Oskar Schindler, page 31
The Nazis’ cold war resulted in the outlawing of the Austrian Nazi Party on June 19, 1933. The Austrian Nazi leadership fled to Munich where they established an exile base of operations to continue their reign of terror in Austria. Amon Göth fled with them and was assigned to work in SS Sector VIII, where he took responsibility for smuggling communications equipment into Austria. This was tied to efforts by the Nazis to use a new medium, the radio, to spread their propaganda into Austria, particularly from the middle of 1933 until early 1934. Göth also served as a courier for the SS until he was arrested and detained by the Austrian police in October 1933. Göth’s arrest and detention coincided with efforts by the government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, who was about to declare martial law “to purge [the government] and Austrian society of Nazi party members and sympathizers.”42 According to Göth, he was released for lack of evidence during Christmas 1933. He was lucky. From November 1933 until April 1934, Austrian authorities had convicted 50,000 Nazis of various crimes against the state and society.43
Ruth Göth claimed that Amon continued his illegal activities for the SS in Austria by “smuggling weapons, money, and information.” She also told Tom Segev that Göth seemed to have “played a role in the murder of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß in July 1934.”44 The assassination of the Austrian leader on July 25 was part of an Austrian SS-led attempt to begin a revolt that would lead to a Nazi seizure of power. More than likely, Hitler knew of the coup, though he thought it was linked to an Austrian military move against the Dollfuß regime. The Nazi rebellion was badly organized and doomed to failure, though it did trigger a minor civil war in certain parts of Austria that resulted in the death of hundreds. The Austrians arrested more than 6,000 Nazis involved in different aspects of the coup. Amon Göth was one of those detained by Austrian authorities, though he somehow managed to escape and return to Munich, where Himmler had opened an SS-Übungslager (SS Training Camp and Garrison) at the Dachau SS complex just to the northwest of Munich. Next to it was the smaller, infamous Dachau Konzentrationslager (KZ; concentration camp). It is not known whether Göth spent any time at the SS facilities at Dachau because he was soon forced out of the SS by his commander, SS Sector VIII’s Oberführer, Alfred Bigler. All Göth said about his dismissal was that he had encountered “difficulties” with Bigler, who, he claimed, was also soon kicked out of the SS. Göth launched counterclaims against Bigler, though he said these went unanswered because of Bigler’s dismissal from the SS.45 It is difficult to gauge the seriousness of the factors that led to Amon Göth’s problems with the SS at this time, though given the infighting within the Austrian Nazi Party, quite possibly they centered around nothing more than personal conflicts between Bigler and Göth. There is no record of Göth’s dismissal in his SS file or in the numerous personnel reports written in 1941 on Göth by his superiors in Vienna. The only indication we have that he was not active in SS affairs from 1934 until 1937 is the simple lack of service details in his SS records. Consequently, it is possible that Göth was allowed to rejoin the SS sometime between 1934 and 1937. This was a difficult time for the Austrian SS and the SA, which were supposed to be dissolved after the July coup. Yet both groups were quickly rebuilt, though by 1938 the ranks of the Austrian SS was still 20 percent smaller than it had been in 1934. It maintained a low profile during this period and worked principally at gathering information for the Third Reich as part of the extensive spy network set up by the Germans in the years before the 1938 Anschluß. But it is difficult to say whether Göth was involved in SS affairs in Austria or Germany between 1934 and 1937. 46
The first document we have that indicates Göth’s return to Nazi Party activity is a letter he wrote on July 16, 1937, to the headquarters of the Austrian Refugee Society (ARS; Flüchtlingshilfswerk) in Berlin. He asked ARS officials for a note permitting the transfer of his party membership to Munich and the confirmation of his Nazi Party number. He gave Pogner-straße 28/III in Munich as his new, permanent address. He explained that his original Party papers had been taken from him after his arrest in Austria in 1933. It is possible that they were destroyed when he was dismissed from the SS, though more than likely they were part of the Nazi Party and SS records seized by Austrian officials after the 1934 coup.47
