Amon Goeth had two different maids named Helen and lived in three different houses at the Plaszow concentration camp

I have been blogging almost daily for two and a half years and have written around 800 blog posts.  The two subjects that have generated the most interest, among my readers, are Dr. Josef Mengele who selected prisoners for the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Amon Goeth, the Commandant of the Plazow concentration camp, who shot prisoners at random from the balcony of the house where he lived, according to the movie Schindler’s List, which is based on a NOVEL entitled Schindler’s Ark written by Thomas Keneally.

During his time as the Commandant at Plaszow, Goeth lived in THREE DIFFERENT HOUSES.  The RED House was the first house where Amon Goeth lived when he was the Commandant, and the WHITE HOUSE which is shown in a documentary entitled Inheritance, was the last house where he lived.

In his NOVEL, Thomas Keneally explained that Amon Goeth was not arrested for shooting prisoners at random from his balcony because Plaszow was a LABOR CAMP at that time. The Plaszow camp was not yet under the jurisdiction of the SS Economic Administrative Main Office, which controlled the concentration camps, but not the labor camps.  The Commandant of a concentration camp did not have the authority to shoot prisoners without permission from the SS Economic Administrative Main Office.  By the time that Goeth was living in the WHITE house, shown in the documentary, Plaszow was a concentration camp and he would have been arrested if he had shot prisoners from his balcony.

In real life, Amon Goeth had two maids, both named Helen, while he was the Commandant at Plaszow. In the movie Schindler’s List, the two maids are combined into one person named Helen.

The two maids, who worked in Goeth’s house at the same time, were named Helen Hirsch and Helen Sternlicht.  Helen Hirsch is now Helen Horowitz; she was one of the “Schindler Jews” who provided information to Keneally for his novel.  Helen Sternlicht is now Helen Jonas.  She is the Helen who is shown in the James Moll documentary Inheritance, as she confronts Monika Goeth in a very belligerent way, making poor Monika feel guilty about the alleged crimes of her father.

Helen Hirsch was a witness at the post-war trial of Amon Goeth in Poland. As far as I know, she was the only one of the two maids named Helen, who testified at the trial. Helen Hirsch testified under oath that Amon Goeth had shot prisoners from THE WINDOW of his RED HOUSE during the time that Plaszow was a LABOR CAMP.

The house shown in the documentary Inheritance is the THIRD house in which Goeth lived during the time that he was the Commandant of Plaszow CONCENTRATION CAMP.  This is NOT the house that was mentioned in the testimony of Helen Hirsch at the trial of Amon Geoth.

Third house where Amon Goeth lived is shown in the documentary Inheritance

In the photo above, notice that there is a balcony on the second floor, which would be called the first floor in European terms. On the ground floor, there is a wide door that opens in the middle, and two casement windows that open outward.  The tiled area outside the doors would be called a patio by most people, not a balcony.

The photo below shows Amon Goeth, holding a rifle, as he stands outside the house.  The doors and windows identify the house as the house shown in the documentary Inheritance.

Amon Goeth standing outside the house shown in the documentary

In the photo above, Amon Goeth is standing on the PATIO outside the WHITE house, not on the upstairs BALCONY.  Note the open door on the left side of the photo which identifies the location as the ground floor.

In the movie Schindler’s List, which was based on a NOVEL, Amon Goeth is shown on a BALCONY, as he shoots prisoners at random in the Plaszow camp. In the movie, the balcony overlooks the Plaszow camp; this scene in the movie is pure fiction. The WHITE house, where Goeth lived at that time, did not overlook the camp.

Scene from the movie Schindler’s List

The photo above is a still shot from the movie. It shows Amon Goeth shooting from a balcony which overlooks a quarry.  This scene is pure FICTION.

The photo below shows Ruth Irene Kalder, the mother of Monika Goeth, standing on the PATIO outside the WHITE house, where Goeth was photographed with a rifle in his hand.

Ruth Irene Kalder standing on the patio outside the house where she lived with Amon Goeth

Note the doors in the background, which clearly identify this as the patio where Amon Goeth was standing with a rifle.

These innocent photos, plus the trial testimony of Helen Hirsch, were twisted into a fictional scene, shown by Stephen Spielberg, in his movie Schindler’s List.

While the Plaszow camp was in operation, Amon Goeth was investigated by Dr. Konrad Morgen, a Nazi judge, and as a result, Goeth was arrested for stealing goods from the Plaszow camp.  He was not arrested for shooting prisoners from his balcony.

If Goeth had actually been shooting prisoners from the WHITE house where he was living at that time, he would have been executed by the Nazis. If he had shot even one prisoner from his balcony, Ruth Irene Kalder would have instantly left him; she was a former movie actress, who was said to have resembled Elizabeth Taylor.  Kalder had been working as a secretary to Oscar Schindler when Schindler introduced her to Goeth.  Schinlder, who was a good friend of Goeth, was arrested at the same time as Goeth, because Schindler had been storing the goods that Amon Goeth was stealing from the Plaszow camp.

In the fictional movie Schindler’s List, the investigation and arrest of Amon Goeth are not mentioned.  He just disappears from the movie and nothing more is said about him.

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the fictional story of Amon Goeth, shooting prisoners from his balcony, lives on. It is one of those “events that never happened, but are true,” as Elie Wiesel famously said.

The movie Schindler’s List should not be shown to school children because the movie is fictional.  I previous blogged about the fictional aspects of Schindler’s List here.

If any readers of my blog still believe that Amon Goeth shot prisoners at random from his balcony, I can’t help you. You have been so brain-washed that you are beyond help.