House where Nazi shot Jews from balcony in Schindler’s List ‘to be turned into luxury villa’
THE house where Nazi butcher Amon Göth shot and tortured Jews is being converted into a luxury villa.
Its Polish owner has rejected pleas to turn the property into a memorial to those who died at the KrakówPłaszów concentration camp.
Artur Niemyski said he did not want to cause offence but could do nothing about the past.
Rabbi Naftali Schiff, founder of Holocaust charity JRoots, called on the developer to back down.
‘We welcome dialogue with the owner, but he has made it clear to us that he wants the world to forget what happened there,’ he said.
‘Now all of this education has been lost. History is being erased before our eyes.’
Göth’s savagery was documented in Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film.
Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, the commandant’s Jewish maid, has accused Mr Niemyski of whitewashing the horrors of the villa’s history. ‘I was a prisoner in this house and a victim,’ she told MailOnline.
‘I want the world to learn what happened there.’ She said she was still haunted by Göth’s monstrous dogs, Rolf and Ralf. ‘One was black and white. He was so big,’ she recalled. ‘He would give this order to the dog, Ralf, and it would tear people apart. Tear people apart, grab them by parts of the body.’
One day she stumbled on Göth standing by the window with a machine- gun, watching slave labourers digging ditches and carrying rocks: ‘He said to me “Look at those pigs. If they don’t start working in a few seconds, they are all going to be dead”.’
She ran to warn the workers – probably saving their lives.
Mr Niemyski, who bought the villa last year for his family, acknowledged the horrors of its past but said this could not decide its future. He admitted he did not know whether he would feel ‘comfortable sleeping at night’, adding: ‘We have to live with this.’
Göth, who was played in Spiel- berg’s 1993 film by Ralph Fiennes, tortured Jews in the villa’s cellar and stabbed one of his maids because she did not set enough places for dinner. He personally shot dozens of prisoners but it is not clear whether he did so from the villa’s balcony – as in the film.
Survivors said he and his mistress lived hedonistic lives amid the shocking violence that took place on a daily basis. Göth was hanged for his multiple murders in 1946.