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Books: Daughter to the Devil
Louise Potterton, Vienna
It�s been a long, hard road to the truth for Monika Goeth, whose father was the concentration-camp commandant made infamous in �Schindler�s List� for shooting inmates randomly from his balcony
As a child, when she didn�t know what he had done, Monika Goeth loved her father very much. But today, the daughter of Amon Goeth, the commander of the Plaszow Camp in Poland where the so-called "Schindler Jews" were interned, says she�s not so sure.
Now 56, Monika, who no longer goes by the name "Goeth," tells her disturbing but fascinating story with total frankness in the German-language book, "I Have to Love My Father, or Do I?" an extended conversation with German author Matthias Kessler.
She recalls how her mother hid the truth about her father, describing him only as "handsome, charming and well-educated." And she describes her reaction to the chilling portrayal of her father by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg�s "Schindler�s List," which made her sick for three days. Among his other sadistic pastimes, Goeth would shoot Jews in the camp from his balcony.
The book also contains rare photos of Amon Goeth and Monika�s mother, Ruth-Irene Kalder, a German actress, at the camp�s villa.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Report by phone from her home near Munich, she says: "The book is the first time I have really spoken about my father. After the interview, I was in a terrible mess, but also relieved, because I was really confronted with the truth for the first time."
In researching the book, author Kessler managed to locate, at the Institute of Jewish History in Warsaw, Poland, one of only two surviving copies of the 500-page protocol of Goeth�s mammoth trial, in which survivors of the camp presented harrowing testimony about their experiences. He had this translated and presented it to Monika at the end of their two-day interview.
Through the transcript she was confronted with the distressing truth about the cruel deeds committed by her father, who would personally shoot dead cowering prisoners on the flimsiest of excuses. Kessler also read parts of it to her. She was shocked by the details of her father�s brutality and said at the interview�s end: "I don�t feel pity for him anymore. I wanted to see him as a victim of National Socialism -- of Hitler and Himmler. Now I see him as a murderer."
Born near Munich in 1945 and brought up by her mother and grandmother, Monika knew little about her father. But as she began to ask more questions, Monika realized that her mother -- who had a photo of him by her bed until she died -- was not being honest about her father�s past.
"My mother never regretted for one second her relationship with Amon. She loved him dearly. She would say he was my father and I should love him."
Ruth-Irene called Amon "Mony" and Monika was named for him. "Mony" was, in fact, as sadistic as the worst of Nazi commanders. "When you saw Goeth, you saw death," said Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindler Jews. Said another survivor: "One day he hung a friend of mine just because he had once been rich. He was the devil."
Goeth, whose crimes included orchestrating the final liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, was executed in 1946 after the Supreme Court of Krakow found him guilty of mass murder. His daughter says: "I�ve often asked myself which is better, hate or love. Hate destroys you personally -- I don�t want to live with hate. As a child I loved my father very much, because I didn�t know what he had done, but today I don�t know if I love him or not. But I know that if I had been old enough I would have certainly visited him and stayed with him before they hanged him.
"He was hanged three times in Krakow, because the rope snapped. His corpse was burned and the ashes thrown into the Weichsel River in Poland."
Monika recalls how at the age of 8, when visiting an old aunt, she was chastised for crying, and told, "if your father could see he would jump out of the Weichsel."
"I asked my grandmother what my father had to do with the Weichsel River, and whether he had drowned. But she told me it was just a saying," Monika told The Report. "I would ask my granny a lot of questions. I would ask why the Jews were killed, and thought to myself, you don�t kill people for no reason. I would say, Tell me Granny, they must have done something. She said they did nothing, but I couldn�t believe it."
As a child Monika lived in Schwabing, Munich. She says she tried to find out more information at school but no one wanted to talk about the war or the Jews. She went to libraries, but in the mid-50s there were no books that discussed what had really happened.
She recalls a school vacation when she was 11. "I wanted to go swimming and hadn�t cleaned the bathroom and I argued with my mother about it. She said, �You are like your father and will end up like him� -- and I knew something was odd, but didn�t ask her. Instead I waited till the next day and asked my granny what really happened to Amon, and she said he was hanged because in Poland the Germans killed Jews and my father was involved. She said he ran a labor camp, but she said it wasn�t like Auschwitz. He had to kill some Jews because of sanitation problems."
