Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps.

Jan 1, 2025 · 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.

Josef Kramer, an only child, was born on November 10, 1906, and raised in Munich, Germany in a middle-class family. His parents, Theodore and Maria Kramer, brought him up as a “strict Roman Catholic.”

The trial ended in mid-November 1945. Kramer and 10 others were sentenced to death, with the rest being acquitted or sent to prison (most of these were released by the early 1950s). Amongst the trial papers retained by Major Winwood is a letter written by …

JOSEF KRAMER, sworn, examined by Major WINWOOD - I was born in Munich on 10th November, 1906, and joined the National Socialist Party on 1st December, 1931, and the S.S. in January [June], 1932. In the autumn of 1934 I started work in the Concentration Camp Service and remained in that, without interruption, until April, 1945.

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.

Josef Kramer (10 November 1906 – 13 December 1945) was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau (from 8 May 1944 to 25 November 1944) and Bergen Belsen (from December 1944 to its liberation on 15 April 1945) concentration camps.

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.

Jan 19, 2025 · Josef Kramer during the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Between May and the end of October 1940, Kramer was assigned as Rudolf Höss' adjutant in Auschwitz. Together with Höss, he inspected the Monowitz site where a factory of I.G. Farben for the production of synthetic rubber and petrol was then built.

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.