Justified Execution Of The Female Guards Of Bergen-Belsen JJ

following the second world war a number of trials were held to bring the perpetrators of war crimes committed during the conflict to justice the most high-profile trials took place in nuremberg with the remaining members of hitler’s inner circle facing the judges the nuremberg trials resulted in the death sentences of some of hitler’s remaining government but a number of other war crimes trials took place these were focused on bringing the perpetrators of evil crimes at specific camps to justice for example the belson

trials these aim to bring the ss guards and staff involved in committing evil at bergen-belsen concentration camp to face up to their crimes the liberation of belson was caught on camera as was immense suffering depravity and evil inflicted by the guards however what shocked many was the fact that many of the guards and staff were young women women who had been brainwashed to commit horrific crimes and many still accused of murdering many inmates today we look at the justified execution of the female guards of bergen-belsen

remember to support our channel please make sure to subscribe bergen-belsen was a camp that began as a camp for allied prisoners of war it was established in 1940 and was found within germany and until 1943 was used exclusively for prisoners of war however the ss then took over a part of the camp and turned it eventually into a concentration camp it was made up of a number of different centres and it had three main sections the prisoner of war one the resident camp and also the prisoner camp over the course of the second world war

the complex held jews political prisoners and other groups who were targeted for persecution by the nazis the ss divided belson into subsections for different groups for example the hungarian camp the special camp for polish shoes and the star camp for dutch jews between 1943 and 1944 thousands of prisoners were transported to belson whilst here the inmates were forced to do work inside of the shu commando in which they recovered pieces of leather from shoes for recycling bergen-belsen also transitioned to become a recovery camp as well where

sick prisoners would arrive from different places and they were then taken in the idea was that they were supposed to recover at belson however the majority of them were put to work and ended up dying of disease starvation and poor medical care in august 1944 a new element at belson was established a women’s camp this caused a large number of women to be brought over but most only stayed for a short amount of time before they were then moved to other places for slave labour it’s famously known as a place where

margo and anne frank were transported to and where both of them died inside the barbed wire fences of belson however much of the issues inside of the camp were caused by the huge overcrowding element that occurred as the germans lost territory during world war ii by late 1944 joseph kraman the beast of belson was in charge and his leadership saw belson swell huge in its size around 85 000 people were transported to bergen-belsen and within a year the number of prisoners had risen tenfold and this caused catastrophic effects the

overcrowding led to a number of issues in particular with a lack of food and malnutrition as there was nowhere near enough food to go around which caused thousands to starve also disease ran right around belson with huge outbreaks of tuberculosis typhoid and dysentery causing more deaths belson itself was only meant to house ten thousand prisoners but the huge number of transported prisoners caused severe problems and because of this scores of people were killed it has been estimated that during the time it operated over 120 000 prisoners

passed through belson the treatment of those inside varied on individual sections of the camp that they found themselves inside of exchange prisoners for example were often treated better than others there were no gas chambers at belson but the vast majority of prisoners died from the conditions inside caused by the huge overcrowding when the british and canadians liberated belson the huge scale of the problem was brought to the world’s knowledge on the 11th of april 1945 himmler had agreed to hand over the camp without a

fight and the ss guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead to attempt to hide some of the crimes a few days later the british set up a neutral zone that was established surrounding belson what surprised the british was that so many of the guards and staff including joseph kramer was still inside of belson and kramer claimed that they were there to uphold order inside when the british and canadians arrived and entered bergen-belsen what they saw was truly horrific they found over 13 000 unburied bodies

and sixty thousand prisoners who were in a terrible state many who were in fact dying of starvation and disease the majority of the prisoners had simply been abandoned and left and had been given no food and water for days and 500 were dying a day from disease the scenes were reported on the bbc it was said here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people you could not see which was which the living lay with their heads across the corpses and around them move the awful ghostly possession of emaciated aimless

people with nothing to do and no hope of life unable to move out of your way and able to look at the terrible sights around them babies have been born here tiny things that could not live a mother driven mad screamed at the british century to give her milk for her child and thrust a tiny mite into his arms then ran off crying terribly he opened the bundle and found the baby that had been dead for days this day at belson was the most horrible of my life the british began to provide care and support for the prisoners but after the

liberation revenge killings did take place and even the ss guards shot and killed some prisoners who were trying to get food from the storehouses prisons over the next few days were de-loused and survivors were moved to a different camp the british forced many of the ss staff based at the camp to bury the bodies in mass graves for those who had died the camp was then burned to the ground by flame frame tanks due to the epidemic of typhus and huge efforts were made to help the survivors but one thing remained on the minds of

those with regards to belson who on earth could carry out the atrocities committed at the camp and who on earth could inflict such suffering onto other people over the time it was operating almost 500 people worked at belson however from september 17th 1945 to november the 17th 45 ss guards and former workers were brought to justice in the belts and trials and what shocked many people around the world was the fact that many of these were young women young women whose names have gone down in history with the immense cruelty and

sadism of the holocaust the trial took 54 court days and comprised of much of the british army footage taken as belson was liberated on trial with those who were found at the camp and those such as joseph kramer who were involved in the leadership of the camp other staff such as doctors and cooks also found themselves on trial some of the women who were brought to trial have gone down in infamy for their notoriously sadistic treatment of prisoners throughout their time at belson and also other concentration camps such as ravensbruck and auschwitz

those women who were on trial in the belsen trial were irma grades elizabeth falcon ralph johanna bormann hertha beaufa her for elhart ilsa foster narim hashick gertrude sauer anna hempel gertrude feist frieda volta hildelichevich and other women who were acquitted however some of these women were notoriously evil emma graves became known as the beautiful beast or the hyena of auschwitz she was only 22 when she faced a court and was the youngest person to die under british law in the 20th century she was a strange character as her

