Inside of a German Cemetery, decades after they had been executed a number of former
concentration camp guards were re-interred after they had been dug up and disturbed in
their graves. Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp which was a huge site of depravity and
evil, and throughout the Second World War thousands of prisoners succumbed to disease
and starvation there. When the British liberators entered the camp, there were around 10,000
corpses lying unburied around the camp, but then there were a number of former guards
who were captured amongst the prisoner population. Some of these tried to hide out to escape
justice, and many former guards fled the camp to do this too, but there were a number of
men and women who were brought to trial for their crimes. Amongst the guards was the commandant
Josef Kramer, and a number of female guards, some who were very young when they entered
the camp and began to inflict suffering and execution on a huge scale. But what is the
story of the exhumations of the executed guards of Bergen-Belsen. To support our channel,
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When the liberators entered Bergen-Belsen, they found a camp which was overcrowded and
there was much suffering. Many people had succumbed to diseases and conditions at the
site, and a reporter summed up the feeling. He said, ‘Here over an acre of ground lay
dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads
against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated,
aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your
way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here,
tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British
sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran
off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.’ There was a huge amount of horror,
and the British did not initially have the amount of manpower to clean up the camp, and
then they forced the SS guards who had worked there to bury the bodies, and many of those
brought to do this job were women who had been placed under arrest.
Many of the former SS guards who survived the typhus epidemic and remained in charge
at Belsen were then taken to the Belsen trials. There were at least 480 people who had worked
there, but there were only 45 brought to trial including former commandant Josef Kramer and
16 female SS guards. There were a number of women including Irma Grese, Elisabeth Volkenrath
and Johanna Bormann who became known for their brutal treatment and executions. These three
women had all worked inside of different concentration camps. Bormann was known as the woman with
the dogs and she would work inside of Auschwitz too, and she would encourage her dog to maul
and attack people inside of the camp and her big wolfhound would savage helpless inmates.
Elizabeth Volkenrath was in her early 20s when she first entered a concentration camp,
and she would become one of the most powerful women in the whole concentration camp system.
She started life in the SS working at Ravensbruck and was trained by Maria Mandl, a well known
overseer before she was then sent to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Volkenrath was known for
beating prisoners and for carrying out selections and executions, but one of the most notorious
female guards was Irma Grese. She was known as the beautiful beast, and was also in her
20s when she was led to the hangmans noose. She worked inside of Auschwitz too, and she
would execute and shoot prisoners who she said were not working hard enough, and if
someone looked at her the wrong way she would happily execute them or send them to the gas
chambers.
Despite hundreds of men working at Bergen-Belsen, there would be only a few dozen who were ever
punished for their crimes. The vast majority escaped any form of punishment. Of those who
were condemned to death, there was Josef Kramer the Beast of Belsen, who was the commandant.
Kramer was responsible for the conditions of the camp, and could have got help and further
resources for the camp if he asked, but he chose to continue the suffering of the inmates.
Fritz Klein was a doctor of death, and he would serve inside Auschwitz as a camp doctor
for the women’s camp. He took part in selections when people were sent to their deaths in the
gas chambers. He was antisemitic and was a brutal man who believed his slaughterous work
was justified. Peter Weingartner was another former guard who was sentenced to death, and
Franz Hossler was also but he was one of the most ruthless guards in the whole concentration
camp system. Hossler would be responsible for executions and gassings, and one SS camp
doctor recorded of his actions one day that, ‘In connection with the gassings I described
in my diary dated 12.10.1942, I declare that on that day about 1,600 Dutch were gassed.
This is an approximate figure, which I stated as a result of what I had heard from others.
The action was led [by] SS officer Hößler. I remember that he tried to drive the whole
group into a single bunker. This he achieved up to a last man who could not be crammed
further into the bunker. Hoßler shot this man with a revolver. This is the reason why
I wrote in the diary: "Gruesome scene before the last bunker! (Hößler!)" He would drive
thousands into the gas chambers, and there were other staff who were also condemned to
death.
Karl Francioh was a cook who was condemned, and he was someone along with Ansgar Pichen
who became known for killing in the kitchens. These men would shoot prisoners inside the
kitchens who were caught stealing mortals of food. If they picked up potato peelings
then they were shot in cold blood. Franz Stofel along with his deputy Wilhelm Dorr were both
condemned to death, as these men had led a death march to Belsen which had resulted in
the horrific executions of many who were shot at the side of the road for not walking quick
enough or for trying to escape. Regarding the executions of the men and women of Bergen-Belsen,
these were all carried out inside of Hamelin Prison, which was held by the British after
the war, and it would be the British executioner Albert Pierrepoint who would be the hangman.
