Amon Goeth: the Masochistic Nazi Butcher

Amon Goeth: the Masochistic Nazi Butcher

In every story there is a protagonist and an antagonist, just like in Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List (1993). As this movie doesn’t focus directly on the holocaust there is a hero and a villain within the events; whilst Oskar Schindler is shown as a hero he still has some qualities that a villain may possess, but Amon Goeth doesn’t show any qualities of a hero throughout the film or in his real life personality. The evil that dwells inside Amon Goeth is not represented in the movie as Spielberg portrayed him to be less malevolence in the film compared to the real Goeth. The events that unfold once Goeth is introduced in the movie shows the immorality of the character and the man. Spielberg endeavours to portray Goeth as a merciless and cruel man who was indifferent to the persecution suffered by the Jewish people at his command. Spielberg illustrated this in numerous scenes throughout the film in order to dramatise Goeth’s evil and malevolent character. The Jewish prisoners within the Plaszow labour camps were lucky if they survived a month. Group punishments were frequent and the torture and death of the Jewish prisoners were daily occurrences. The first time the audience is introduced to Amon Goeth, he is riding through the Krakow ghetto in a convertible. Spielberg introduced him as cold man as he did not seem to be affected by the living standard of the people around him; all he cared about was the coldness. Amon Goeth was depicted wrongly in the film as he was a cruel masochistic man who committed even more horrible crimes in real life than he did in the film. Amon Goeth cruelly tortured and punished the Jews and for seemingly no reason at all. While Spielberg shows several examples of Goeth’s murderous nature, he fails to explore the true horror of Goeth’s actions in depth. A testimony from the high court Jewish judge and a Schindler juden Moshe Beijski, at a trial of the war criminals of that time stated that “_t__he case of Olmer, whose daughter lives...

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