What British Soldiers Did When They Caught the “Beast of Belsen” D

April 15th, 1945, Northern Germany. The British 11th Armored Division was advancing through the woods. They were looking for the enemy, but instead they found a smell. It was a stench so powerful, so thick that the tank crews had to tie handkerchiefs around their faces. It smelled like death.

It smelled like the end of the world. They followed the smell to a massive gate. Standing there, waiting for them was a man. He was dressed in an immaculate SS uniform. His boots were polished. His medals were shining. He looked healthy, well-fed, arrogant. He held a riding crop in his hand. He didn’t run. He didn’t hide.

He walked up to the first British tank. He saluted and he said, “Ishm commandant, I demand a truce. The prisoners are sick. You must not let them out.” The British soldiers looked at him. Then they looked past him, at the piles of bodies stacked like firewood, at the thousands of walking skeletons behind the wire.

The British commander, Brigadier Glenn Hughes, looked at the fat, healthy Nazi standing in front of him. He put his hand on his revolver. He wanted to shoot him right there. He didn’t shoot. Instead, he gave an order that would become legendary. Arrest him and put him in the cages.

Let him see what it feels like. This is the true story of the capture of Yseph Kramer, the man the world called the beast of Bellson. It is the story of how British soldiers broke his ego. How they forced the SS to bury the dead and what the hangman said when he finally put the noose around the beast’s neck.

To understand the rage of the British soldiers, we have to see what they saw. Bergen Bellson was not a death camp like Achvitz. It had no gas chambers. It was something else. It was a horror camp. The Nazis had dumped 60,000 prisoners there and stopped feeding them. They stopped giving them water.

They let typhus rage through the barracks. When the British tanks rolled in, the soldiers thought they had entered a different planet. There were 13,000 unburied bodies lying on the ground. The living were sleeping on top of the dead. The silence was terrifying. People didn’t have the energy to scream. They just stared.

One British officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mvin Gonan, later wrote, “It was a scene from Dante’s Inferno.” “I saw a woman eating a raw turnip. She was sitting on the corpse of her sister. She didn’t even notice.” The British soldiers were tough men. They had fought across France and Germany, but this this broke them.

Grown men sat on their tanks and wept openly. And in the middle of this hell stood Yseph Kramer, calm, unbothered. He acted like he was the manager of a hotel that had some sanitation problems. He told the British, “I did my best. Berlin stopped sending food. It is not my fault.” He shrugged his shoulders.

That shrug, that lack of humanity was the spark that lit the fire of revenge. Joseph Kramer wasn’t an accidental villain. He was a career monster. He had joined the SS early. He had learned his trade at Daau, then Mouhausen. Then he became the commandant of Awitz Berkanau, the most efficient killing machine in history.

He was known for his brutality. Survivors said he would kick prisoners to death with his heavy boots just for walking too slow. [snorts] He personally selected children for the gas chambers. He wrote letters to his wife about how much he loved his job. By 1945, he was transferred to Bellson. He brought his methods with him, but without gas chambers.

He used starvation. He was nicknamed the beast, not because he looked like a monster, but because he looked so normal. He looked like a baker or a truck driver. But behind his eyes, there was nothing. When the British arrived, Kramer made a fatal mistake. He thought the British were gentlemen. He thought they would respect his rank.

He thought they would treat him as an officer. He was about to find out that the British 11th Armored Division were not gentlemen. They were Avengers. The moment of arrest was violent. Brigadier Hughes ordered Kramer to be disarmed. A British sergeant walked up to the beast. Kramer sneered at him.

Do you know who I am? The sergeant didn’t answer. They smashed his rifle butt into Kramer’s stomach. Kramer doubled over. The arrogance vanished. The soldiers stripped him of his weapons. They tore off his medals. They tied his hands behind his back. Kramer protested, “I am a commandant. You cannot treat me like this.

” The British officer replied, “You are a murderer, and you will be treated like one.” They didn’t put him in a jail cell. They dragged him to the ice box. It was a root cellar, a potato storage room underground. It was freezing cold, dark, damp, just like the barracks he forced his prisoners to live in. They threw him inside, the sound of metal door slamming shut.

For the first time in his life, the beast was in a cage. But Kramer wasn’t the only monster they found. Running the women’s camp was a 21-year-old woman, Irma Greece. She was beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyes. The press called her the beautiful beast, but her soul was rotten. She carried a whip made of cellophane.

She used it to slash the faces of female prisoners. She had two large dogs that she trained to attack people on command. When the British arrested her, she was defiant. She stood with her hands on her hips. She glared at the soldiers. She thought her beauty would save her. It didn’t. The British soldiers saw the scars on the prisoners.

They saw the fear in the women’s eyes when Irma walked by. They threw her in the cell next to Kramer. She screamed. She cursed. She sang Nazi songs at the top of her voice to keep herself awake. The British soldiers guarded the door. They didn’t give her special treatment. They gave her the same rations the prisoners got.

Watery soup, stale bread. The master race was finally getting a taste of its own medicine. The story of Bellson is hard to hear, but it is necessary. Most history books skip the details of the retribution. We believe you deserve to know the full story. If you want to see justice served, hit that subscribe button.