The ARS had been set up before the 1934 coup and afterwards sent money from Nazi party coffers in Germany to help the families of Nazis killed and executed after the failed coup against Dolfuß. German party leaders hoped this would stop the flood of Austrian Nazi refugees into the Reich and create a greater sense of loyalty towards the Reich among Nazi Party members in Austria. The ARS, which was headed by the head of the Austrian SS, Alfred Rodenbücher, also gave money to unemployed Nazis and even loaned funds to Austrian Nazi businessmen who were having problems because of their political beliefs. Göth’s request to ARS headquarters in Berlin for copies of his party documents and permission to transfer his party membership to Munich suggests that he was working for the ARS in Austria. It is also possible that Göth received funds from the ARS during this period, though his father kept a tight rein over the family business. Moreover, it is questionable whether Franz Göth would have accepted funds from the Nazis.48
What did Amon Göth do from 1934 until 1937? Ruth Göth said that he lived in Munich and tried to “develop his publishing business.” Göth’s parents, Franz and Berta, urged him “to make a normal life for himself” and get married. Ruth said her grandfather was something of a liberal and was disillusioned with his son’s involvement in Nazi politics. Franz Göth later told Ruth that he considered Amon’s Nazi activities nothing more than “teenage adventurism.” To push their son along the path of normalcy, Franz and Berta even found him a wife, though the marriage ended in divorce after a few months.49
Göth returned to Vienna and the SS after the Anschluß in the spring of 1938; he soon found himself under pressure to remarry because Himmler required all SS men between twenty-five and thirty to marry and “found a family.” He became engaged to Anny Geiger, who had been born in Innsbruck in 1913. But before they could be wed, they had to pass a rigid series of SS tests, including photos of the prospective couple in bathing suits, to insure they possessed the proper physical characteristics. The SS forbade church marriages and required that all SS men be married by their local commander. To move up the ranks, an SS man was expected to turn his back on the Christian faith.50
On October 23, 1938, Amon Göth and Anny were married in an SS ceremony; the couple remained married throughout the war. Anny bore three children but there is some confusion about this. Göth’s 1941 SS Person-alangaben lists only two sons, though his 1943 Recommendation for Promotion (Ernennungsvorschlag) lists three children: two sons and a daughter who was deceased. Göth’s first son was born in the summer of 1939, his second in February 1940. But the respected life of a publisher did not interest Amon Göth as much as Nazism and the SS, and by the time Adolf Hitler conquered Austria in the spring of 1938, he had rejoined his beloved SS. When war broke out, he began full-time service in the SS, though he still considered himself a publisher by trade. Anny and the children lived permanently in Vienna throughout World War II.51
In early 1939, Göth was assigned to SS-Standarte 89 in Vienna; when war broke out, he was reassigned to SS Sturmbann 1/11. On March 9, 1940, Göth proudly noted in his 1941 Lebenslauf that he became a member of one of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s Sonderkommando units, where he served as a Verwaltungsführer (administrative leader) on the SS operational staff in East Upper Silesia. Eight months later, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Oberscharführer (technical sergeant). At the time, he lived in Kattowitz (Kattowice), though he gave as his permanent address Zollerg 25/16, 7 Wien (Vienna).52
Upper Silesia, or, as the Germans called it after it was integrated into the Third Reich in 1939, East Upper Silesia (Ostoberschlesien), was highly prized during the war for its coal production output, second only to that of the Ruhr Valley in Germany. Equally important was Upper Silesia’s industrial capacity. By 1943, it produced 5 percent of Germany’s raw iron and 9 pecent of its steel. Robert Ley, the head of the German Labor Front (DAF; Deutsche Arbeitsfront), underscored the importance of East Upper Silesia to the war effort in the Kattowitzer Zeitung in early 1942: “As one of our mightiest arms producers, the Gau of Upper Silesia has the task of contributing to the strengthening of the German armament industry and thus to the achievement of the final victories of our arms.”53
