Josef Kramer
| Josef Kramer | |
|---|---|
Josef Kramer, in Celle awaiting trial, August 1945.
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| Born |
10 November 1906 Munich |
| Died | 13 December 1945 (aged 39) Hamelin |
| Cause of death | Executed by hanging |
| Other names | The Beast of Belsen |
| Criminal penalty | Death by hanging |
| Criminal status | Deceased (Executed by hanging) |
| Motive | Nazism |
| Conviction(s) | Crimes against humanity at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. |
Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was the Commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was a notorious German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes and hanged on the gallows in Hamelin prison by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Josef Kramer was born and grew up in Munich as an only child in a middle-class family. His parents, Theodore and Maria Kramer, brought him up as a "strict Roman Catholic“. in 1915, the family moved from Munich to Augsburg, where Josef Kramer went to school. He began an apprenticeship as an electrician in 1920. From 1925 to 1933, except for working in a department store and as an accountant, he was mostly unemployed .
He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and the SS in 1932. His SS training led him into work as a prison guard and, after the outbreak of war, as a concentration camp guard.
In 1934, he was assigned as a guard at Dachau. His promotion was rapid, obtaining senior posts at Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps. He became assistant to Rudolf Höß, the Commandant at Auschwitz in 1940. He accompanied Höß to inspect Auschwitz as a possible site for a new synthetic oil and rubber plant, which was a vital industry in Germany given its shortage of oil.
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