Execution of Josef Kramer
- Sadistic Nazi Commandant of Auschwitz Birkenau & Bergen Belsen - WW2

27 April 2022

Category: High Ranking Nazi Representatives

Josef Kramer was born on 10 November 1906 in Munich and 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.

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. 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. 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.

He refused to confess

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 17 September 1945. At his trial he refused to confess to the of the charges brought against his claiming only to have been present during selections but never taking active part in them. 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 commited 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 13 December,1945.

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