On the 13th December 1945, the executioner Albert Pierrepoint was very busy inside Hamelin
Prison.
It was on that day that he would lead a series of Nazi war criminals out of their cells to
the gallows.
Some of the most evil former guards of concentration camps were executed that day, and the condemned
included Josef Kramer the Beast of Belsen and Irma Grese, the Hyena of Auschwitz.
Those who were sentenced to death following the Second World War and the Belsen trials,
were found guilty of working in Bergen Belsen one of the worst concentration camps inside
of the Third Reich.
But who were those guards who were executed for their work inside of Bergen-Belsen?
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The Belsen trial was one of a number of war crimes trials that took place with the aim
of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice following the end of World War 2.
The Belsen Trials took place with the British and civilian personnel running the proceedings,
and it took place in Luneburg in 1945 and a number of the defendants had worked inside
of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Throughout the trial, many witnesses testified about the horrific conditions of Bergen-Belsen,
a camp which contained great depravity and death around every corner.
The trial was titled that ‘Trial of Josef Kramer and 44 others,’ and there were 45
former SS men and women along with Kapos who were in the dock.
There were 16 female ss members of staff, and 16 male ss members along with 12 Kapos.
Bergen-Belsen initially began its time as a exchange camp for Jewish hostages, but as
the camp got bigger the infrastructure broke down especially as the war went against the
Germans.
Throughout its time in use, it’s estimated that 120,000 prisoners passed through the
barbed wire fences, and more than 50,000 prisoners were killed inside of the camp.
These figures included Anne Frank and her sister Margot.
At Bergen-Belsen, inmates were made to work initially, and many of them were forced to
salvage and recycle pieces of leather from shoes brought there.
Prisoners in that part of Belsen were treated a little better, but things quickly turned
at the camp.
In March 1944, part of the camp became a recovery site where prisoners who were too sick to
work at other camps were taken, and simply left.
Many of them died at Belsen from diseases, starvation, and a lack of medical attention.
Later there was also a new section added at the camp for women, and Belsen by November
1944 received 9000 women and young girls.
But in December 1944, the Beast of Belsen Josef Kramer who had previously worked at
the extermination camp of Auschwitz Birkenau was brought to Belsen to work as the camp
commandant.
It was during his late leadership that the camp became colossal in it’s size, and the
fact it became incredibly overcrowded.
Bergen-Belsen was only planned initially to hold a few dozen thousand prisoners, but by
April the 15th 1945, 60,000 prisoners were house there.
This was an increase of around 20,000 prisoners from just 2 months before.
The overcrowding led to a huge increase in deaths from disease including typhus which
ran rampant, and also Tuberculosis, dysentry, typhoid fever and malnutrition was very common.
Belsen should only have held 10,000 prisoners, but the camp broke down and sanitation was
terrible also.
All of these factors led to the British finding a camp in pure chaos.
There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, but the 50,000 death toll was mostly caused
by the conditions there.
It was estimated in it’s most deadly month that over 18,000 prisoners died and each day
hundreds were perishing from disease and starvation.
Heinrich Himmler on the 11th April 1945 agreed to give over Belsen without a fight to the
British and Canadian liberators, and when the British entered the camp they saw true
hell on earth.
The BBC reporter that evening who was part of the liberation summed up the proceedings
saying, ‘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.’
When the liberators entered, they found 13,000 unburied bodies and 60,000 inmates many who
were incredibly sick and hungry, and many who were dying.
500 a day were dying mostly from typhus.
But the liberators initially were suffering from a lack of manpower to clean up the bodies.
To begin with only the commandant Josef Kramer was arrested, but there were a number of SS
members of staff and guards who had remained at the camp to supposedly maintain law and
order.
But these were then arrested, and they were then forced to clean up the bodies and bury
them inside of mass graves.
There were some SS guards who killed some starving prisoners, and a number of prisoners
turned on Kapos who were seen as collaborators by many and killed around 170 of them.
A number of German citizens were also brought to Belsen to help clean up and shown the crimes
that happened near by, and eventually part of the camp was burned to the ground by flamethrowing
tanks to stop the typhus epidemic.
But those members of staff who were arrested were then brought to trial at the Belsen Trial.
17 members of staff who were arrested had died of typhus, and those brought to trial
were Josef Kramer the commandant, Fritz Klein the camp doctor, Franz Hossler the deputy
camp commander, Elisabeth Volkenrath, Irma Grese, Peter Weingartner, and many more former
members of staff from cooks to guards and other functionaries.
The trial lasted for 54 days in court, and it began with the indictments and the opening
speech from the prosecution.
Over the course of the trial, a huge number of witnesses came to the stand and many included
the men who liberated the camp describing the scenes that they saw.
The British even showed a film which contained the harrowing images of Bergen-Belsen.
All of the defendants pleaded not guilty, but many of the death sentences relied on
two clauses.
