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This post discusses the Belsen Trial and the execution of 11 camp personnel in 1945. Content is shared solely for historical education and remembrance of victims.

13 December 1945, Hamelin Prison – Eleven Executions in One Morning

There was no cheering crowd, no loudspeakers, no newsreel cameras. Only the cold interior of a former German prison and eleven gallows ready in a row.

Between 7:48 a.m. and 10:12 a.m. on 13 December 1945, Britain’s most famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint – renowned as Europe’s fastest executioner – carried out eleven death sentences in succession, averaging less than two and a half minutes per person.

Among them were:

Josef Kramer, the “Beast of Belsen”

Irma Grese, aged 22 – the youngest woman ever executed under British civilian law in the 20th century

Elisabeth VolkenrathJohanna Bormannand seven other defendants

What made this morning uniquely chilling for the few official witnesses (British prison staff, medical officers, a chaplain and a handful of accredited reporters) was not delay or cruelty, but its cold, almost mechanical efficiency.

Pierrepoint worked according to his famous “quick and humane” method:

The condemned were woken, blindfolded and led to the trapdoor in under 30 seconds.

The trap opened the instant he pulled the lever – almost all died instantly from a broken neck.

While one body still hung, the rope for the next was already being prepared.

One British officer present wrote in his private diary: “We expected chaos or at least some emotion. Instead there was only the repeated thud of the trapdoor and the creak of rope. It was more chilling than any battle I ever fought.”

Irma Grese was the third in line. When the trap opened she had time for only the faintest sound before silence.

We recount that morning not to dwell on death, but to:

Honour the more than 50,000 people who perished at Bergen-Belsen in the war’s final months.

Recognise the survivors who faced their tormentors in the Lüneburg courtroom.

Remind ourselves that the rule of law – however swift and cold – remains the only barrier against a return to darkness

Official sources:

Belsen Trial records – The National Archives UK (WO 235)

Albert Pierrepoint, “Executioner: Pierrepoint” (memoir 1974)

British medical officer’s report, Hamelin Prison, 13 Dec 1945

Raymond Phillips (ed.), “The Trial of Josef Kramer and Forty-Four Others” (1949)