Join us as we uncover the fate of the beast. The British realized that arresting the SS wasn’t enough. The camp was a mess. There were thousands of bodies rotting in the sun. Disease was spreading. The British commander made a decision. The SS created this mess. The SS will clean it up.

He ordered the SS guards, men and women, to report for duty, but not as guards, as laborers. They were forced to march into the camp. But this time, the prisoners were watching. The prisoners were cheering. The British soldiers pointed their bayonets at the SS. “Pick them up,” they ordered. “Pick up the bodies.” The SS were horrified.

They were used to ordering others to do the dirty work. Now they had to touch the rotting flesh of their victims. They had to carry the bodies to mass graves. They were not allowed to wear gloves. They were not allowed to wear masks. They had to do it with their bare hands. Ysef Kramer was dragged out of his cell. He was shackled.

The British tied him to the back of a jeep. They drove him through the camp. It was a parade of humiliation. The prisoners saw their tormentor tied up like a dog. They spat at him. They threw stones. For the survivors, seeing the all powerful commandant reduced to a prisoner was the first step in their healing. But nature had its own revenge.

The bodies were infected with typhus. It is a deadly disease carried by lice. By forcing the SS to carry the bodies without protection, the British exposed them to the infection. It wasn’t an official execution order, but it was a death sentence. Within days, the SS guards started falling sick. They developed high fevers. They became delirious.

Their bodies broke down. The British doctors treated the survivors, but they didn’t waste medicine on the SS. Over 20 SS guards died of typhus in the weeks after the liberation. They died the same death they had inflicted on thousands of innocent people. It was poetic justice. The biology of the camp turned against its creators. September 1945.

The survivors demanded a trial. They wanted the world to know what Kramer had done. The trial was held in Lunberg. Ysef Kramer and Irma Grese sat in the dock. They wore numbers on their chests, number one and number nine. Kramer tried to defend himself. He used the same excuse every Nazi used.

I was just following orders. I am a soldier. I have a duty to the fatherland. I did not kill anyone personally. The system killed them. The British prosecutor, Colonel Backhouse, destroyed him. He showed the films. He showed the photos of the bodies. He brought in witnesses who said, “I saw him beat a man to death.

I saw him shoot a child.” Kramer’s face remained stone cold. He didn’t show remorse. He didn’t show sadness. He just looked bored. Mgrese was different. She tried to charm the judges. She smiled. She fixed her hair. But then the witnesses spoke. They described her dogs, her whip, her cruelty.

The judges looked at her with disgust. The verdict came on November 17th. Guilty. Sentence. Death by hanging. When the judge read the sentence, Kramer didn’t blink. Madresse threw her head back and laughed. A hysterical, broken laugh. December 13th, 1945. Hamlin Prison. The British sent their best man for the job, Albert Pierre Point.

The most famous executioner in British history. He was a professional. He took pride in his work. He didn’t hate the Nazis. He just wanted to do his job efficiently. He arrived at the prison. He measured the drop. He checked the ropes. He wanted it to be quick. Kramer was first. He walked into the execution chamber. He looked at Pierre Point.

He didn’t say a word. No final speech. No hile Hitler. Just silence. Pierre Point put the white hood over his head. He put the noose around his neck. Clack. The trap door opened. The beast of Bellson dropped. His neck snapped instantly. He was dead before his heart stopped beating. The monster was gone. Next was Irma Grace.

She was the youngest woman ever executed under British law in the 20th century. She walked in. She looked at the English guards. She smiled one last time. She said, “Chel, quickly.” Pierre Point obliged. Clack. She fell. The beautiful beast was no more. After the executions, the British army did one last thing at Bellson.

They evacuated the last survivors to hospitals. The camp was empty, but the barracks were still full of lice and disease. They brought in the flamethrowers, a sound of roaring fire. They brought in the bulldozers. They burned the camp to the ground. every wooden hut, every guard tower, every fence. They wanted to erase the infection from the earth.

A sound of crackling fire consuming wood. A ceremony was held. A sign was put up. It didn’t celebrate a victory. It simply said, “This is the site of the infamous Bellson concentration camp, liberated by the British on 15th April 1945. 10,000 unburied dead were found here. 13,000 have died since.

May they rest in peace.” The capture of the beast of Bellson was a turning point. It was the moment the British soldiers realized that this wasn’t just a war for territory. It was a war for the soul of humanity. They treated Kramer not as a soldier but as a criminal. They stripped him of his dignity.

They forced him to face his crimes and then they removed him from the world. Some say the British were too harsh in the beginning, that kicking and beating prisoners is wrong. But those who were there, those who smelled the smell, they say it was the only justice that made sense. Joseph Kramer thought he was a god in his camp, but in the end, he was just a man hanging from a rope, and the world was a better place without him.

The British soldiers showed no mercy to the SS guards at Bellson. Do you think they were justified in their brutal treatment of Kramer, or should they have been more professional? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments. And if you want to see the story of how American soldiers handled the guards at Dowau, click this video right here.

Thanks for watching.