When Monika was around 12 a Jewish girl joined her school class. She recalls: "She was named Ernestine Silber and had beautiful dark hair. She went home the same way as me;
I walked on the other side of the road so she didn�t see me. I was so impressed with how her father welcomed his Ernestine when she came home from school. He would embrace her and I thought, what is supposed to be so bad about the Jews? I sure would like to be treated the way they treat their children."
But when Monika told her mother about the new girl, Ruth-Irene was shocked and said that she hoped that Ernestine did not mention her name at home. The daughter says she responded, "Your stupid Mony had a little work camp somewhere in the middle of Poland. Do you really think that every Jew knows who Amon Goeth was? And she said, �The Jews know your father.�
"Then I was afraid to get too close to her. What could I say? I�m the daughter of someone who killed your relatives?"
Ruth-Irene Kalder, an attractive actress from Breslau, had moved to Krakow to find work, and become one of Oskar Schindler�s many secretaries at his factory. She got to know Amon through Schindler, who one day took her to a party at Goeth�s villa, on the edge of the camp. At that time she was around 25; they started a relationship and she moved into the villa. Monika says: "She was fascinated by this Goeth. He was married and had two children in Vienna and said to her from the start, �You can live here with me, but I can�t get a divorce because of my children.� My mother accepted this."
Monika was born in November 1945 in Bad Toelz, near Munich. When she was 1, a passer-by stabbed her in the neck. She still has the scar. Her mother presumed it was a Jew who recognized her from the camp.
Her mother told Monika about daily life at the villa at Plaszow. "She would get up and go riding, because she always said, after this, breakfast tasted especially good. In the afternoons she would go riding again. She would play a bit of tennis. Then there were the evening parties to prepare. There was incredible luxury." According to Monika, her mother never ventured beyond the villa to visit the actual camp. "Amon, when he was in his house, was a charming man with impeccable table manners. He would court her. She was a very attractive woman. In fact she had a Jewish look, slim and with dark hair."
Amon Goeth never married Monika�s mother, but in 1948 she changed her name to Goeth after Amon�s father, a publisher, made a solemn affirmation that his son was engaged to Ruth-Irene and the planned wedding had been prevented because of the chaos toward the end of the war.
As a teenager Monika met Oskar Schindler, in Frankfurt, with her mother: "He didn�t want us to go to his apartment, because he was embarrassed since he lived rather shabbily. He must have been unemployed at that time. My mother paid for the drinks in the restaurant, and in those days it was unusual for a woman to pay the bill. He drank coffee and schnapps one after the other. I�ve never seen anyone drink like Oskar, although he had no money. He looked at me and said, �Hey Moni, you look just like your father.�
"And I thought to myself, he seems to like Amon and not hate him. I knew from my mother that my father had once got Oskar out of prison, so I asked him why he didn�t go to Krakow when the allies arrested him. He said, �Monika, it was impossible; they would have hanged me as well -- even if I had saved 10,000 Jews.�"
When she was 20 Monika met Manfred, a Jewish survivor of the Plaszow camp, in a Munich bar. She noticed the tattoo on his arm and asked which camp he had been in.
When he said "Plaszow," she replied: "Thank God you were just in a labor camp and not a concentration camp. Did you know my father?" She told him her father�s name and he screamed, "That murderer, that swine." He refused to talk to her about it, saying she was too young.
At the beginning of 1983 Ruth-Irene was approached by a British journalist who said he wanted to produce a documentary about Oskar Schindler. He returned with a TV crew and later Ruth-Irene told Monika that the journalist no longer wanted to know anything about Oskar, but rather Amon Goeth. The day after the interview she committed suicide.
After her mother�s death Monika had her father�s death sentence translated into German. She also visited Auschwitz and Plaszow, and met with survivors of her father�s camp.
In 1994 Monika went to see the film "Schindler�s List." She says: "I just thought: For God�s sake, I hope he doesn�t shoot any more people. I hope there�s a part where he becomes a bit more humane." After the film she was ill for three days.
Monika married for the first time in 1971 and had a daughter in 1976. Later, in 1987, after her divorce, she married her second husband, while working as a secretary at Munich University. They live today in Bavaria, and the couple care for Monika�s grandson, David Amon.
Monika has read extensively on the topic and is a great admirer of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, about whom she says, "In spite of all the cruelties he experienced, he sought justice and not revenge, and when the Austrians trampled on this justice by acquitting Nazi thugs in court, he never gave up."
Monika recently studied classical Hebrew at university. She says: "It was like an inner compulsion to learn Hebrew. Just like the compulsion to read about the Holocaust."
September 9, 2002
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