EXECUTIONER PIERREPOINT (extracts)

...At last we finished noting the details of the ten men, and RSM O'Neil ordered 'Bring out Irma Grese.' She walked out of her cell and came towards us laughing. She seemed as bonny a girl as one could ever wish to meet. She answered O'Neil's questions, but when he asked her age she paused and smiled. I found that we were both smiling with her, as if we realized the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age. Eventually she said 'twenty-one,' which we knew to be correct. This blonde girl of twenty-one. who habitually carried a riding whip to lash prisoners to death, had, it was stated by one of her fellow-guards in the camp, been responsible for at least thirty deaths a day.

O'Neil asked her to step on to the scales. 'Schnell!' she said — 'Quick, get it over.' Elisabeth Volkenrathh was called. She, too, had made the selections for the gas-chambers. Apart from that, her general behaviour to the prisoners had made her, survivors said. the 'worst-hated woman in the camp'.

I reflected that if she could top Irma Grese she must have been formidable. She was a good-looking woman. She did not flash the smile that Irma Grese had given, but she seemed steady, although nervous. She was followed by Juana Bormann, 'the woman with the dogs', who had habitually set her wolfhounds on prisoners to tear them to pieces She limped down the corridor looking old and haggard. She was forty-two years old, only a little over five feet high, and she had the weight of a child, a hundred and one pounds. She was trembling as we put her on the scale. In German she said 'I have my feelings.' With the bundled records under my arm I went back to my room and spent the next two hours working out the length of drop that would be required for each of the condemned persons. It was not a simple task, for I had to allow for the adjustment of the drop after each execution and this controlled to some extent the order in which I took the prisoners.

I was very anxious not to confuse any of the drops. It would have been easy, in this unprecedented multiple execution, to have called for the condemned in the wrong order. But, however it complicated the operation, I had come to the decision that I must take the women first. The condemned cells were so close to the scaffold that the prisoners could not but hear the repeated sounds of the drop. I did not wish to subject the woman for too long to this. I determined to carry out the execution of the women, singly, at the start, and follow with double executions for the men. I still had to go back to the execution chamber to make the final tests, Back past the corridor with the staring eyes. We went through a full rehearsal, and I knew that inevitably the condemned must know what was going on. It was a heavy day. As we want back to the mess RSM O'Neil said 'Albert, I have read about executions, but I never thought there was so much work to do.' 'Yes.' I agreed, it is not as easy as you read.' I was awakened by a batman at six o'clock next morning. Friday the 13th of December 1945. I made my way to the prison and met O'Neil and another officer.

The mandatory witnesses began to arrive, and finally the British officer in charge of the execution came in. He was Brigadier Paton-Walsh, whom I had known in pre-war days as Deputy Governor of Wandsworth. With him was Miss Wilson, Deputy Governor of Manchester, who had to attend because women were to be hanged. At a few minutes to the hour the Brigadier asked, 'Are you ready, Pierrepoint?' I answered 'Yes sir. 'Gentlemen, follow me,' he said, and the procession started. We climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting. A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung open the door and we filed past the row of faces and into the execution chamber. The officers stood at attention. Brigadier Paton-Walsh stood with his wrist-watch raised. He gave me the signal, and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber, I walked into the corridor.

'Irma Grese,' I called. The German guards quickly closed all grills on twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion her in the corridor. 'Follow me,' I said in English, and O'Neil repeated the order in German. She walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it, then walked on 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 hand she said in her languid voice 'Schnell'. The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead.

After twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.

Within another ten minutes I had prepared the rope for Elisabeth Volkenrath, and I went into the corridor and called her name.

Half an hour later I had hanged Juana Bormann.

We paused for a cup of tea, and I set about adjusting the scaffold for the double executions. I called 'Josef Kramer, Fritz Klein.' Kramer came out of his cell first. Although he had lost two stones in weight since he was captured, he was still a powerful man, and I was thankful when I had strapped his thick wrists safely behind him. I marched him to the trap and put the white cap over his face. I came back to the corridor to pinion Klein, then brought him into the execution chamber. On the trap, Klein hardly measured up to Kramer's shoulder. I adjusted the ropes and flew to the lever. This first double execution took only twenty-five seconds. But there were inevitable delays between the operations. The bodies of the two men ...