December 22, 1947, Krakow, Poland. The former staff of Auschwitz - the
deadliest German Nazi concentration camp – hears their sentences read.
After a month of gruesome testimonies, 23 defendants out of the 41
are sentenced to death by hanging. One of them is Paul Götze one of the most sadistic Nazi guards.
Paul Götze was born on the 13th of November 1903 in Halle, then part of the German Empire and he
was a painter by profession. In 1937 Götze joined the Nazi Party and in 1942 he joined the SS.
In July 1942 he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he committed
his worst crimes. At first, Götze worked as a guard supervising the prisoners working outside
and within the camp where the minimum working day numbered 11 hours. In his position, Götze was
incredibly sadistic, and his cruelty often went far beyond what his superiors ordered him to do.
On one occasion he was seen hitting one inmate with his rifle butt for
having lifted half a smoked cigarette. When it seemed to Götze that the prisoners
were not working hard enough, he was often seen punching them in the face brutally
while calling them “Polish swine “ . He had no mercy even with women. When
one French female inmate stopped to work for a moment because she was starved and exhausted,
Götze beat her brutally with his bare hands. The poor inmates were forced to work without
any break and Götze did not even allow them to use the toilet.
In February 1943 Paul Götze was promoted to block leader.
He took active parts in selections on the rail ramp and actively participated
in taking prisoners – especially Jews and those who were sick - to the gas chambers.
During these actions, especially when unloading transports and loading victims on trucks to be
murdered in gas chambers, Götze was extremely brutal and was seen beating and kicking them.
The SS guards were able to dominate and control the camp’s large populations with the help of the
kapos. The kapos were prisoners in Nazi camps who were selected by the SS to supervise the
other camp’s inmates. The kapos received better food, clothing and housing and had a reputation
of brutal supervisors, beating, denouncing and even killing their fellow prisoners.
On one occasion a prisoner was seen smoking a cigarette by a block’s kapo. The kapo not only
beat the prisoner but also reported it to Götze. That night, Götze dragged the prisoner out of his
bed and beat and kicked until he was unconscious. The poor inmate was then woken with water and had
to hold a squatting position with bricks in his hands until losing his strength and falling down.
Götze ‘s specialty was to come to the block at night with a rod in his hand
and pick the victims who he later killed with a blow to the head from his rod.
When one prisoner survived such a blow from Götze’s rod, Götze ordered him to
be taken outside the block and undressed and there he crushed the prisoner’s skull.
When he saw that prisoners were sick and unable to continue their work,
he wrote down their names and ordered them to be taken directly to the crematorium.
Götze also took part in the liquidation of the so-called “Gypsy Family Camp”.
The Nazis considered Roma and Sinti people as racially inferior and in December 1942
Heinrich Himmler issued an order to send all Roma and Sinti people from the Nazi occupied
territories to concentration camps including Auschwitz. Romani families deported to the
Gypsy Family Camp were held together, instead of being separated as was typical at Auschwitz.
The conditions in the camp were horrible. One holocaust survivor described it as hell on Earth.
The prisoners - half-crazed with hunger - were crammed inside the barracks which were icy cold.
To keep warm all the inmates had to huddle together.
On the 2nd of August 1944 , 2,897 surviving men, women, and children from this Gypsy family camp
were murdered in the gas chambers at Birkenau.
Because the crematorium was out of order by this time, the bodies of the killed
prisoners were burned in trenches. After the war one witness testified
how the poor inmates had unsuccessfully battled with the SS with improvised weapons. However,
the SS crushed their opposition brutally and then loaded the prisoners into trucks and killed them.
Paul Götze was then transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
After the end of the war, Paul Götze was finally to face justice and pay for his crimes.
He was tried at the Auschwitz Trial which began in November, 1947 and lasted one month.
On the 22nd of December, 1947, the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow
sentenced Götze to death by hanging. He was 44 years old when he was
executed on the 28th of January 1948, There were no tears shed for Paul Götze.
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