From the summer of 1941 until late May 1942, Göth served as an Ein-satzführer (action leader) and a financial administrator with the 1/11th SS-Standarte Planetta, where he worked with an Umsiedlungskommando (resettlement commando) under SS-Obersturmbannführer Franz Weilgung in the Kattowitz office of the Ethnic German Central Office (VoMi; Volks-deutsche Mittelstelle), which was part of Himmler’s Reich Office for the Integration of the German Volk-Nation (Reichsamt für den Zusammen-schluß des deutschen Volkstums). Göth’s superiors praised his work with the resettlement command and said that he exhibited “superior character and very good SS-comradeship.”54 When the Germans occupied Upper Silesia in the fall of 1939, they created a special “police line” that ran through the Kattowitz district and divided the new district into two distinct parts. The western area of East Upper Silesia, which had a large German population and was the heart of industrialized Silesia, would not only be an area ripe for major industrial development and exploitation but also Germanization. The area east of the police line, which included Auschwitz and the surrounding area, had large Polish and Jewish populations, which the Germans wanted to isolate from the western portion of East Upper Silesia as part of their “ethnic reordering” scheme.55
The idea was that the western portion of East Upper Silesia, along with other segments of recently conquered Poland, would become something of a racial laboratory centered around the move of ethnic Germans into the region after the expulsion of Poles and Jews. Different SS-controlled offices under Himmler’s newly created Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV; Reichskommis-sariat für die Festigung deutsches Volkstums) would then oversee the transfers and expulsions. The RKFDV’s headquarters office in Berlin under SS-Gruppenführer Ulrich Greifelt would plan for the resettlement of ethnic Germans and oversee the expulsion of Poles and Jews; the VoMi, under SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz, would be responsible for the physical transfer of the German immigrants; this would include the creation of temporary settlement camps and the selection of leaders within these diverse groups. The Reichsstatthalter (governors) of each Gau (district or province) in the newly conquered territories were responsible for the care of the new settlers. Himmler’s new super police organization, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA; Reichs-sicherheitshauptamt), headed by Reinhard Heydrich, was in charge of “requisitioning” the property of “anti-state” Jews and Poles and deporting them to the General Government. These organizations, in turn, had to work with other Party and government agencies to insure the success of the German settlement program.56
What is important about Göth’s role in all of this is that he worked in a part of the Greater Reich where economics took precedent over racial policy when it came to the fate of Jews. Because the SS came to view him not only as a seasoned administrator but also as an expert on Jewish resettlement and transfers, we can surmise that Göth was probably involved in similar policies and programs in East Upper Silesia. Jewish policy in East Upper Silesia was overseen by SS-Oberführer Albrecht Schmelt. By the fall of 1940, Schmelt had developed a highly efficient and extremely profitable Jewish slave labor system that housed Jews in a network of two hundred camps scattered throughout East Upper Silesia. If Albrecht Schmelt was Amon Göth’s SS role model, then he learned from a master of brutal efficiency and corruption. Schmelt’s Jewish slave labor force grew from 17,000 in the fall of 1940 to more than 50,000 by late 1943. The vast sums made by Schmelt and the SS from hiring out his Jewish laborers to factories and other businesses were such that the SS was able to help fund a resettlement program for ethnic Germans in the district and even provide aid to SS men killed in battle. And there was enough wealth left over to help buy an estate, Parzymiechy, where ethnic Germans were trained to become farmers. Schmelt was also able to skim enough money from this program to pay for a private home for himself and put RM 100,000 ($40,000) in his private bank account.57
By the time Amon Göth was transferred to Lublin in the summer of 1942, he had become a seasoned administrator. Ten months earlier, he had been promoted to the rank of Untersturmführer. His transfer papers stated that he was to work on the staff of SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globočnik, the SSPF (SS- und Polizeiführer Ost; SS and Police Leader) in the Lublin district. His transfer documents stated that he was to become part of “Son-derdienst [Special Aktion] Reinhard,” specializing in “Judenumsiedlung” (Jewish resettlement) efforts.58
