The Holocaust survivor and hero who captured 'Hitler's Butcher'

Josef Levkovich was living a peaceful life with his family in the Jewish neighborhood of Krakow, Poland, when in 1939 the Nazis invaded and turned their daily lives into hell.

"Krakow was a big Jewish city, and we were living in the heart of the Jewish Krakow, and all around us there were synagogues," Levkovich said.

"The Nazis were patrolling there all day, and what did they do: just harassing the Jews, pushing them down onto the sidewalks, and starting to trim the beard, with scissors cutting the long coats. I also had little sidelocks, so my parents said you have to take them off because it's too dangerous."

Under Nazi rule, Josef, who was just 13 years old at the time, was subjected to forced labor every day alongside his father. 

A few months later, his mother and three brothers were deported to the Belzec extermination camp, where half a million Jews died during the Holocaust. Josef was sent to the labor camp run by Amon Goeth, known for his cruelty that gave him the nickname of Hitler's butcher.

"This commander was a beast, the biggest murderer in the world called Amon Goth. This man, man that I called an animal, though it would also be an honor to call him an animal. This individual killed for fun. He went through the camp, we were lined up for fun."

"I'll give you one example that happened in front of me: Two rows in front of me there was a man called Shlomo Spielmann. He was tall, so Goeth said step out. He took him out of the lineup and said in German, which I understood: 'I cannot take a Jew looking so handsome, so beautiful.' Took the gun and 'Poof poof'."

Amon Goth is the Nazi commander described in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. In his camp, the average life expectancy was 4 weeks, as inmates at the camp were starved and forced to do heavy labor, usually until their deaths.

Josef's life was saved by the Jewish police chief at the camp, who beat Josef with a whip before Goeth could, leaving him for dead. 

Upon the liberation of the camps in May 1945, Josef was 17 years old and weighed 60 pounds.

"I left Poland, I was already in danger, a lot of people wanted to kill me. The United Nations gave us a hotel in Austria in a city called Bad Aussee. I became a policeman there. I said I have to go and look for Nazis that I was in their camps, that were not yet found." 

"I went to the American Authority, CID, and I said, 'I would like permission to work for you,' so they gave me a uniform, so I started to look around."

Levkovich started his attempts to track down Amon Goth, the former Nazi commander who was hiding in a German prison camp and pretending to be a regular soldier.

"I started interrogating officers, generals. I went to one officer and asked, 'Do you know every one of the soldiers? Any one you don't recognize?' And he said 'Yes, yes. There is one in the corner who did not belong to our company.' And I went there and I recognized him. It was Amon Goeth. My blood was boiling in me. I asked him but he didn’t open his mouth. I beat him in his bed. I was actually reprimanded by the authorities for that — you were not allowed to hit them. I told them if you had been like me in the concentration camp, you would have cut him to pieces with a knife. I took him and put him in an isolated cell, because I said this is an important guy, you cannot leave him in the field with the others," Levkovich recalled.

Following the discovery and capture of Amon Goeth, Levkovich went on and contributed to the arrest and conviction of many other Nazi criminals. 

After the war, he also helped rescue 600 Jewish orphans who were hiding with Polish families and in monasteries, and helped them find refuge in Israel.