The Pittsburgh Press (December 14, 1945)
British hang 11 for murders at Belsen
Kramer, Irma among Germans executed
BRITISH HQ, Germany (UP) – Josef Kramer, beetle-browed czar of the Belsen concentration camp, and 10 other Belsen officials, including three women, were hanged yesterday, it was disclosed officially today.
For more than six hours the 11 marched in turn to the gallows and were executed for committing mass murders and atrocities in the camp. Thousands of Jews, Poles and other inmates died at Belsen in the months before British troops reached it.
Kramer and Dr. Fritz Klein, SS doctor who picked the victims for the Oswiecim gas chambers, swung to their deaths simultaneously at 12:11 p.m., the announcement said.
First to die
The first to die was Elisabeth Volkenrath, 26-year-old former hairdresser who led the SS women at Belsen. She was hanged at 9:30 a.m. Half an hour later Irma Grese, blond “queen” of the camp, went to the gallows.
All 11 were sentenced by a British military court at Lueneburg on November 17 after a trial lasting nine weeks. Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery rejected their pleads for clemency.
Great secrecy had been attached to the execution date and the name of the town where the executions were to occur. On Tuesday, British and German police mounted guard around the gallows at the Hamelin prison.
Others executed
The others who died were: Juana Bormann, 42, a cringing little woman who set a huge dog at the throats of prisoners; Peter Weingartner, 30, a Yugoslav peasant; Franz Hoessler, 34, SS guard and Kramer’s lieutenant; Karl Francioh, 33, SS guard; Ausgar Pichen, SS guard and butcher shop employee; Franz Staerfel, 33, SS guard, Wilhelm Doerr, SS guard.
Kramer maintained throughout the trial that he was only carrying out orders from superior officers. His wife described him as a kindhearted family man who worried because the Belsen prisoners had to sleep on bare floors.