On April 15, 1945 the British 11th Armored Division liberated Bergen-Belsen – one of
the worst Nazi concentration camps which epitomized the true bestiality and horrors
of the Nazi regime and its death camps. The British forces found 13,000 unburied death bodies
and almost 60,000 prisoners who were sick and starved. Other thousands of inmates died of
various diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis during the months following the camp’s liberation.
The British forces managed to capture male and female Nazi personnel responsible for
these horrors and forced them to help bury the dead bodies in mass graves.
One of them was the commandant of Bergen Belsen concentration camp - Josef Kramer
Josef Kramer was born on the 10 November 1906 in Munich, then part of the German Empire.
He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and in 1932 he joined the SS. From 1934 until the end of
the war he worked in various concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen.
When in 1940 the Nazis established the most notorious concentration camp Auschwitz,
Josef Kramer was sent to this newly created concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland
and became the assistant to Rudolf Höss, the camp’s commandant.
Kramer remained there for 5 months when he left Auschwitz and became the
commandant of Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in April 1941.
Josef Kramer became one of those responsible for the murder of male and female Auschwitz
Jewish prisoners for the so-called “ Jewish skeleton collection” which was to be housed
at the Reich University of Strasbourg after the victims were photographed
and their anthropological measurements taken. The purpose of this project was to prove the
alleged racial inferiority of the so called “ Jewish race “ and to emphasize that the Jews
were “ subhumans” and Germans were “ superhumans”. It is believed that 86 inmates – 57 men
and 29 women were gassed for this project personally by Josef Kramer.
This project was never completed and when the allies discovered the corpses,
some of them were beheaded and they were preserved by formalin.
After the war, Kramer admitted he had forced the Jewish victims into the gas chamber
and gassed them on the orders of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. He added that he could
not disobey such orders and that he did not consider killing these innocent people a crime.
In May 1944 Kramer was sent back to Auschwitz concentration camp.
The commandant of the whole camp was Rudolf Höss and Josef Kramer became the commandant
of Auschwitz Birkenau subcamp which was the main center used to kill prisoners.
When in the summer of 1944 transports with hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews
were coming in day and night, the crematoria could not keep up with burning the bodies. Thus,
the ditches had to be dug. All this took place when Josef Kramer was the camp’s commandant.
Kramer also took active part in the selections making the selections himself
and helping to load people on lorries which would bring these poor victims to the gas chambers.
At Auschwitz, one of Kramer’s favorite habits was making women do punitive sport exercises
in which the poor women would have to march, run or do frog jumps until exhaustion.
On one occasion he was seen shooting at a prisoner. Fortunately, he did not kill
the poor inmate, but a bullet that hit the prisoner went through the prisoner’s hand.
After the war, this inmate testified about this.
Josef Kramer arrived at Bergen Belsen, which was a camp for sick people, on December 1, 1944.
Sanitary conditions were terrible and there was no water for washing and hardly enough water for
cooking. Between January and March 1945 when the prisoners were sent on death marches from
the other concentration camps, about one-third of the prisoners who arrived in the transports
were already dead, and almost 80 percent of the rest had to be fetched by truck from the station
as they were too week and sick to walk. On one occasion out of a transport of
1,900 inmates over 500 arrived dead. The prisoners got almost no food during
these death marches and there was no food when they arrived into the camp. The camp was so
overcrowded that the prisoners had to sleep in a sitting position on the floor.
During winter months when it was freezing cold, there were 200 blankets in the whole camp
for tens of thousands of prisoners. In March 1945, due to starvation, thirst and the outbreak of
typhus epidemics, the average daily mortality rate of prisoners was between 250 and 300.
At Bergen Belsen, Josef Kramer did not have any mercy with sick and starving prisoners
and applied what he had learned at Auschwitz. Kramer’s rule was
so brutal that he became known as the “ beast of Belsen “
The morning roll calls were introduced and even the sick prisoners had to attend them.
After the war, Kramer explained it saying that these prisoners were lazy
to go out of the barracks and thanks to attending these hours lasting roll calls
the inmates could leave very bad air in their huts for a while.
When one female inmate tried to escape and was caught, Josef Kramer started to hit the
poor woman with a stick brutally on her head, face, and all over her body. As a result, the
girl gave the names of two girls who she said had helped her. When these 2 girls refused to confess,
Kramer gave instructions for them to receive five strokes on the bare behind to make them confess.
After the war, he only admitted to having slapped the face of the girl who wanted to escape
and claimed that he did not know anything about two other girls.
The morning roll calls were introduced and even the sick prisoners had to attend them.
After the war, Kramer explained it saying that these prisoners were lazy
to go out of the barracks and thanks to attending these hours lasting roll
calls the inmates could leave very bad air in their huts for a while.
One of the favorite sport activities of the SS at Bergen Belsen was shooting at
starving prisoners going near the kitchen.
Josef Kramer and his cooks such as Karl Francioh were seen taking part in this.
When Kramer realized that the end of war was inevitable and the allies were approaching,
he turned around completely and he even tried to find food for hungry and typhoid-ridden prisoners.
Because of this, he probably expected not to be arrested after the war would be over.
Thus, when the British forces liberated Bergen Belsen, Josef Kramer remained in the camp and did
not flee as many of the camp’s guards had done. He showed the allies the camp and was soon arrested.
He was tried at the Belsen trial which began on the 17 September 1945.
At his trial he refused to confess to the of the charges brought against him
claiming only to have been present during selections but never taking active part in them.
At the beginning he even claimed that there had not been any gas chambers.
He even said that if any S.S. personnel who found pleasure in torturing the poor
inmates carried sticks or unauthorized weapons, they did it against his orders.
When he was asked about Irma Grese, the infamous “Hyena of Auschwitz” who used to kick prisoners
with her heavy boots or whip them with her woven leather whip which was covered with cellophane
so that human blood could be easily washed from it, he said he could only say the very best about
Grese. He added that she took her duties very seriously. He was right when taking her duties
seriously meant brutal torture and mistreating the poor prisoners at Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.
When he heard Grese's statement read in which she said she had carried a whip and used it
consistently, he said it was exaggerated. Herta Ehlert, one of the camp’s guards
who was sentenced to 15 years in prison testified, that on one occasion when she
complained of the increasing death rate to Kramer he replied, 'Let them die, why should you care'"?
This attitude explains why there were thousands of thirsty prisoners in the camp
even though Bergen Belsen was only 400 meters away from the river. When he was asked why he
had not pumped water from the river, he claimed he lacked the necessary materials. It was again
a lie as the British troops pumped water from the river with a material they had found in the camp.
He did not even let the prisoners drink water directly from the river saying it was not fit for
drinking. However, water from the river was fit for drinking and the British troops found filth
in the concrete tanks from which they were using water in the camp.
When the tribunal asked him if he preferred to be a party to wholesale
murder rather than be arrested himself, he replied without hesitation “ yes “ .
The British Military tribunal found Josef Kramer guilty of crimes he committed at Auschwitz and
Bergen Belsen and sentenced him to death by hanging. He was 39 years old when the British
executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out the sentence on the 13 December,1945.
There were no tears shed for Josef Kramer.
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