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Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a Hauptsturmführer and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945).
Josef Kramer was a German commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (1944–45), notorious for his cruelty. Joining the Nazi Party on Dec. 1, 1931, Kramer volunteered for the SS the following year. He served at various camps, including Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Dachau, and commanded Birkenau.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Josef Kramer had been camp commandant at Bergen-Belsen and before that at Auschwitz. Of the other defendants, 12 were kapos, 16 female SS members and 16 male SS members. Although the SS was an all-male organisation, women were able to enlist as members of the SS-Gefolge, a form of civilian employee.
Amongst the trial papers retained by Major Winwood is a letter written by Josef Kramer whilst awaiting his execution. It is a plea for clemency, addressed to Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, at that time Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine.
Josef Kramer (10 Nov. 1906 – 13 Dec. 1945), SS Hauptsturmführer, started his SS career as a guard at Dachau, then served at the Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen Camps, and became Rudolf Höss’s adjutant in 1940 during the initial set-up phase of the Auschwitz Camp.
Dec 11, 2009 · The German officer in charge of the Belsen camp at that time was Josef Kramer. A man known to prisoners as the 'Beast of Belsen'. He was taken out and within months was tried before a British...
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The commandant of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer, and fourty-four others were tried by a British war crimes court at Luneburg, from the 17th August 1945 to the 17th November 1945. Thirty of the accused were found guilty, of these, twelve were sentenced to death and hanged, Nineteen to various terms of imprisonment.
