Voting Station

Josef Kramer

Please vote to return to collections.

Military Personnel

The Resume

    (November 10, 1906-December 13, 1945)
    Born in Munich, Germany
    Nazi Officer
    Commandant in charge of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
    Joined the Nazi Party, in 1931, and the SS, in 1932
    Initially employed as a guard at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Mauthausen concentration camps
    Promoted to the rank of Hauptsturmführer (Captain) in 1942
    Placed in charge of the gas chambers of Auschwitz in May 1944
    Transferred from Birkenau to Belsen in December 1944
    Detained by the British army after the liberation of Belsen in May 1945
    Presided over Bergen-Belsen's implosion in the last few months of WWII, causing 50,000 deaths, with up to 35,000 of them dying of typhus in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation
    Convicted of war crimes and hanged on the gallows in Hamelin prison (Dec. 13, 1945)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was considered a sociopath even by Nazi-standards.
    He was nicknamed the 'Beast of Belsen' by camp inmates.
    He was so physically formidable that his own executioner was allegedly intimidated by him.
    He was described by a London newspaper as 'a typical German brute—a sadistical, heavy-featured Nazi... quite unashamed.'
    He oversaw selections at Auschwitz-Birkenau despite not being of the medical profession.
    He fondly reminisced about watching naked women prisoners die in the Birkenau gas chambers, through a peephole, in later testimonies.
    He was known as Auschwitz's harshest taskmaster, to the point where subordinates would fake illnesses to get out of his shifts.
    He regularly accused his Nazi subordinates of 'favoring prisoners' and threatened to arrest them if they did not meet their quotas for dead Jews.
    Bergen-Belsen initially had a reputation among deported Jews as 'one of the good camps,' until he was placed in charge of it, at which point it became just as hellish as the worst Death camps.
    He dealt the final nail into the coffin of Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, who arrived in Belsen shortly after he was placed in charge of the camp (they perished in the squalid conditions during the Typhus epidemic).
    He was appalled by the worsening conditions of the Belsen camp, not out of remorse for the victims but out of anger that the mass of dead bodies littering the ground could not be disposed of, or at least aligned in an 'orderly fashion' (he was used to the bureaucratic efficiency of Auschwitz).
    He was one of the few SS Officers who remained in Belsen after it was liberated, nonchalantly touring the heaps of corpses and disease-filled tents alongside mortified British troops.
    He seemed legitimately perplexed as to why he was being charged with 'crimes against humanity' for his role in the Nazi Final Solution, admitting to having 'no uneasy conscience' (so what if it involved systematically killing women and children).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was a rose lover.
    Wow, here's one we haven't heard before: He was a loving husband and devoted father!
    At least he didn't use the Hippocratc Oath as an excuse for his actions....
    He ordered Irma Grese not to beat the Belsen prisoners with her whip, but she ignored him and did it anyway.
    He did not commit suicide or hide from international law for decades, unlike most major Nazi war criminals.
    He is dead.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 5 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 22 Votes: 54.55% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 12 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 114 Votes: 70.18% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 13 Votes: 61.54% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 18 Votes: 38.89% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 17 Votes: 29.41% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 73 Votes: 57.53% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 161 Votes: 60.87% Annoying