Inside of the concentration camp system, there were many people who worked in different roles.
The SS were the administrators of the sites, and they were the ones who also guarded prisoners,
but many prisoners were forced to serve some of the guards, and work in different capacities.
At Auschwitz, there was one part of the camp known as Kanada, a sorting area where prisoners
were forced to sort through the belongings of the people who were sent to their deaths.
But there were others forced into roles inside of the camps serving superior and high ranking
officers, and commandants.
One woman who was forced to work as a maid inside of the Krakow-Plaszow Camp was Helen
Jonas Rosenzweig, who worked for one of the most evil commandants of any camp.
Amon Goth, was a sadistic brute who would shoot prisoners for sport from the balcony
of his villa, but amazingly Helen managed to survive the war, and only passed away in
2018 at the grand age of 93, but her memories and experiences did haunt her.
Welcome to the UntoldPast, join us today as we look at ‘the untold survival of Amon
Goth’s maid,’ and as always to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Helen Jonas Rosenzweig was born as Helena Stenlicht inside of Krakow on the 25th April
1925.
Her early life was stated to have been happy, and she had two sisters and she lived inside
of Krakow.
She would have attended school, and probably had many friends and acquaintances, however
on the 1st September 1939 her life changed.
Hitler had ordered the invasion of Poland, and with this Nazi tanks and soldiers rampaged
throughout the country, and caused immense suffering, devastation and death.
They would brutalise much of the polish population and force them into submission, but for Jewish
families they suffered heavily.
Helen’s family were rounded up, and after the Polish surrender, her family were sent
to live inside of the Krakow Ghetto.
This was one of five major ghetto’s inside of large cities established by the nazis.
They used this system to persecute and strike fear into the hearts of Poland’s jews, and
the persecution began as soon as the German soldiers captured the city of Krakow.
Jews were ordered to report for forced labour, and they were forced to wear identification
armbands, but following this the ghetto was established.
The Ghetto was guarded by the German police, the Police police and the Jewish police.
It was enclosed by a wall made of stone and barbed wire, and the stones were used as they
looked like tombstones and were intimidating.
It was a closed site, meaning access was restricted and Jews could not leave unless they had the
proper documentation and authorisation.
When it was first created it had 16,000 living inside of it, and had 320 buildings inside.
The Nazis ordered the windows looking out onto the Aryan side to be bricked up, so Jews
were completely shut away from the outside world.
Executions were common inside the city, and mass deportations did occur with thousands
of people being sent to extermination camps where they were killed as soon as they arrived,
or to sites such as Auschwitz.
But Helen and her family were held in the ghetto for a while before in 1942 they were
deported from the Krakow Ghetto and were sent to different camps.
Her father was sent to Belzec and there he was killed as soon as he arrived, but along
with her mother and two sisters, Helen was sent to the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp.
This was a camp where there were many executions, deaths from forced labour and the conditions
there were truly terrible.
Prisoners were forced to work in the armaments factories at Plaza, and also the stone quarry
there.
Many women and children were sent there, but as mentioned the death rate was high as diseases
such as Typhus ran rampant.
Near to the camp was a large hill named the Hujowa Gorka, where mass shootings took place
with 8000 people at least being killed outside there, a number of times each week.
The inmates were often forced to watch these executions.
Food was very scarce, and things were incredibly tough.
The Sternlicht girls all arrived together, and this would have hopefully made their ordeal
slightly easier being together a lot of the time.
But on the third day that she was at the camp, Helen was washing windows inside of a barrack
when the commandant of Krakow-Plaszow walked in.
Amon Goth was a formidable and terrifying man, who would take the lives of inmates without
even a second’s hesitation.
He was known for executions and brutality, and when he approached Helen it’s likely
she was incredibly scared.
He spoke to Helena and commented about the work she was doing, and with this she was
then ordered to go to Goth’s villa, and she would then begin work there as a housemaid.
She was moved out of the barracks there, to then go and work inside of the Goth residence.
Whilst inside of Goth’s villa, she would work alongside another maid called Helen,
Helen Hirsch wand the pair lived together in the basement of the house.
The pair were forced to work for Goth, but this work kept them away from the daily life
of the Concentration Camp.
For the next two years the two women shared the household work at the commandant’s house,
and they continued to live in fear constantly, as they knew what their master could be like.
Amon Goth was known for being a sadistic and brutal man, and Helen noticed this first hand.
She stated after the war that she saw him shoot prisoners from the balcony of his villa,
and he would do this for spots.
He would place his hat on his head, and would go on to the balcony, watch the prisoners
with his rifle aimed, he would then look down his scope and take shots at the inmates, as
if he was hunting deer.
The film Schindler’s list would portray these moments, and many prisoners who had
been there a while knew that when Goth was spotted on the balcony with his hat, it was
time to hide.
Helen continued to see his evil, and she would claim that she once saw him shoot dead a young
jewish man who worked for him as a valet without any reason at all.
Working inside the house was scary, but then Sternlicht had a boyfriend who worked at the
camp who was part of the resistance.
Helen began to steal papers from Goth to give to her boyfriend, but after hearing that Adam
her boyfriend was involved in resistance, whilst Helen Sternlicht was nearby, Goth shot
her boyfriend dead.
Helen believed she would be killed too, but Goth never mentioned it.
To send a clear message, her boyfriends body was then hanged in front of the other prisoners
for days to send a clear warning about anyone joining the resistance or trying to escape.
But one man who regularly visited Goth’s villa was Oskar Schindler.
He once said to Helen, ‘Remember to people in Egypt, they were freed.
So you will be too.’
Helen later said about Goth, ‘As a survivor I can tell you that we are all traumatized
people.
Never would I, never, believe that any human being would be capable of such horror, of
such atrocities.
When we saw him from a distance, everybody was hiding, in latrines, wherever they could
hide.
I can't tell you how people feared him.’
Goth was later relieved of comment, and was accused of failing to provide adequate food
to the prisoners under his watch and also with violating regualtions with regards to
the treatment and punishment of prisoners.
He was so brutal, even the Nazis believed he went too far at times.
But following Goth’s arrest, she was rescued by Schindler and she said, ‘Like magic,
all of a sudden the doorbell rings, Schindler is standing there in his coat and saying ‘You’re
coming with me.’
Helen was added to the list of workers for his factory along with her sisters and Helen
Hirsch.
Her mother though had died from pneumonia at the camp.
But as the Red Army approached Krakow as the war had turned against the Germans, the camp
was closed and the inmates were sent to sites such as Auschwitz.
Schindler planned to open a factory elsewhere using the workers he had in Krakow, and the
men travelled by train, but the women were sent to Auschwitz.
But following weeks of bribes accepted by the SS, Schindler managed to get to women
sent to his new site.
Helen and her sisters then spent the rest of the war in safety, and were liberated by
the Red Army in May 1945.
After the war, Helen Sternlicht testified against Amon Goth in his war crimes trial,
and he was executed following this.
But two days after liberation she met a man named Joseph Jonas, and the couple married
and then she emigrated to america with her family the year after the end of the conflict.
But interestingly in 2004, despite being in her late 70s, she would meet with Amon goths’
daughter, and they met and talked about her experiences.
What may have saved Helen Sternlicht was the job she was forced to do.
If she hadn’t have been selected by the evil Goth to become a maid inside of his house,
she would possibly have succumbed to the disease and forced labour inside of the camp.
She also may have been sent to extermination camps or to other sites, but it was later
Oskar Schindler’s actions that prevented her dying inside of Auschwitz.
The story of Helen’s survival is an interesting one, and it is a story that deserves to be
told.
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