The Man History Called the Beast of Belsen
The Auschwitz Chapter
From Natzweiler-Struthof, Kramer was transferred to Auschwitz, the largest and most lethal installation in the entire camp network. He was promoted to the rank of Captain and served there from May 1944 through November of the same year — a period that corresponded with the mass deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews. During this time, the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau were operating at maximum capacity. The number of people killed during Kramer’s tenure at the Auschwitz complex runs into the hundreds of thousands. His role placed him in direct operational authority over the killing process. His performance during this assignment led directly to his next promotion.
Why He Was Chosen for Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen was originally not classified as a concentration camp in the traditional sense. It began as a holding facility for prisoners who might be exchanged for German nationals held by the Allies. But as the war turned against Germany in its final years, the camp’s purpose shifted. The SS took full administrative control, and the facility was converted into a more conventional concentration camp receiving prisoners evacuated from other sites. Kramer was selected as commandant specifically because of his prior record. The SS wanted someone who could manage large-scale operations without moral hesitation. His history at Natzweiler and Auschwitz made him the obvious candidate.
How Bergen-Belsen Operated Under His Command
Under Kramer’s administration, Bergen-Belsen was divided into separate sections — distinct blocks assigned by ethnicity and category of prisoner. Jews formed the largest prisoner population, but the camp also held political prisoners, Soviet POWs, and others. Some prisoners were held as potential exchange commodities for German POWs held abroad. Others were simply worked, starved, or executed. As the camp population swelled with evacuees from the east in the war’s final months, conditions deteriorated catastrophically. Food and water supplies collapsed. Disease spread without any medical response. Kramer made no effort to address these conditions. The deterioration was known to him and went uncorrected.
The Scale of the Death Toll
Calculating precise casualty figures for Bergen-Belsen under Kramer is difficult because records were incomplete and partially destroyed. What historians have established is that more than 20,000 people died during his tenure as commandant — and that figure includes children. Many died not from direct execution but from deliberate neglect: starvation, typhus, dysentery, and exposure in overcrowded conditions that Kramer had the authority and resources to partially alleviate. The deaths from disease and starvation were not incidental. They were the foreseeable result of administrative choices Kramer made or refused to make. Under international law, that distinction matters less than many assume.