The first was that Auschwitz they had been involved in the murder or slaughter of innocent
people, and the second was that they were guilty of doing the same at Bergen-Belsen.
A number of the defendants who were executed worked at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and
those who were imprisoned instead of executed were those who it was more difficult to prove
had been involved in killings, executions, selections and sending people to the gas chambers.
Those who were sentenced to death were, Josef Kramer the Beast of Belsen who oversaw the
mass movement of prisoners to the camp, the crimes he had committed at Auschwitz Birkenau
came to fruition and how he had overseen the killings of hundreds of thousands there.
Fritz Klein was executed and he was the camp doctor at Belsen, and he was strongly antisemitic,
and took place in scores of selections at Auschwitz which resulted in the deaths of
thousands.
Peter Weingartner was also condemned for his crimes as a block leader in the women’s
camp at Auschwitz Birkenau.
He was known for being a guard who forced prisoners to dig ditches and those who did
not work hard enough were shot.
At Belsen he also worked and was indicted as he had been involved in abusing prisoners
as well as selecting them to go to the gas chambers.
Franz Hossler was the deputy commandant under Kramer, and he was known for being brutal
as he deliberately shot prisoners even until the camp was liberated and he was seen as
a hitman who were executed anyone who was breaking the rules.
Karl Francioh was a cook who was executed, and he was accused of shooting several prisoners
at Belsen who had been stealing food as they were desperate.
Also he shot those who were so desperate they picked up potato peelings off the floor to
eat.
Asgar Pichen was another cook and he was head of the camp kitchen and also found guilty
of shooting prisoners who stole food.
Franz Stofel had led a death march to Bergen-Belsen where many prisoners were shot if they were
too slow to walk or tried to escape, and Wilhelm Dorr who was also executed participated in
this too.
One of the most infamous camp guards of the Holocaust was Irma Grese who was described
as the Hyena of Auschwitz.
She was also referred to as the Beautiful Beast, and she was particularly known for
her acts of sadism and murder.
She became the youngest woman to die in the 20th century under British law, and many witnesses
testified of her brutality using a whip.
She was known for murdering prisoners with her pistol and also her bare hands, as well
as owning a dog that she encouraged to attack prisoners.
Grese also worked at Ravensbruck, and was known as a feared and savage guard.
Elisabeth Volkenrath despite her young age was rather senior as a camp guard too, and
she had been promoted to oversee all of the camp sections for the female prisoners at
Auschwitz.
Volkenrath was known for instigating a reign of terror and fear and also participating
in the gas chambers where she sent prisoners to their deaths instantly as they arrived
at Auschwitz.
The final woman to be condemned was Johanna Bormann, who was described as the Lady with
the Dog, who would encourage her hound to attack and maul prisoners to death.
She was known for being one of the most hated members of staff at Belsen and Auschwitz.
But there were many other men and women who worked at Bergen-Belsen and who had been caught
who were sentenced to time in prison of a varying length, and also were acquitted.
As mentioned the executions for the Belsen Trials took place on the 13th December 1945
inside of Hamelin Prison.
It was notorious executioner Albert Pierrepoint who was summoned to be the man who would take
the lives of the Nazi war criminals.
Pierrepoint was considered an expert of his craft, and he used the long drop method which
required expert calculations.
Pierrepoint and his assistant met with the condemned days before to calculate the drop
needed to kill them instantly based on their height and weight.
The condemned cells were the prisoners were kept were at the bottom of the execution chamber
where a gallows with a trapdoor had been created.
Pierrepoint would later write of the executions and he documented how the former members of
staff of Bergen-Belsen were killed.
For example he 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’
One by one the executions took place, with the names of the condemned called out before
the cell was opened and they were led to the execution chamber accompanied by guards.
Each of them followed the same pattern, identify was confirmed before they were walked quickly
up the stairs of the gallows before arms and legs were secured.
Following this a hood was placed over their head, and the noose was the secured and they
were shuffled over the trapdoor where Pierrepoint had put a white chalk X marking where they
should stand.
Then he quickly pushed the lever releasing the trapdoor and the condemned crashed through
to their deaths.
The bodies were then cut down a while after they were left hanging as doctors then confirmed
their death.
There would later be a second Belsen Trial where one man Erich Zoddel would be sentenced
to death.
Pierrepoint would go on to execute many other war criminals at Hamelin and he executed around
226 people between December 1948 and October 1949 and often executed over 10 a day and
was noted for his skill and efficiency, ending the lives of the condemned quickly.
But inside of Bergen-Belsen it was true hell on earth in the final days of the conflict.
What the British and Canadian liberators found stayed with them until the day they died,
and many were haunted by the horror and evil of the Nazi regime.
Despite hundreds of guards and staff working at Belsen, only a very few were sentenced
to death and executed for their crimes.
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