He joined the
Nazi Party in 1931 and the
SS in 1932. His SS training led him into work as a prison guard and, after the outbreak of war, as a concentration camp guard. In 1934, Kramer was assigned as a guard at
Dachau. His promotion was rapid, obtaining senior posts at
Sachsenhausen and
Mauthausen concentration camps. Kramer became assistant to
Rudolf Höss, the Commandant at
Auschwitz in 1940. He accompanied Höss to inspect Auschwitz as a possible site for a new synthetic oil and rubber plant, "a vital industry given Germany's shortage of oil.".
Natzweiler-Struthof Kramer was named Commandant of
Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in April 1941. Natzweiler-Struthof was the only concentration camp established by the Nazis on present-day
French territory, though there were French-run transit camps, such as the one at
Drancy. At the time, the area in
Alsace-Lorraine in which it was established had been annexed by
Nazi Germany. As commandant at Natzweiler-Struthof, Kramer personally carried out the gassings of 80 Jewish men and women, He was brought to Auschwitz to manage the gassings of new transports in May 1944, according to the Prosecution Judge Advocate at the War Crimes tribunal that convicted him of being responsible for the deaths committed at Auschwitz. There were a number of witnesses who said that he took an active part in the selection parades in that, for instance, he loaded people into the trucks and beat them when they resisted. At Auschwitz, Kramer soon became known among his subordinates as a harsh taskmaster. One of the defendants at the
Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Dr.
Franz Lucas, testified that he tried to avoid assignments given to him by Kramer by pleading stomach and intestinal disorders. When Lucas saw that his name had been added to the list of selecting physicians for a large group of inmates transferred from
Hungary, he objected strenuously. Kramer reacted sharply: "I know you are being investigated for favouring prisoners. I am now ordering you to go to the ramp, and if you fail to obey an order, I shall have you arrested on the spot."
Belsen are made to load the bodies of dead prisoners onto a truck for burial, 17–18 April 1945 In December 1944,
SS-Hauptsturmführer Kramer was transferred from
Birkenau to
Bergen Belsen, near the village of Bergen. Belsen had originally served as a temporary camp for those leaving Germany, but during the war it had been expanded to serve as a convalescent depot for the ill and displaced people from across north-west Europe. Although it had no gas chambers, Kramer's rule was so harsh that he became known as the "Beast of Belsen". As Nazi Germany collapsed, administration of the camp broke down, but Kramer remained devoted to bureaucracy. On 1 March 1945, he filed a report asking for help and resources, stating that of the 42,000 inmates in his camp, 250–300 died each day from
typhus. On 19 March, the number of inmates rose to 60,000 as the Germans continued to evacuate camps that were soon to be liberated by the Allies. As late as the week of 13 April, some 28,000 additional prisoners were brought in. With the collapse of administration and many guards fleeing to escape retribution, roll calls were stopped, and the inmates were left to their own devices. Corpses rotted everywhere, and
rats attacked the living too weak to fight them off. Kramer remained even when the British, led by Major
Brian Urquhart, arrived to liberate the camp, and took them on a tour of the camp to inspect the "scenes". Piles of corpses lay all over the camp, mass graves were filled in, and the huts were filled with prisoners in every stage of emaciation and disease. ===Ranks and promotions in the
Schutzstaffel (SS)=== at Belsen before being removed to the POW cage at Celle, 17 April 1945.
Irma Grese and former
SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer in prison in
Celle in August 1945 ==Trial and execution==