- READ MORE: Robert Rinder changed death penalty stance after finding out about executioner who hanged Nazi responsible for grandfather’s torture
It was December 1945 and Albert Pierrepoint had the biggest job of his life on his hands – literally.
Britain’s hangman – the methodical killer who handled his tools of the trade with dexterity – had been sent to Germany to execute 13 depraved Nazi war criminals.
Chief among them was Josef Kramer, who in almost his last act as commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had executed 22 defenceless inmates with a submachine gun.
Irma Grese, a 21-year-old guard, carried a whip which she used to beat inmates to death.
Dr Fritz Klein – a 55-year-old Romanian medic – had worked beside Kramer at Auschwitz and then Belsen. The rabid anti-Semite chose who would be forced to work and who would die.
The others on Pierrepoint’s list included Juana Bormann (she kept a pack of dogs who would be set on prisoners) and Elizabeth Volkenrath, who as commandant of the women’s camp at Auschwitz would beat inmates to death with her fists.
All of the murderers had been condemned to death at the Belsen trials in Lüneburg, Germany. They were just a handful of the 200 Nazis who Pierrepoint ultimately dispatched.
A month after hanging the Belsen war criminals, Pierrepoint executed American-born traitor William Joyce, who became known as Lord Haw-Haw for his relentless broadcasting of Nazi propaganda.

It was December 1945 and Albert Pierrepoint (above) had the biggest job of his life on his hands – literally. Britain’s hangman – the methodical killer who handled his tools of the trade with dexterity – had been sent to Germany to execute 13 depraved Nazi war criminals


In almost his last act as commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Josef Kramer (left) executed 22 defenceless inmates with a submachine gun. Dr Fritz Klein chose who would be forced to work and who would die
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Robert Rinder changed his anti-death penalty view after researching Nazi who tortured grandfather

This week, barrister and TV star Rob Rinder said he changed his anti-death penalty stance after finding out about Pierrepoint, who hanged a Nazi responsible for his grandfather’s torture.
Mr Rinder’s Jewish ancestors – great grandparents, four great aunts and a great uncle – were murdered at Treblinka death camp during the Holocaust.
His grandfather, Morris Malenicky, escaped the death camps because he was a teenager and able to work, so he was forced into slave labour at Buchenwald concentration camp.
Mr Rinder found out about Pierrepoint while researching his latest programme, Britain Behind Bars: A Secret History.
Having discovered that Pierrepoint dispatched one of Buchenwald’s commanders, who was ‘responsible for torturing my grandfather’, Mr Rinder said: ‘It changed my view (against capital punishment).
‘It made me less confident (and see) that the issues are complex.’
Pierrepoint had worked as a greengrocer before following in the footsteps of his father and uncle in becoming an executioner.
At the end of 1945, Britons were fresh from hearing of the war crimes carried out in Nazi Germany’s execution camps.


Irma Grese (left), a 21-year-old guard, carried a whip which she used to beat inmates to death. Juana Bormann she kept a pack of dogs who would be set on prisoners

Elizabeth Volkenrath was commandant of the women’s camp at Auschwitz before moving to Belsen. She would beat inmates to death with her fists
Radio and newspaper reports of the horrors at Belsen – first reported by Richard Dimbleby on the BBC – had shocked the nation.
Press interest in Pierrepoint’s trip to Germany was enormous. He described the pack of reporters who followed him to his plane as ‘about as unwelcome as a lynch mob’.
For his special role, Pierrepoint was given the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
The condemned were being held in a row of tiny cells that had been constructed by the Royal Engineers.
Kramer had served first as an SS guard at Dachau. By 1940, he was assistant to Rudolf Hoss at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland.
He was put in charge of the gas chambers and would later describe at his trial how 80 women ‘began to scream’ when Zyklon-B cyanide gas started to kill them.
He said: ‘I put in a small amount of salt through a tube and looked through a peephole to see what happened.
‘The women breathed for about a minute before they fell to the floor. I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order.’
Kramer moved to Belsen in Germany in December 1944. As the camp’s commander, he was dubbed the Beast of Belsen by inmates.
Any prisoners who failed to respond instantly to an instruction would be clubbed, whipped or shot to death.
Klein both divided prisoners between those who would live and die and also selected naked women for the SS brothel.

Nazi murderers Josef Kramer and Irma Grese, pictured, were hanged at Hameln, Germany, by Albert Pierrepoint on December 13, 1945

Defendants at Belsen War Crimes Trial in Luneberg, Germany (Grese is number 9 and Volkenrath is number 7)
He cited his duty as a doctor as: ‘My Hippocratic oath tells me to cut a gangrenous appendix out of the human body.
‘The Jews are the gangrenous appendix of mankind. That’s why I cut them out.’
When Belsen was liberated by British troops, Klein tried to pose as a charity worker by wearing a Red Cross armband.
After survivors pointed him out, he was forced to dig mass graves.
Pierrepoint said the blonde Irma Grese was ‘as bonny a girl as one could ever wish to meet.’
A fellow guard claimed that Grese killed at least 30 people a day. Like Bormann, she kept dogs that were trained to tear people apart.
Volkenrath, who later worked Belsen, was, according to survivors, ‘the worst-hated woman in the camp’. The 26-year-old devised a punishment that she called ‘making sport’.
It involved forcing inmates to exercise until they collapsed.

A month after hanging the Belsen war criminals, Pierrepoint executed American-born traitor William Joyce (above), who became known as Lord Haw-Haw for his relentless broadcasting of Nazi propaganda
Pierrepoint spent much of his day at the prison where the inmates were held preparing the nooses for each of them.
Each rope was measured to ensure that the condemned would fall the correct distance to break their necks cleanly.
With each execution audible to the other prisoners, Pierrepoint arranged for the women to be hanged first, so they would suffer less.
On Friday, December 13, he first hanged Volkenrath. He then moved on to Grese. He later wrote in his autobiography: ‘She walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing around it, then walked to the centre of the trap where I had made a chalk mark.
‘She stood on this mark very firmly and, as I placed the white cap over her head, she said in a languid voice, “Schnell”.’
After the third woman was hanged, Pierrepoint paused for a cup of tea. Then Kramer was executed.
It was dark by the time the last of the 13 bodies were removed from their rope.
It was then that officials realised only 12 coffins had been supplied. So the last body was wrapped in hessian sacking before burial.
In late 1946, Pierrepoint and his wife took over a pub outside Manchester that was called Help The Poor Struggler.
He would continue in his role as Britain’s chief executioner for another ten years, but always refused to discuss his work.

In his autobiography, Pierrepoint admitted that he did not believe in capital punishment. He died in 1992 aged 87
Other people he hanged included serial killers John Christie and John Haigh, who was known as the ‘Acid Bath Murderer’.
He also dispatched Ruth Ellis, who was the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
Last year, the notebook in which Pierrepoint recorded the name, age, height, weight and remarks about the neck type of each of those he hanged was sold at auction for £12,400.
In his autobiography, Pierrepoint admitted that he did not believe in capital punishment. He died in 1992 aged 87.