Hanns alexander

On 12 May , my great-uncle, Hanns Alexander, arrived at the Belsen concentration camp. Born in Berlin in , Hanns had fled Germany following the rise of the Nazis, ending up in England. Driving through the camp gates, Hanns had no idea what to expect.

Hanns Alexander (6 May – 23 December ) was a German Nazi hunter who tracked down and arrested Gustav Simon, a Nazi Party official, and Rudolf Höss.

He was shocked by what he found: thousands of dead bodies on the ground, those alive were walking half-starved and in terrible condition. Hanns spent the first few days helping clearing up the camp, burying the bodies in mass graves and saying Jewish prayers. He was then told to help with the interrogation of the SS guards and officers who had been arrested when the British had liberated the camps just three weeks before.

In a small room located at the Celle prison, fifteen miles south from Belsen, Hanns acted as interpreter during the interrogations. As such, Hanns was one of the first to hear first hand from the perpetrators about what had taken place in Auschwitz: the transports, the selections, the medical experiments, and the gas chambers.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Hanns and the other members of 1 War Crimes Investigation Team, prepared for the trial that had been set for the end of the summer. They interviewed prisoners who had helped the guards, the so-called Kapos. And they returned to the SS officers, pressing them to admit their role in the atrocities. It was attached to the crematorium.

The complete building containing the crematorium and gas chamber was situated in Camp No. The better-known Nuremberg Trials would not start till November later that year. For the next few weeks, the international press was transfixed.