If anyone came to symbolize the brutality of German policy towards Polish Jews during this period, it was Globočnik. But Globočnik was more than just a brute. He was also a crook of the highest order, and he, like Albrecht Schmelt, became a role model for Amon Göth. Like Göth, he was an Austrian Old Fighter who had been arrested and imprisoned several times for illegal Nazi activity before the Anschluß. In fact, it is possible that both men knew each other in Austria and Munich. Göth and Globočnik both smuggled explosions into Austria from Germany for the Austrian Nazi Party and spent a lot of time in Munich working for the outlawed party. But here their careers diverged. While Göth’s career in the Nazi Party and the SS languished because of his dismissal in 1934, Globočnik, who joined the Nazi Party (Party no. 442 939) and the SS (SS no. 292 776) later than Göth, quickly caught the eye of Himmler when he became an SS member in 1934 (SS No. 292 776). Like Göth, he spent a great deal of time in Munich from 1934 to 1938, where he helped operate a ring smuggling funds into Austria. Globočnik also served as Gauleiter of the Kaernten district in Austria.59
In early 1939, Globočnik, who at the time was Gauleiter of Vienna, was stripped of his rank and honors for corruption. However, Himmler, who thought highly of Globočnik, resurrected his career in the fall of 1939 when he made him the SSPF for Lublin. Globočnik transformed the Lublin district into an economic center for SS firms using Jewish slave labor and also planned to make it the heart of SS and German colonization in Poland. In late 1941, Globočnik was put in charge of what later became known as Ak-tion Reinhard, so-named to honor the memory of Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated by Czech partisans on June 4, 1942, in Prague. Aktion Reinhard was the SS plan to murder the 2.3 million Jews in the General Government as part of the Final Solution. It centered around the creation of three special “extermination camps”—Bełźec, Sobibór, and Treblinka.60
There are documents in Göth’s SS files in the Bundesarchiv and in the National Archives as well as a brief reference in his war crimes trial transcript linking Göth to Aktion Reinhard. In addition, Mietek Pemper, Göth’s Jewish stenographer, shed some light on Göth’s activities as an Ak-tion Reinhard staff officer in his testimony during Göth’s war crimes trial in 1946. Göth’s SS records provide no details about his activities because of the secrecy that surrounded Aktion Reinhard. Each of the 450 SS men, police officers, and “euthanasia” specialists chosen to serve with Globočnik were sworn to secrecy and asked to sign a statement pledging that they would say or write nothing about their activities to anyone except members of the Aktion Reinhard staff. They also agreed not to take photographs of any of the Aktionen of the operation, and to maintain this secrecy even after they completed their service with Aktion Reinhard. Göth, along with many of the other Austrians selected to serve with the Globočnik team, worked in one of the three Aktion Reinhard death camps. According to Göth’s war crimes transcript, he worked directly under SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Höfle, an Austrian who headed the Main Department (Hauptabteilung) and was responsible for planning the roundups from the ghettos and the deportations to the Aktion Reinhard death camps. This is where Göth gained the skills that made him an expert in brutally rounding up Jews in ghettos and preparing them for deportation to death camps. Three of the five charges brought against him during his war crimes trial in 1946 dealt with the closing of the Kraków and Tarnów ghettos and the forced labor camp at Szebnie.61
Göth spent only six months working for Höfle and Globočnik before he was appointed commandant of the Płaszów forced labor camp in Kraków on February 11, 1943. According to Pemper, he was sent to Płaszów because he had trouble with Höfle.62 But the lessons he learned during that six-month period in Lublin honed his brutish, murderous skills. Raimund Titsch, the manager of one of the factories in Płaszów, said that even before his arrival, the factory managers and Jews in the camp already knew Göth as the “Bloody Dog of Lublin.”63 It is difficult to say what job Göth had during this period, though his SS file indicates that on October 1 he was assigned to the “Stab,” meaning possibly the Aussiedlungsstab (Evaluation or Deportation Staff) under Höfle. Göth probably worked on Höfle’s headquarters staff because the actual deportations were overseen by local SS leaders and the movement of rail transports were handled by German railroad officials in Kraków. During the brief period he was in Lublin, this group oversaw the building of new, more efficient gas chambers in the three death camps as well as personnel and labor changes designed to make the camps run more efficiently. Yet Göth must have had some experience with ghetto deportations and camp administration because the SS later had high regard for him as a camp commandant and expert on closing ghettos; in fact, the fall of 1942 was one of the most active periods for such “actions” in the General Government.64
