Talk:Josef Kramer
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[edit] Life before WWII?
I'm just curious if anyone thinks it necessary or worthwhile to add any biographical information on Kramer's younger days. Was he old enough to participate in WWI? How did he get involved with the Nazis? Etc. -Kasreyn
[edit] Contents of deleted article 'Josef kramer' (lowercase k)
The following was copied from said misnamed article before the page was deleted. A closer inspection should be done to ensure that potentially non-redundant, correct, parts of the material may be included here in the properly named article. --Wernher 03:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Josef Kramer (born 1906, died 1945) was the infamous commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In this area of human tragedy Kramer excelled, and soon built up a somewhat sordid career record, having been trained at Auschwitz and having also worked at Dachau and Birkenau. In 1940 he accompanied Franz Hoess (who later 'trained' Kramer at Auschwitz) to inspect Auschwitz as a possible site for a new synthetic coal oil and rubber plant. This of course was a vital industry in Germany, given its shortage of oil. Kramer soon became somewhat notorious as a harsh taskmaster. One of the defendants at the Frankfurt Trial, Dr. Franz Lucas, testified that he tried to avoid assignments given him by Kramer by pleading stomach and intestinal disorders. When Dr. Lucas saw that his name had been added to the list of selecting physicians for a large group of inmates transferred from Hungary, he objected strenuously. Kramer reacted sharply: "I know you are being investigated for favouring prisoners. I am now ordering you to go to the ramp, and if you fail to obey an order, I shall have you arrested on the spot".
In August 1943, Kramer received 86 inmates who were to be killed with gas. With the ever-ready help of the SS, he had the women stripped and, once naked, herded into the gas chambers. He later testified, "When the door closed they began to scream. I put in a small amount of salt through a tube and looked through a peephole to see what happened. The women breathed about a minute before they fell to the floor." Kramer repeated this until all were dead. When asked how he felt about this he said "I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order. That, incidentally, is the way I was trained." Like countless other Nazis and Germans after the war, he claimed he was simply following orders. Perhaps a more famous similar incident was Heinrich Himmler's response to being showed a photograph of starved corpses at a liberated camp: "Am I responsible for the excesses of my subordinates?"
In late 1944, as the war entered its final climatic phase and Nazi Germany started lashing out at its enemies like a wounded and cornered animal, Kramer was transferred from Birkenau to Belsen, near the village of Bergen. Originally a small, even privileged, camp, Belsen had been expanded to serve as a convalescent depot for sick persons and displaced people from acoss northwest Europe. Although it had no gas chambers, Kramer's rule was so harsh that he became known as the "Beast of Belsen".
As Germany collapsed, the administration of the camp broke down, but Kramer never took a single step without filling in a form. On March 1st, 1945, he filed a report stating that of the 42,000 inmates in his camp, 250–300 had died from "typhus". On March 19th, the number of inmates rose to 60,000 as the Germans continued to evacuate camps that were soon to be liberated by the Allies. As late as the week of April 13th, some 28,000 prisoners were brought in. With the collapse of administration and many guards fleeing to escape retribution, roll calls were stopped and the inmates were left to their own devices. Corpses rotted everywhere, and rats attacked the living too weak to fight them off. Kramer remained even when the British arrived to liberate the camp. He remained indifferent and callous, and took them on a tour of the camp to inspect the 'scenes'. Piles of corpses were lying all over the camp, mass graves were filled in, and the huts were filled with prisoners in every stage of emaciation and disease.
Kramer was tried by a British military court at Lüneberg and was sentenced to death on November 17th, 1945. He was executed shortly afterward.
External links:
An interesting news story - retold. SS troops carrying people who died of typhus - before the camp was burned down to control typhus. I wonder if the SS was being used to protect our soldiers who probably didn't really want to touch dead typhus victims? 159.105.80.141 13:45, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Categories: | 1907 births | 1945 deaths | German World War II people
I believe correspondence from Kramer has been uncovered where he tries to feed,treat,etc prisoners in Belsen. If anyone knos where to find this it would be appreciated. It may turn out that this man was slandered. If he tried to help inmates at Belsen it is likely he was doing the same at Auschwitz. This could be one of the biggest problems for the preservation of the holocaust story so far. Russia may end up blackmailing us to keep the memos,etc hidden.159.105.80.63 12:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Citations?? A very short time spent reading about Kramer sure brings alot of the "history" on him up short. Most of his confessions in court were preceded by total denials of any gas chambers, etc. Any literature on his intervening interrogation? It appears to have been very persuasive.159.105.80.63 14:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
His gassing technique ( a little bit of salt ) followed by 1 minute to collapse( death) sounds like a guy who had no idea how to gas a person and had never seen it done or heard anything about how to do it - really convincing. 159.105.80.63 14:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)Didn't any US prosecutor every have these confessions proofread by an engineer, doctor, a high school graduate,etc? A confession that is technically impossible is an insult to the court - both their magesty and their intelligence.159.105.80.80 12:18, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Any information desired on the extent of torture, by whom, dates, types before his trial? I have found a source, book written in the 1980s.159.105.80.141 16:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Above and the article state that Kramer kept good records/reports - any link to these?159.105.80.141 19:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
JOSEF KRAMER WAS ALSO A TOTAL BABE. I WOULD DO HIM EVERYDAY, AND NIGHT, OF MY LIFE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.212.185.170 (talk) 18:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I noticed not one citation in the article - where did the article come from or any of the information? The two links at the bottom are recent newspaper articles of little value. There must be a history book on this guy somewhere. If any article every deserved the "citations needed" heading this one must rank in the top ten.159.105.80.141 (talk) 13:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
