Josef Kramer - Commandant.

Joseph Kramer was born in Germany in 1906. He joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) and in 1934 joined the concentration camp service.

Kramer served in the Natzweiler camp before being appointed as the commandant of Auschwitz and later Belsen. In 1945 numbers in the camp increased from 15,000 to nearly 50,000. When the camp was liberated by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War they found over 13,000 corpses.

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial Kramer was accused of selling off camp food supplies during 1945. Joseph Kramer was found guilty and executed on 1st October, 1946.

Nuremburg War Crimes Trials

On 1st November, 1943, Cordell Hull (USA), Anthony Eden (Britain) and Vyacheslav Molotov (Soviet Union) signed in Moscow a declaration that warned that the Allies were determined to bring to justice those "German officers and men and members of the Nazi Party who have been responsible for atrocities, massacres and executions."

In May 1945, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin and Charles De Gaulle agreed that an international military tribunal should try the leaders of Nazi Germany for war crimes. It was decided to charge the men and women on four counts: crimes against peace (planning and making war); war crimes (responsibility for crimes during war); crimes against humanity (racial persecution) and conspiracy to commit other crimes.

The tribunal's judges included Frances Biddle (USA), Norman Birkett (Britain), Robert Falco (France), Geoffrey Lawrence (Britain), John Parker (USA), Roman Rudenko (Soviet Union) and Henry Donnedieu de Vabres (France).

Several Nazi leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels were dead while Martin Bormann and Heinrich Mueller had not been captured. The list of 23 defendants included Hermann Goering, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Albert Speer, Julius Streicher, Alfred Jodl, Fritz Saukel, Robert Ley, Erich Raeder, Wilhelm Keitel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Hjalmar Schacht, Karl Doenitz, Franz von Papen, Constantin von Neurath and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Robert Ley and Hermann Goering both committed suicide during the trial. Wilhelm Frick, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Walther Funk, Fritz Saukel, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and Joachim von Ribbentrop were found guilty and executed on 16th October, 1946. Rudolf Hess, Erich Raeder, were sentenced to life imprisonment and Albert Speer to 25 years. Karl Doenitz , Walther Funk, Franz von Papen, and Constantin von Neurath were also found guilty and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

At other war crime trials Josef Kramer and Irma Grese were also executed.

Irma Grese

Irma Grese was born on 7th October, 1923. At the age of nineteen she began work as a concentration camp guard at Auschwitz. Known as the "Belle of Auschwitz", "Angel of Death" and "Blond Angel of Hell" she was in charge of 18,000 female prisoners at the camp.

Later she moved to Belsen where she worked under Josef Kramer. She developed a reputation for sadism and a fascination with medical experiments on inmates. She was said to have had love affairs with Kramer and Josef Mengele, the camp physician.

For guilty for war crimes Grese was executed on 13 December, 1945.

 

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