Before the executions were carried out, Pierrepoint days before along with his assistant individually
met the condemned guards and he then took their height, and their weight to make sure
he could calculate the drop required to snap their necks when they fell through the trapdoor.
The executions were all carried out on the 13th December 1945, and the women went first
with Elizabeth Volkenrath being the first to go through to the execution chamber, which
had been fitted with simultaneous gallows to make the job quicker and more efficient.
When one person plunged through the trapdoor, Pierrepoint would get the next, and two people
would be condemned within minutes before the first would be declared dead. It was said
of Irma Grese’s execution that, ‘ ‘We climbed the stairs to the cells where the
condemned were waiting. A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung open
the door and we filed past the row of faces and into the execution chamber. The officers
stood at attention. Brigadier Paton-Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave
me the signal, and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber, I walked into
the corridor. 'Irma Grese', I called. The German guards quickly closed all grilles on
twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell
was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion her in the corridor. 'Follow
me,' I said in English, and O'Neil [sic] repeated the order in German. At 9.34 a.m. she walked
into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it, then walked
on to the centre of the trap, where I had made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark
very firmly, and, as I placed the white cap over her head, she said in her languid voice, Schnell.
The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After
twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.’
This was repeated until all of the former staff of Belsen who had been condemned were
inside of coffins. They would be declared dead after a short while hanging, and then
placed inside of a coffin. After executions of war criminals, many authorities decided
to burn the remains of those for example after the nuremberg trials, the condemned nazi war
criminals would be cremated and their ashes were then scattered. But this was surprisingly
not the case with the executed guards of Bergen-Belsen. Following being placed into coffins, these
were then buried in graves inside of the prison yard of Hamelin prison, a short distance from
where they were executed. But there came a time where the British then gave up control
of the prison, and because of this the graves of the executed guards were then disturbed.
The coffins were dug up and were disinterred, and this included Kramer, Grese, Volkenrath
and all the others whom Pierrepoint had executed. In 1950 the British handed Hamelin back to
the Germans, and at this point there was a worry about pro-nazi groups in the country.
Some people shockingly wanted to give those executed guards a proper and decent burial,
and a nazi send off and it was in March 1954 when the bodies were exhumed and the ground
was broken to dig these people up. The coffins were exhumed and specialists identified each
of the remains and their bones were then placed inside of new coffins and were prepared for
reburial elsewhere.
91 bodies were exhumed and these were executed nazi war criminals, and they were then to
be buried inside the nearby Am Wehl Cemetery in Hamelin. This cemetery previously held
the remains of WW1 soldiers, but then it would house the remains of the executed nazi guards
of bergen-belsen. There were strict instructions to prevent this becoming a shrine, as no memorials
were allowed on the graves, but then wooden crosses would be used to mark the burial sites
if families paid for it. This led to masses of wooden crosses being paid for by pro-nazi
groups, and there was a lot of controversy regarding the burial. One newspaper article
claimed that, ‘‘‘British occupation authorities refused to interfere with German
authorities who moved the bodies from a mass grave to individual plots in the city cemetery,
after a campaign by neo-Nazi elements in Hamelin, Lower Saxony. Thirty of the 90 bodies of the
executed Nazi war criminals have already been moved from a common mass grave near Hamelin
and reinterred in the city’s cemetery. The remaining bodies will be moved later. Among
those reburied are Joseph Kramer, named the “Beast of Belsen” by inmates of the notorious
death camp, and Irma Grese, who hounded women prisoners at Belsen.’ But these exhumations
and reburials would cause a significant amount of criticism, and there were many neo-nazis
who would visit the grave site and hold rallies inside of the cemetery.
But after the years went on, there were calls to hide the gravesite to deter trouble. The
crosses and memorials were removed, and today the gravesite is just a plain field off a
path, and there are no references to the evil former guards of bergen-belsen that are laid
to rest there, a short distance from their execution site. The guards of Bergen-belsen
were responsible for some of the worst war crimes in history, and these were men and
women who had no regard for the lives of the prisoners. They all had blood on their hands
and were murderers, but it is surprising that despite the amount of criticism, a decision
has not been made to scatter the ashes of these once and for all. But too much time
has passed now, and some people would regard disturbing the remains of people executed
almost 80 years ago to them burn them would be inappropriate. But this did happen for
Rudolf Hess whose gravesite became so much of a problem that his remains were interred
and his ashes were then scattered. But the former guards of Bergen-Belsen were some of
the most evil nazi war criminals the world has ever seen.
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