Karl Hermann Frank - War criminal.

Karl Hermann Frank - War criminal.

On the 22nd of May 1946 Karl Hermann Frank was hanged in public as a war criminal at Prague’s Pankrác Prison.  Czechoslovakia still used the Austro-Hungarian poll hanging method at this time.  

Kurt Daluege and Frank ordered the destruction of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky in retaliation for Reinhard Heydrich's assassination. In Lidice, Frank ordered the shooting of all the men, sending the women to concentration camps, and the murders of many of the children.  A few were sent to live with SS families in Germany.

Here is the Associated press report of the execution, published on May 23, 1946

“FRANK IS HANGED FOR LIDICE CRIME.

Eight thousand spectators, including widows of the men slaughtered at Lidice, watched without pity as Karl Hermann Frank was hanged in Pankrác Prison courtyard for having been chiefly responsible for the massacre.

Those of Lidice’s widows who were able to come and widows of the 30,000 other Czechs for whose executions Frank had been judged indirectly responsible occupied the second row of seats.  Ahead of them were the officials.

Frank was the first Nazi of Cabinet rank to be executed for war crimes.

Not the slightest gleam of compassion could be seen in that long row of unforgiving eyes as Frank clad in a ragged Nazi Elite Guard uniform walked quietly between two guards.  At his own request he was not shackled.

The ruler of Czechoslovakia under Nazism had to stand under the dangling hangman’s noose for eight minutes in accordance with prison formality while a digest of the verdict was re-read by Antonin Kozak, judge of the Peoples’ Court which convicted him yesterday.  It found him responsible, among other crimes, for the destruction of Lidice and the murder of its male population.

Frank was informed that there had been no reply to his telegraphed appeal to President Eduard Benes for leniency.  That meant that the hangman would take over.

As the noose was adjusted about his neck Frank muttered in German “Germany will live even if we do not live.”

Czechoslovakia used this unusual variant of short drop hanging.  There was no gallows as such, but rather a stout vertical wooden pole (or post) of about 2-3 meters in height with a metal hook or eye bolt at the top to which a rope noose was attached.  There were steps up to a small platform at the back of the pole for the executioner to stand on.  

The pinioned prisoner was placed with their back to the pole and then lifted up either manually by the hangman’s assistants, or on a cloth sling running under his armpits so that the executioner could put the noose round the neck.  At the signal he was now jerked downwards by the assistants thus tightening the noose.  

This jerk combined with the thinness of the cord typically caused a carotid reflex and led to rapid unconsciousness.  A video of the hanging of Karl Hermann Frank which took place on the 22nd of May 1946 in Prague’s Pankrác prison is currently available on YouTube.  He was lifted up to the top of the pole by a sling and then dropped about a meter, the hangman covering Frank’s face with his hand. This film clearly demonstrates how pole hanging worked and does not give the impression that Frank struggled after suspension. 

Late 19th century Austrian hangman, Josef Lang, considered this method to be far more humane than American style standard drop hanging and claimed that no criminal suffered for more than a minute with his method.