The nazi
How perculiar that we see raiph fiennes in schindlers list committing his crimes and then we see he is being hanged for it in this film (played by another actor of course)
I thought that was quite an odd moment
Kagsy, I think you are mistaken! You are confusing Kramer (whom Pierrepoint hanged) with Amon Goeth! Joseph Kramer was commander of Berrgen-Belsen concentration camp (which the British liberated), whereas Goeth was commander of Plaszow camp in Poland, which the Russians liberated!
shareThe end of SCHINDLER'S LIST portrays Goeth being hanged in the most barbaric fashion imaginable: his feet not bound, his hands only loosely, the rope merely held by a soldier, virtually no drop, all adding up to very slow strangulation.
We don't know if that's how it actually happened, of course, but this much is known. The British wanted Pierrepoint to hang the high-ranking Nuremberg convicts as well as the middle- & junior-ranking officers from Belsen, but the Americans wouldn't have it and insisted on assigning one of their executioners, who did such an awful job of it that pictures of the prisoners' maimed, bloodied necks were plastered all over the front pages in Britain - causing major embarassment to our government, who believed that no matter how terrible the Nazis' crimes, our moral high ground disappeared if we dispatched them inhumanely.
Having said all that, British Home Secretary Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe - one of the senior prosecutors at Nuremberg - surrendered that high ground quite knowingly himself a few years later when he pushed through the execution of Derek Bentley; when the film of that story, LET HIM HAVE IT, premiered, a German couple told Bentley's sister "We're shocked - we thought only Hitler did things like that."
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My God - they show decades-old executions on YouTube?!
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Execution isnt a deterant to murderers, so....
Anyways the soviets managed to judge and execute nazis, and they only managed to kill what 20 million people. Im sure theres a lesson there somewhere.
I'm inclined to agree with winterhawk101 - there's a great deal of hypocrisy surrounding this whole subject. The Nuremberg trials were especially tainted by the involvement of Stalinist Russia, which itself was responsible for tyranny and genocide.
Also, if you come away with just one lesson from "Pierrepoint" it should be this: there is no such thing as a humane way to carry out an execution. It is always sordid and brutal.
Prison isn't a deterrent either.
share'Prison isn't a deterrent either'
Agreed!
I always find it strange when people argue against Capital Punishment on the grounds that 'it isn't a deterrent'.
It is self evident that criminals are not deterred from committing crimes - whether the sentence is prison, execution or anything else.
Goeth's actual execution was badly botched and he had to be hanged three times. However, the short drop was not used by the Polish authorities in his case.
Since at least two of the ten men were choked to death by the rope, it can be said that the American Master Sergeant John Woods did a poor job of hanging the Nuremberg condemned. However, botched executions had nothing to do with releasing individual photos of each man lying on his coffin just prior to being cremated. Well before the executions, the powers that be decided to release the pictures and one couldn't tell from them whether the hanging was done in a proper manner. A few of the executed men had bloody noses but there weren't any "bloodied necks."
There's video of Goethe being hung. It was by Americans, not partisans, using a third-rate gallows system. It was botched, with Goeth plunging to the bottom of a hole in the ground twice.
shareGoeth was not hanged by Americans, he was sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland and executed near the site of Plaszow concentration camp. Also the depiction of his execution in Schindler's list is not wholly accurate.
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