RZM M1/52 Totenkopf cap skull with a story

[ToxicGas]

While looking up more on Belsen, I found the following text:

'On the morning following Kramer's arrest, Sington drove into the SS compound and was surprised to see scores of healthy appearing female inmates thronging together, "gaily and smartly dressed, …talking in groups or carrying packages and blankets into or out of the huts."26 [1] Many of these women were young and robust Jewesses who had recently entered the camp from Auschwitz-Birkenau. The women were exuberant, as they had just looted the camp warehouses and SS storerooms during the night and early morning hours. A number of them were wearing SS uniforms.'

-I thought that was interesting, and it ties in with the story of the Totenkopf. I wonder how much of the SS gear got out of the camp? I don't know if any rules were in place there, but I recall hearing that in some camps it was forbidden to take any SS uniforms or insignia, as they were to be destroyed.



Mat

[BOB COLEMAN]

I seriously doubt that Kramer was a scapegoat. He was in command and therefore, responsible for everything that occured in the lager. If he was not aware of everything that was going on, he was incompetent.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Mat, I have removed the link. I do not want revisionist sites to be even remotely associated with this forum. Please be cautious of these type of sites.

Cheers, Ade.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

I seriously doubt that Kramer was a scapegoat. He was in command and therefore, responsible for everything that occured in the lager. If he was not aware of everything that was going on, he was incompetent.

Well said and thanks to Adrian for keeping good order and discipline here. Our interest lies in the regalia, not the propagation of the political ideology behind it, especially in contemporary forms. There are one hundred and fifty thousand sites that do just that, and they are elsewhere.

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Granted the scarcity and deprivation of Germany in May 1945 and for years thereafter, whatever clothing got used by the needy and desperate likely was redyed and worn out pretty quickly.

[ToxicGas]

Well said and thanks to Adrian for keeping good order and discipline here. Our interest lies in the regalia, not the propagation of the political ideology behind it, especially in contemporary forms. There are one hundred and fifty thousand sites that do just that, and they are elsewhere.

Believe me, I in no way condone or support Nazi ideology, and I was not aware that this was a revisionist site. In the conclusion it mentioned the ultimate responsibility for the gross overcrowding of Belsen lay with with those higher up who ordered prisoners of other camps to be taken there. Is that not true? My understanding is that this was done on a large scale, something the command of Belsen surely would not have welcomed or been capable of dealing with. It mentioned Himmler to be at fault, surely no revisionist site would say that? From what I read, there was nothing pro-Nazi at all, just an assessment of Belsen's situation. I apologise if this site is in some way connected or of the nature you describe, but what I read seemed only to be a legitimate historical analysis.

Bob, I agree with what you said in that he will have known what was happening in the camp. I think what the article was saying is that Kramer was fully aware of the situation, but helpless to deal with it. Again, I am not claiming his innocence here, just bringing up this point of view. I see this as no different to legitimate documentaries on the history channel, evaluating the questionable convictions of *some* accused war criminals... they are not Pro-Nazi, they are merely looking neutrally into specific cases.

If Kramer was innocent of the responsibility of the thousands of deaths that occurred in the camp, it would not change the fact that such deaths were a result of the Nazi regime. I will leave it at that, as this is irrelevent from the topic of the thread I suppose, but I want to make it clear I am in no way a Nazi apologist.

Mat

[BOB COLEMAN]

Kramer was in the camp system for many years

Dachau 1936-1937
Sachsenhausen 1937
Mauthausen 1937-1940
Auchwitz 1943
Natzweiler 1944
Bergen-Belsen 1944-1945

He knew what he was doing and stayed in the system. He was certainly not an innocent victim. Your statement about not being able to do anything about his circumstances does not coincide with historical fact. He was another sadistic brute who received proper justice at the end of a rope.

[ToxicGas]

Kramer was in the camp system for many years

Dachau 1936-1937
Sachsenhausen 1937
Mauthausen 1937-1940
Auchwitz 1943
Natzweiler 1944
Bergen-Belsen 1944-1945

He knew what he was doing and stayed in the system. He was certainly not an innocent victim. Your statement about not being able to do anything about his circumstances does not coincide with historical fact. He was another sadistic brute who received proper justice at the end of a rope.

Thank you for the information, something I was not aware of. I agree then, that there can be no claim of innocence for him. It still makes sense to me that the one responsible for the eventual death toll of Belsen is whoever directed masses of prisoners into a camp already greatly exceeding it's capacity. However, Kramer was clearly working in the camps for a long time and must have been directly involved with (if not, aware of at the very least) the crimes of the SS.

This aside, I'm still in pursuit of photos of uniformed Belsen guards if anyone at all can provide any. It seems at this point I've done all I can do to acquire them, until I have the opportunity to access historical archives.

Mat

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Kramer was in the camp system for many years

Dachau 1936-1937
Sachsenhausen 1937
Mauthausen 1937-1940
Auchwitz 1943
Natzweiler 1944
Bergen-Belsen 1944-1945

He knew what he was doing and stayed in the system. He was certainly not an innocent victim. Your statement about not being able to do anything about his circumstances does not coincide with historical fact. He was another sadistic brute who received proper justice at the end of a rope.

Well said. The SS was hardly an organization of the normal type, run by business school graduates (though it had business types of the era who were criminals of a particular kind...) with some sort of ethical compass as young people today might conceive of such a thing or not. Rather, the Wachverbaende later SSTV manifested a particular brutality and viciousness of which its founder was proud and he cultivated with special fervor. Hence, Kraemer cannot get off as Hoess tried to do as a victim of bureaucratic fiat. The means whereby the extermination camps in the Generalgouvernement were rolled up and the prisoners put on death marches into the Altreich was also hardly a garden party.

All those concerned should read books of a serious kind on the final phase of the war. We have no need of apologia here.

[HPL2008]

It is also worth noting that Kramer did not wind up at Bergen-Belsen during the final half year of the war in Europe by some biographical coincidence.

Kramer, with his long job experience as a Dachau-trained and Auschwitz-practiced industrialized murderer and slave-driver was sent there because he was deemed by Oswald Pohl to be just the right man for the job at hand.

His predecessor Adolf Haas was of a phlegmatic nature and primarily interested in maintaining a lazy and comfortable lifestyle for himself, marked by food, wine and various extramarital affairs. When the role of Bergen-Belsen shifted to that of a collection- and transit camp for evacuees from other camps and a "dying camp" for the sick and worn-out prisoners, the unambitious Haas was replaced by Kramer in late 1944.

He lived up to the expectations put in him, too:

Under Kramer, conditions for the prisoners worsened at once. He immediately put an end to the (relative) privileges of the 6,000 Jews held there as potential "exchange material" for Germans interned abroad, removed all Jewish prisoners from "prisoner functuary" positions and privileged work details, replaced many of them with the most brutal criminal inmates, cut food rations, increased the number and severity of punishments etc. etc.

His half-hearted attempts to intervene with Glücks to temporarily close the camp for further transports do nothing to change that and were hardly the result of a humanitarian attitude or concern over the well-being of his inmates.