Alfred Kramer (SS member)

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Alfred Kramer (born November 7, 1898 in Waldenburg , Silesia; † May 29, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech ) was SS-Oberscharführer and person responsible for transporting prisoners during the evacuation of the Warsaw concentration camp as well as the camp manager of the Kaufering I subcamp . As a war criminal , Kramer was sentenced to death and executed in the Dachau trials .

Life

Kramer, a painter by profession, served in the German army from 1916 . Kramer's marriage had three children. According to his own statements, he voluntarily joined the SS on April 20, 1933. From September 1, 1939, Kramer was a member of the Buchenwald concentration camp staff ; in September 1941 he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland.

Excerpt from Kramer's statement of November 1, 1945 (English translation).
Earth huts in a subcamp near Kaufering. Photo from April 29, 1945 after the liberation by the US Army.

When the Warsaw concentration camp was dissolved at the end of July 1944, Kramer said he was responsible for the transport of around 4,000 prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp , who were guarded by 250 SS members. The concentration camp prisoners, the majority of whom were Jews, were driven to a train station on foot for four days in high summer temperatures and from there transported to Dachau in cattle wagons. According to Kramer, there was neither enough water nor food available. Two or three prisoners were shot by the SS when they tried to drink from a river. According to Kramer, 30 to 35 concentration camp prisoners died of malnutrition, illness or beatings by the guards during the walk. Other prisoners died during the five-day train journey to Dachau.

On September 3, 1944, Kramer was transferred to a satellite camp of the Dachau concentration camp in the Kaufering and Landsberg am Lech area. Eleven satellite camps were set up in this area ; the prisoners were used as slave labor in the construction of a semi-underground concrete bunker in which fighter planes were to be produced. Kramer was initially a camp leader in the Kaufering I subcamp near Iglinger Strasse in Landsberg with around 1,800 prisoners, mostly Lithuanian Jews. 100 to 120 members of the concentration camp personnel were under his command, and his superior commander was Walter Langleist . According to Kramer, the prisoners were beaten with fists, sticks and whips, some of which resulted in death. To punish the prisoners, there were standing cells in which these eight to ten hours, sometimes two to three nights, were locked. Kramer stated that he was present at the execution of six Jews at the end of November 1944, which was carried out in front of all prisoners. The prisoners in Subcamp I were housed in earth huts that were contaminated with vermin and whose roofs were leaky. You were doing forced labor in a cement factory; the actual working time was twelve hours a day, during which there was a cup of soup to eat. The entire working day was 18 to 19 hours.

As camp leader of Subcamp I, Kramer remained in office until November 12, 1944. Shortly before the concentration camps were liberated, he fled Landsberg on April 28 by bicycle. On May 3rd, he was captured by the American forces between Gmund and Hausham .

After the end of the war, from November 15, 1945, Kramer and 39 other members of the camp personnel were accused in the main Dachau trial, which took place as part of the Dachau trials . The US Military Tribunal was charged with "violating the laws and customs of war" against civilians and prisoners of war alike. The term “ common design ” played a central role in the prosecution : not only the individual acts of the concentration camp personnel were viewed as criminal, but the concentration camp system itself. In the course of the preliminary investigations it had proven difficult to assign individual crimes to the accused, as the concentration camp inmates only partially survived, their statements lacked the necessary precision due to the traumatization and they only partially knew the names of the perpetrators. Kramer was the only one of the defendants to admit his anti-Semitism .

Kramer was sentenced to death on December 13, 1945, along with 35 other defendants . In his case, the court saw the beating and kicking of prisoners, sometimes resulting in death, as an individual act of excess as proven. Kramer also had prisoners march to work without shoes at the end of October or beginning of November. The judgment was confirmed on April 5, 1946 by the Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces in Europe, who had received a recommendation from a so-called "Review Board" of the army. Kramer was hanged on May 29, 1946 in the Landsberg War Crimes Prison .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Biographical information on Kramer in: Review of Proceedings of General Military Court in the Case United States vs. Martin Gottfried Weiss (pdf, 40 MB) at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org, pp. 63f, 119f; http://www.icwc.de/fileadmin/quellen/000-50-2.pdf straight-line | date = 2018-03 | archivebot = 2018-03-29 03:53:01 InternetArchiveBot | url = http: //www.icwc.de/fileadmin/quellen/000-50-2.pdf}} Review and Recommendations of the Deputy Theater Judge Advocate. (Link no longer available, August 9, 2012) at the International Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials (ICWC), p. 81; also Edith Raim: The Dachau concentration camp external commandos Kaufering and Mühldorf. Armaments construction and forced labor in the last year of the war, 1944/45. Landsberger Verlagsanstalt Martin Neumeyer, Landsberg am Lech 1992, ISBN 3-920216-56-3 , p. 160.
  2. ↑ Handwritten submission by Kramer dated November 1, 1945, English translation in the review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 64 f. Deviating from this in the same document, pp. 119 and 151, as well as in Raim, KZ-Außenkommandos , p. 160, the year of accession 1939.
  3. ↑ Handwritten submission by Kramer dated November 1, 1945, English translation in the review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 64f. For the evacuation of the Warsaw concentration camp see also Warsaw concentration camp at www.deathcamps.org
  4. ^ Raim, KZ-Außenkommandos , passim. An overview of the locations of the camps at the European Holocaust Memorial Foundation eV (accessed on March 25, 2916)
  5. ↑ On the origin of the prisoners: Edith Raim: Das Ende von Kaufering IV. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (ed.): Dachauer Hefte , Heft 20, Verlag Dachauer Hefte, Dachau 2004, ISBN 3-9808587-4-X , p . 139–156, here p. 141.
  6. ↑ Handwritten submission by Kramer dated November 1, 1945, English translation in the review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 64 f.
  7. ↑ On the conditions in the subcamp I: Holger Lessing: The first Dachau trial (1945/46). Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1993, ISBN 3-7890-2933-5 , pp. 191f, 195. Raim, Ende , p. 149.
  8. ↑ On "Common Design": Robert Sigel: In the interest of justice. The Dachau war crimes trials 1945-1948. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-593-34641-9 , p. 42 ff.
  9. ↑ Raim, KZ-Außenkommandos , p. 282. See Kramer's statement of November 1, 1945, in English translation in the Review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 65: "To be honest, I do not like Jews."
  10. ↑ Lessing: Prozess , p. 321.
  11. ↑ Summary of the review on Kramer: Review (pdf, 40 MB), p. 151. Ibid, p. 164, the recommendation to keep the death penalty in the case of Kramer.
personal data
SURNAME Kramer, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Camp leader of a subcamp near Kaufering, executed as a war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Waldenburg , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1946
Place of death Landsberg War Crimes Prison