Amon Goeth - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Goeth's actions at Płaszów Labor Camp became internationally known through his depiction by British actor Ralph Fiennes in the 1993 film, Schindler's List. In a subsequent interview, Fiennes recalled:

Evil is cumulative. It happens. People believe that they’ve got to do a job, they’ve got to take on an ideology, that they’ve got a life to lead; they’ve got to survive, a job to do, it’s every day inch by inch, little compromises, little ways of telling yourself this is how you should lead your life and suddenly then these things can happen. I mean, I could make a judgement myself privately, this is a terrible, evil, horrific man. But the job was to portray the man, the human being. There’s a sort of banality, that everydayness, that I think was important. And it was in the screenplay. In fact, one of the first scenes with Oskar Schindler, with Liam Neeson, was a scene where I’m saying, 'You don’t understand how hard it is, I have to order so many—so many meters of barbed wire and so many fencing posts and I have to get so many people from A to B.' And, you know, he’s sort of letting off steam about the difficulties of the job.

Fiennes won a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and his portrayal ranked 15th on AFI's list of the top 50 film villains of all time. He ranks as the highest non-fiction villain. When Płaszów survivor Mila Pfefferberg was introduced to Fiennes on the set of the film, she began to shake uncontrollably, as Fiennes, attired in full SS dress uniform, reminded her of the real Amon Goeth. At the film's climax, Goeth's hanging is dramatized. However, he is incorrectly shown patting his hair in place and saying "Heil Hitler" moments before an officer in the People's Army of Poland kicks a chair out from under him.

In 2002, Amon Goeth's daughter Monika Goeth Hertwig published her memoirs under the name Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder? ("But I have to love my father, don't I?"). Monika described the subsequent life of her mother, Ruth Kalder Goeth, who unconditionally glorified her fiancé until confronted with his role in the Holocaust. Ruth committed suicide in 1983, shortly after giving an interview in Jon Blair's documentary Schindler. Monika Hertwig's experiences in dealing with her father's crimes are detailed in Inheritance, a 2006 documentary directed by James Moll. Appearing in the documentary is Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, one of Amon Goeth's former housemaids. The documentary details the meeting of the two women at the Płaszów memorial site in Poland. In a subsequent interview, Jonas-Rosenzweig recalled,

"It's hard for me to be with her because she reminds me a lot of, you know...she's tall, she has certain features. And I hated him so. But she is a victim. And I think it's important because she is willing to tell the story in Germany. She told me people don't want to know, they want to go on with their lives. And I think it's very important because there's a lot of children of perpetrators, and I think she's a brave person to go on talking about it, because it's difficult. And I feel for Monika. I am a mother, I have children. And she is affected by the fact that her father was a perpetrator. But my children are also affected by it. And that's why we both came here. The world has to know, to prevent something like to happen again."

Monika Hertwig has also appeared in a recent documentary film called Hitler's Children, directed and produced by Chanoch Zeevi who is an Israeli documentary maker. In the documentary, Monika and other close relatives of infamous Nazi leaders describe their feelings, relationships and memories of their relations.