MAZAL LIBRARY
.	EXECUTIONER PIERREPOINT (extracts) Page 145
.	Executioner at War 145 were to die from the effects of starvation, beatings and disease. How many people had been liquidated there could never be stated as a firm total. The place had been for years a death-camp where the average life of internee was twelve days. In 1945 people did feel emotional about that. Unfortunately for my personal life, that emotion had a painful backlash on me. The announcement that I was to hang the convicted staff of Belsen was made from Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters in Germany with far fuller publicity than had ever been officially given to executions at home. Because of what people felt about Belsen, and because they saw me as, in a way, their own stand-in avenger, not only for the wrongs of the SS but for all their grief at the deaths in this long war, I became a far too familiar public figure, and in private far too troubled. I had more reporters and photographers camped on my doorstep than a heavily suspected murderer before he is arrested. I was chased to my aircraft in the middle of the Northolt airfield by a pack of newspapermen who were to me about as unwelcome as a lynch mob. 'He should avoid attracting public attention ... He should clearly understand that his conduct and general behaviour must be respectable and discreet ...' That was how I had been trained to be an executioner, and I could see it all going by the board. I landed at Buckeburg at five o'clock on a December afternoon. I was met by a major and his driver in an old jeep. We had a forty minute run through dark, devastated country to the story-book Pied Piper town of Hameln. In the back seat of the jeep I was freezing from the wind and drenched with rain. Almost immediately after my arrival there was a conference with British Army officials, some of whom had been seconded from H.M. Prison Service. A The discussions were lengthy, for I was to conduct the execution of thirteen persons in one day. Eleven were from Belsen, and two others had been sentenced to death by the War Crimes Commission. This was a revolutionary total in modern British criminological history, and the operation demanded careful planning. It was agreed that arrangements should be left entirely in my hands. I had thirty-two hours in which to complete my preparations. I rose early on the morning of December 12th and looked out the window at a cold, damp prospect. 'Brr! There must be a hanging today! I remembered the old Yorkshire
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