The camp commander at Espeland, SS-Oberscharführer Georg Eberl, had been treating prisoners reasonably well, but this changed with the arrival of Runzheimer on 1 March 1944. Under the approval of his new superior, SS-Hauptsturmführer Eugen Nemitz, Runzheimer presided over a reign of terror in the camp. Strictly enforcing the rules and punishing the slightest mistake, he greatly increased use of the camp's isolation cells. He also initiated a programme of punitive exercises to follow the ten hour camp workday. This would include forcing prisoners to perform hare jumps to the point of exhaustion, making them run across the camp while carrying full buckets of excrement from the latrine, and making the weakest carry him on their backs. In addition to this, he was also physically violent, dishing out beatings with a stick and trampling prisoners. On one occasion, in the middle of winter, he ordered inmates to roll in dirt before forcing them to wash off in the nearby river. Some of the prisoners died of exhaustion.
