Kramer, Josef (1907–1945)

German SS officer; commandant of Belsen concentration camp November 1944 until its liberation by British troops April 1945. Film of the camp shocked cinema audiences across Britain and the USA and Kramer was named the ‘Beast of Belsen’. He was among 11 defendants sentenced to hanging for war crimes at the Belsen trial in 1945.

A concentration camp guard since 1932, he gradually worked his way up, commanding at Natzweiler, where he inaugurated the first gas chambers, then at Auschwitz May 1944, before finally becoming commandant at Belsen.