Josef Kramer, German concentration camp commandant (born 1906)

Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen 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.

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, including subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.