Holocaust survivor, 96, recalls horrifying moment the ‘Butcher of Płaszów’ shot dead a Jewish man he found too ‘handsome’
- Josef Lewkowicz, 96, told Good Morning Britain about horrors of the Holocaust
- READ MORE: JOSEF LEWKOWICZ recalls how he confronted Amon Goeth
A Holocaust survivor – who lived through six concentration camps, including Auschwitz – has recalled a horrific moment which saw a Jewish man killed just for being too ‘handsome’ for a Nazi to bear.
Josef Lewkowicz, 96, laid bare the atrocities committed by Amon Goeth – known as the Butcher of Płaszów – who he later went on to track down and confront after being freed.
After the war, the Austrian Nazi officer was finally found hiding under a false name at Dachau concentration camp.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, the Polish-born author opened up about just one chilling example of the villain – who was played by Ralph Fiennes in the 1993 film Schindler’s List – and his ‘crazy’ mind.
‘There’s no expression how to describe him…he was just a murderer,’ Josef recounted.
Josef Lewkowicz, 96, laid bare the monstrosities committed by Amon Goeth – known as the Butcher of Płaszów
‘He went through the camps, we were shivering because we never knew what this crazy mind would happen.’
Once, a man in front of him was shot just because the horrific monster said he ‘cannot take a Jew so handsome looking’.
In Josef’s new book The Survivor, he details capturing the man who had tormented him for years after offering his services to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
He told Susanna Reid and Ed Balls that his blood ‘boiled’ upon seeing Goeth in 1946, who looked ‘like a beggar’ and was lying on the ground at Dachau.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ he admitted. ‘To shoot him would be like giving him a gold medal.
‘I started beating him…calling him all the names he would call us.’
Josef was even reprimanded for his violence by American intelligence – but has no regrets for his actions.
‘I can tell you that it is not a miracle that I survived,’ he concluded. ‘Every day was a miracle to survive. At day we prayed to be night, because during the day to survive was a miracle…at night we prayed to be day…’
He told Susanna Reid and Ed Balls that his blood ‘boiled’ upon seeing Goeth (pictured in 1943) in 1946, who looked ‘like a beggar’ and was lying on the ground at Dachau
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, the Polish-born inspirational author opened up about just one chilling example of the villain – who was played by Ralph Fiennes (pictured) in the 1993 film Schindler’s List – and his ‘crazy’ mind
Josef was just 14 when he was given his first job of shovelling human bones into a wheelbarrow at the Płaszów concentration camp in Poland.
It marked the start of three years of misery that saw him shipped through five different concentration camps as a teenager.
During that time – in which Nazis killed all 150 members of his family – he saw starving prisoners butchering and eating a dead boy and watched guards make prisoners jump off cliffs.
While being held captive in Ebensee – a concentration camp in Austria – Josef had once recalled how conditions became unbearable as he watched on as starving people roasted the body of a dead Russian boy.
In 2019, he told The Sun: ‘A young Russian boy died and there was a few of the Russian people went and cut off his whole behind, and made a fire with branches and dry wood, and roasted human flesh, and ate it.
In Josef’s new book The Survivor, he details capturing the man who had tormented him for years
‘I had seen so much cruelty that nothing surprised me anymore.’
Josef added that he has chosen to share his harrowing story in a bid to preserve the truth for generations to come.
He then made it his life mission to hunt down Nazis who went into hiding after the war, saying: ‘I have to get after those Nazis who tortured us, that made our days miserable, killing us, beating us, hanging us.’
Josef trained as a policeman and set about searching large prisoner of war camps and interrogating captured German soldiers about where SS officers had fled to.
Shortly before Goeth was executed for his war crimes, former prisoner Josef went to see him in his cell where he told him: ‘You are the worst – there is nothing like you.’
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