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Josef Kramer
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German SS officer, concentration camp commandant, and convicted war criminal (1906–1945)
OverviewAI-generated
Josef Kramer was a German accountant and merchant born in Munich in 1906. He was a member of the Nazi Party and the Schutzstaffel, holding the rank of Hauptsturmführer in the Waffen-SS. His employers included the Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, Natzweiler-Struthof, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. He participated in World War II and was convicted of crimes against humanity.
Kramer authored eleven works, including *Untersuchungen über die Abhängigkeit der Farbenempfindung von der Art und dem Grade der Beleuchtung* and *Mensch, Den Sie Schnute Nannten*. He died by hanging in Hamelin in 1945 as a result of capital punishment.
Synthesized by Vinony from 29 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1906-11-10 ) 10 November 1906, Munich , Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire
- Died
- 13 December 1945 (1945-12-13) (aged 39), Hamelin Prison , Allied-occupied Germany
- Other name
- The Beast of Belsen
- Criminal status
- Executed by hanging
- Motive
- Nazism
- Conviction
- War crimes
- Trial
- Belsen trial
- Criminal penalty
- Death
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Josef
- Family name
- Kramer
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Nazi Germany
- Place of birth
- Munich
- Place of death
- Hamelin
- Occupation
- merchant
- Employer
- Dachau concentration camp
- Political party
- Nazi Party
- Languages spoken
- German
- Award
- War Merit Cross
- Participant in
- Nuremberg Medical Trial
- Conflict
- World War II
- Military branch
- Waffen-SS
- Military rank
- Hauptsturmführer
- Image
- Kramer Josef.jpeg
- Work location
- Auschwitz
- Convicted of
- crime against humanity
- Significant event
- interrogation
Show 11 more facts
- Commons category
- Josef Kramer
- date of birth
- 1906-11-10
- date of death
- 1945-12-13
- member of
- Schutzstaffel
- cause of death
- hanging to death
- manner of death
- capital punishment
- allegiance
- Nazi Germany
- start of work period
- 1932-00-00
- significant person
- Irma Grese
- name in native language
- Josef Kramer
- P8168
- USS Valley Forge
Sources (9)
via Wikidata · CC0
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
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. Dubbed the "Beast of Belsen" by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Early life
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Josef Kramer” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.