Amon Göth was a wealthy boy from Austria but cared nothing for farms or family reputation. He had a penchant for violence and right-wing extremism. He was a Nazi at 23 running propaganda and dodging the Austrian police. He fled to Munich doubled up and enlisted in the SS in 1940. Things then took a darker turn fast.
In 1942 he was ordered to round up Jews in eastern Poland, stuffing them into cattle wagons and shipping them to camps. A year later they assigned him Plaszow, a forced labor camp, and he ran it like a sadistic king. He killed prisoners off his balcony for kicks. Sneezing the wrong way meant you were dead. No warning, no quarter.
Even the SS believed that he had overacted not for murder but for appropriating Jewish property which the Nazis believed was state property. They arrested him in 1944.
In 1945 the Americans grabbed him. At his trial he gave the usual garbage: “I was just following orders.” No remorse. Just cold evil. He was hanged in 1946 near the same camp he turned into a slaughterhouse.
Evil does not always hide. Sometimes it smiles.
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