HISTORYThe Man History Called the Beast of Belsen6 min read

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.