father even threw her out of his home such was his disgust that she became a concentration camp guard she became a guard at different camps and was known for taking part in selections at auschwitz picking those women and children to be sent to their deaths in the gas chambers virtually playing god with other people’s lives she was also known for murdering prisoners too with her own hands and weapons and was even noted for setting dogs onto prisoners encouraging them to rip the prisoners to bits elizabeth falconraft ii was just a young

girl when she faced the judges she too worked as an overture inside of auschwitz and she was noted for selecting prisoners to go to the gas chambers volcano was well thought of inside of the auschwitz’s command and she oversaw all of the camp sections for female prisoners virtually being the head of the women’s prison there she was also known for being a prolific murderer often beating prisoners unconscious with a truncheon she even once pushed an elderly prisoner down some stairs to her death and she was known for shooting prisoners at will

johanna borman was also known as a woman with the dogs she was older than grazer and vulcan raph and worked in a number of different camps she was selected to work inside of auschwitz and she abused prisoners terribly she was known for also setting her dogs onto prisoners for murdering them as well and she also took part in selections these three women in particular were sentenced to death alongside a number of men following the belton trials found guilty of crimes against humanity inflicting such suffering onto prisoners

of bergen-belsen and also auschwitz and other camps they worked inside of her foreign heart ilsa foster her for beaufort irene hashick gertrude sauer anna hempel gertrude feist frieda volta and hilicivich were all sentenced to various different prison sentences having been found guilty of only one offence with the condemned being found guilty of more than one the executions of the belts and trials were to be carried out on the 13th december 1945 and they were performed by hanging with the execution of being albert pierpoint

pierpoint was an experienced executioner who used the long drop method in which he would meet prior to the execution with the condemned to work out their height weight and also the drop needed to snap their necks pierpoint was brought to hamline prison to carry out the executions and he was seen as reliable and trusted and he was expected to complete the job effectively and efficiently when he met irma grazer he wrote in his biography that at last we finished noting the details of the men and o’neill ordered bring out irma graves

she walked out of her cell and came towards us laughing she seemed as bony a girl as anyone could ever meet just o’neill questions but when we asked her her age she paused and smiled i found that we were both smiling with her as if we realized the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age eventually she said 21 which we knew to be correct o’neil asked her to step on the scales schnell she said the german for quick in britain prison warders and medical staff would have been responsible for weighing and measuring the condemned

prior to the execution but on this occasion albert pierpoint and o’neill did it irma was five feet five and quarter inches tall and weighed 150 pounds and she was given a drop of seven feet four inches grazer’s execution was also described by peerpoint it was chosen that she would be the first of the condemned to die due to her age but there is some debate as to whether her and vulcan wrath were executed first the executions of the women took place at 9 34 a.

m 10 04 am and 10 38 am peer point wrote of greatest execution the following morning we climbed the stairs to the cells where they condemned to awaiting the german officer at the door leaning to the corridor flung the door open and we fired past a row of faces and into the execution chamber the officers stood at attention brigadier patton walsh stood with his wristwatch raised he gave me the signal and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber i walked into the corridor irma grey’s eye called the german guards quickly closed all of

the grills on all 12 of the inspection holes and open one door erma grazer stepped out the cell was far too small for me to go inside of and i had to pinion her in the corridor follow me i said in english and o’neill repeated the order in german at 9 34 am she walked into the execution chamber gazed for a moment at the official standing round it then walked on in the center of the trap where i’d made a chalk mark she stood on the mark very firmly and as i placed a white cap over her head she said in her voice schnell

the drop crashed down and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead after 20 minutes her body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial elizabeth falconraf following her death sentence continued to deny her involvement in the holocaust and she stated that she did not know where the prisoners were going that she selected to be sent to their deaths she claimed to have never heard of the gas chambers but it was pierpoint who would hear her final words at around 1004 am in the same manner as

grazer she was brought from her cell her identity confirmed and then she was handed over to peer point for her execution with ruthless efficiency and success he performed her execution with the drop snapping her neck she was only 26 when she was executed and when she first conducted her horrific crimes she was even younger johanna borman is the outlier of the three women executed following the belson trials she was much older than grazer and vulcan raph but two displayed sadistic tendencies shown by the staff that

worked inside of the concentration camps when he met her pierpoint stated that she limped down the corridor looking old and haggard she was 52 standing only a little over five feet she was trembling as she was put on the scale in german she said i have my feelings like the two women who went before her bowman was executed with efficiency by peer point as he had already meticulously calculated her drop needed to have been eight feet eight inches her execution was performed at 10 38 with her execution being performed very

swiftly and she was a final female executed following the belt and trials the men were then fetched from their cells to face their sentence and peer point and he performed 11 executions on the 13th december 1943 inside hamlin prison on the gallows the execution of the female guards of belson showed the world how evil in particular these three women were the belsen trials brought to the world’s attention how terrible humans can be to each of our with the suffering of those inside the camp being shown in front of

the world’s media the suffering of those who were responsible for the horrific conditions at belson was short-lived and was no match for what they inflicted onto innocent people belson was the place where aunt frank and dozens of thousands of other people died because of the regime that sought to exterminate so many people off the face of the earth the executions of irma greater elizabeth falconrath and johanna bormann were justified but for so much suffering there was only a few executed much interest fell on those who were

simply sentenced to time in prison and there was much debate as to whether more people could have been sentenced to death for the crimes of bergen-belsen once again thanks for watching to support our channel please make sure to subscribe and once again thank you so much for watching