← Back to the front page

40 Fascinating Facts About the Relatives of Nazis After WWII

Khalid Elhassan March 14, 2019 24 min

7. Amon Goeth, of Schindler’s List Fame

Amon Goeth during his trial in 1946. Rare Historical Photos

Amon Goeth is perhaps best known today as Oskar Schindler’s foe, having been portrayed by Ralph Fiennes as the camp commandant in 1993’s Schindler’s List. The real-life Amon Goeth, who ran the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp in Poland, was a sadist who trained his dogs to tear people apart and got a kick out of watching them savage prisoners. After the war, he was convicted of ordering the torture, murder, and imprisonment of thousands, and for personally killing, torturing, and maiming an indeterminate number of people. He was hanged near his personal killing field.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.