Josef Kramer

Josef Kramer ( Munich , October of November of 1906 - Hamelin , 13 of December of 1945 ) was an officer in the SS during World War II . He was commander of the concentration camp of Struthof-Natzweiler , Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen , being involved in the Holocaust Jewish .

Biography

Activity in concentration camps

Kramer entered the Nazi Party with the number of ficha 733.597 the 1 of December of 1931 and to the SS with the number 32.217 in June of 1932.

He was prominent in the concentration camp of Dachau since the autumn of 1934 to 1937 , the year that happens at Sachsenhausen . Highlighted in the Mauthausen concentration camp between 1938 and 1940 . From 1940, he became an adjunct to the SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss , Commander of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. It ascended to SS Hauptsturmführer ( Captain ) 21 of June of 1942 . Serving in Auschwitz until 1943. In 1944 he served as Commander in the concentration camp of Struthof-Natzweiler where he participated directly in the murder of 80 women detained in that camp, whose skeletons were sent to the Reich University of Strasbourg for examination . In 1944, Kramer was assigned as Commander of the Birkenau concentration camp (Auschwitz II) and on 1 December 1944 as Commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp until the arrival of the British on April 15, 1945. The conditions Infamous of the camp and the massive death of the prisoners earned him the nickname to Kramer of “the beast of Belsen” in the international press. According to Olga Lengyel , Kramer said the warden affair with Irma Grese .

Capture and Execution

Kramer was detained by British troops by releasing the concentration camp being tried for crimes against humanity at the British Military Court in Luneburg in the so-called ” Bergen-Belsen Trial “, sentenced to death and hanged by the British in Hamelin , the 13 of December of 1945 with Irma Grese and other staff Belsen, the executioner was the famous Albert Pierrepoint .

In fiction

Josef Kramer was one of the characters in the Holocaust novel by Gerald Green ( 1978 ), which portrayed his participation in the Jewish Holocaust of World War II.

Ranges and ascents