It was December 1945 and Albert Pierrepoint had the most important job of his life on his hands, literally.
The British executioner – the methodical killer who handled his tools of the trade with skill – 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 commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp executed 22 defenseless inmates with a submachine gun.
Irma Grese, a 21-year-old guard, carried a whip with which she beat inmates to death.
Dr. Fritz Klein, a 55-year-old Romanian physician, had worked alongside Kramer at Auschwitz and then Belsen. The rabid anti-Semite chose who was forced to work and who died.
Among the others on Pierrepoint’s list were Juana Bormann (who kept a pack of dogs that attacked prisoners) and Elizabeth Volkenrath, who, as commandant of the Auschwitz women’s camp, beat prisoners to death with her fists.
All of the murderers had been sentenced to death at the Belsen trials in Lüneburg, Germany. They were just a few of the 200 Nazis that Pierrepoint eventually eliminated.
A month after hanging the Belsen war criminals, Pierrepoint executed the American-born traitor William Joyce, who became known as Lord Haw-Haw for his tireless dissemination of Nazi propaganda.
It was December 1945 and Albert Pierrepoint (above) had the biggest job of his life on his hands – literally. The British executioner, the methodical killer who handled his work tools with dexterity, had been sent to Germany to execute 13 depraved Nazi war criminals.
In his last act as commander of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Josef Kramer (left) executed 22 defenseless prisoners with a machine gun. Dr. Fritz Klein chose those who would be forced to work and those who would be killed.
This week, lawyer and TV star Rob Rinder said he changed his stance against the death penalty after learning about Pierrepoint, who hanged a Nazi responsible for torturing his grandfather.
Mr. Rinder’s Jewish ancestors – his great-grandparents, four great-aunts and a great-uncle – were murdered at the Treblinka death camp during the Holocaust.
His grandfather, Morris Malenicky, escaped from the extermination camps because he was a teenager and able to work, so he was forced to do slave labor at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Mr Rinder learned about Pierrepoint while researching his latest programme, Britain Behind Bars: A Secret History.
After discovering that Pierrepoint had sent one of the Buchenwald commandants, “responsible for torturing my grandfather,” Mr. Rinder said: “That changed my opinion (against capital punishment).
“It made me lose confidence (and see) that the problems are complex.”
Pierrepoint had worked as a greengrocer before following in the footsteps of his father and uncle and becoming an executioner.
By late 1945, the British had just learned of war crimes committed in Nazi Germany’s execution camps.
Irma Grese (left), a 21-year-old guard, carried a whip that she used to beat inmates to death. Juana Bormann had a pack of dogs that attacked prisoners.
Elizabeth Volkenrath was the commandant of the Auschwitz women’s camp before moving to Belsen. She beat prisoners to death with her fists.
Radio and newspaper reports of the horrors of Belsen (first reported by Richard Dimbleby on the BBC) shocked the nation.
Pierrepoint’s trip to Germany sparked enormous interest among the press. He described the group of journalists who accompanied him to the plane as “almost as unwanted as a lynch mob.”
For his special role, Pierrepoint was awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel.
The condemned were held in a row of small cells that had been built by the Royal Engineers.
Kramer had first served as an SS guard at Dachau. In 1940, he was an assistant to Rudolf Höss 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” as Zyklon-B cyanide gas began to kill them.
He said: ‘I put a small amount of salt through a tube and looked through a peephole to see what happened.
“The women breathed for a minute before falling to the ground. I had no feelings in doing those things because I had received an order.”
Kramer moved to Belsen, Germany, in December 1944. As camp commandant, he was nicknamed “the Beast of Belsen” by inmates.
Any prisoner who did not respond immediately to an instruction would be beaten, whipped, or shot to death.
Klein divided the prisoners between those who would live and those who would die and also selected naked women for the SS brothel.
Nazi murderers Josef Kramer and Irma Grese, pictured, were hanged in Hamelin, Germany, by Albert Pierrepoint on 13 December 1945.
Defendants at the Belsen war crimes trial in Lüneberg, Germany (Grese is number 9 and Volkenrath is number 7)
He cited his duty as a physician as follows: ‘My Hippocratic Oath tells me that I must cut out a gangrenous appendage from the human body.
“The Jews are the gangrenous appendix of humanity. That is why I extirpate them.”
When Belsen was liberated by British troops, Klein attempted to pass himself off as a charity worker by wearing a Red Cross armband.
After being singled out by survivors, he was forced to dig mass graves.
Pierrepoint said that blonde Irma Grese was “the most beautiful girl one could wish to meet.”
A fellow guard said Grese killed at least 30 people a day. Like Bormann, he had dogs trained to tear people apart.
Volkenrath, who later worked at Belsen, was, according to survivors, “the most hated woman in the camp.” The 26-year-old devised a punishment she called “doing sports.”
The idea was to force inmates to exercise until they passed out.
A month after hanging the Belsen war criminals, Pierrepoint executed the American-born traitor William Joyce (above), who became known as Lord Haw-Haw for his tireless dissemination of Nazi propaganda.
Pierrepoint spent much of the day in the prison where the inmates were being held, preparing the ropes for each of them.
Each rope was measured to ensure that the condemned fell the correct distance to cleanly break their necks.
Since each execution was audible to the other prisoners, Pierrepoint arranged for the women to be hanged first, so that they would suffer less.
On Friday, December 13, Volkenrath was hanged first. Grese was then moved on. She later wrote in her autobiography: ‘She entered the execution chamber, looked for a moment at the officials standing around her, and then walked to the centre of the trap where I had made a mark with chalk.
‘She stood on that mark very firmly, and when I put the white cap on her head, she said in a languid voice: “Schnell.”‘
After the third woman was hanged, Pierrepoint stopped for a cup of tea. Kramer was then executed.
It was already dark when the last of the 13 bodies was removed from the rope.
It was then that officials realized that only 12 coffins had been delivered, so the last body was wrapped in burlap before burial.
In late 1946, Pierrepoint and his wife took over a pub on the outskirts of Manchester 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 at the age of 87.
Other people he hanged included serial killers John Christie and John Haigh, known as the “Acid Bath Murderer”.
He also sent 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 comments on the type of neck of each of those he hanged sold at auction for £12,400.
In his autobiography, Pierrepoint admitted that he did not believe in capital punishment. He died in 1992 at the age of 87.