Posted on Jan 15, 2021
The “Witch of Buchenwald” is sentenced to prison
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Warning on this read. Horrifying
Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her extraordinary sadism.
Born in Dresden, Germany, Ilse, a librarian, married SS. Col. Karl Koch in 1936. Colonel Koch, a man with his own reputation for sadism, was the commandant of the Sashsenhausen concentration camp, two miles north of Berlin. He was transferred after three years to Buchenwald concentration camp, 4.5 miles northwest of Weimar; the Buchenwald concentration camp held a total of 20,000 slave laborers during the war.
Ilse, a large woman with red hair, was given free reign in the camp, whipping prisoners with her riding crop as she rode by on her horse, forcing prisoners to have sex with her, and, most horrifying, collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of tattooed camp prisoners. A German inmate gave the following testimony during the Nuremberg war trials: “All prisoners with tattooing on them were to report to the dispensary… After the prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were killed by injections. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department, where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated further.
Warning on this read. Horrifying
Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her extraordinary sadism.
Born in Dresden, Germany, Ilse, a librarian, married SS. Col. Karl Koch in 1936. Colonel Koch, a man with his own reputation for sadism, was the commandant of the Sashsenhausen concentration camp, two miles north of Berlin. He was transferred after three years to Buchenwald concentration camp, 4.5 miles northwest of Weimar; the Buchenwald concentration camp held a total of 20,000 slave laborers during the war.
Ilse, a large woman with red hair, was given free reign in the camp, whipping prisoners with her riding crop as she rode by on her horse, forcing prisoners to have sex with her, and, most horrifying, collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of tattooed camp prisoners. A German inmate gave the following testimony during the Nuremberg war trials: “All prisoners with tattooing on them were to report to the dispensary… After the prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were killed by injections. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department, where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated further.
The “Witch of Buchenwald” is sentenced to prison
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Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
During the Holocaust, Ilse Koch lived in the Buchenwald concentration camp with her husband. She would order the deaths of prisoners at-will, and even enjoye...
Thank you my friend Lt Col Charlie Brown for posting a summarization of Ilse Koch who is considered one of the most evil people.
Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
During the Holocaust, Ilse Koch lived in the Buchenwald concentration camp with her husband. She would order the deaths of prisoners at-will, and even enjoyed watching people being tortured and killed. Her home was filled with momentos made from human skin. Ilse Koch just may have been responsible for more deaths than your average serial killer. She is considered to be one of the most evil women that ever lived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox6J4vlrfF8
1. Ilse Koch and her husband Karl Otto Koch.
2. Human remains and images of tattoos from Buchenwald
3. Ilse Koch in 1947, popularly known as the 'The Bitch of Buchenwald.'
4. Ilse Koch faces the judge to hear her sentence, August 1947 at Dachau.
Background from {[https://allthatsinteresting.com/ilse-koch}
The Bitch of Buchenwald”: The Story Of Ilse Koch, One Of The Holocaust’s Biggest Monsters
By Abby Norman Published April 12, 2016
Updated July 20, 2020
Ilse Koch may not be as famous as the Holocaust's ringleaders, but she was every bit as evil.
We’ve written twice before about women who not only survived the Holocaust, but saved the lives of fellow prisoners with their superhuman courage and will to survive. The stories of Gisella Perl and Stanislawa Leszczyńska highlight one vital aspect of human nature: Our ability to persevere and care for others in even the most harrowing and cruel of circumstances.
But the Holocaust also presented many opportunities for humanity’s terrible dark side to run wild, as well. While Adolf Hitler, Josef Menegle, and Heinrich Himmler are rightly remembered as its figureheads, there were others just as villainous, but their names didn’t quite make the history books.
One of these individuals was Ilse Koch, whose sadism and barbarism would lead to her to receive the nickname The Bitch of Buchenwald.
Ilse Koch, born Margarete Ilse Köhler, was born in Dresden, Germany on September 22, 1906, to a factory foreman. Her childhood was completely unremarkable: Teachers noted her as being polite and happy, and at age 15 Koch entered accounting school, one of just a few educational opportunities for women at the time.
She began working as a bookkeeping clerk at a time when Germany’s economy was struggling to rebuild itself after WWI, and in the early 1930s, she and many of her friends joined the Nazi Party. The party, and Hitler’s ideology, was attractive to Germans first and foremost because it seemed to offer solutions to the myriad difficulties the country faced after losing the Great War.
In the beginning, the Nazi Party focused mainly on turning the German people against democracy — specifically, the Weimar Republic’s first politicians — which they felt was at the root of why they had lost the war.
Hitler was a compelling speaker, and his promise to abolish the deeply unpopular Treaty of Versailles — which demilitarized part of the country, then forced it to pay massive, unaffordable reparations while trying to recover from the calamities of war — appealed to many Germans who were struggling both with identity and making ends meet.
Koch, who was already well aware of the penurious economic climate, likely felt that the Nazi Party would restore and perhaps even bolster the fraught economy. In any case, it was her involvement in the party that introduced her to her future husband, Karl Otto Koch. They were married in 1936.
The following year, Karl was made Commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. It was one of the first and largest of the camps, opened shortly after Dachau. The iron gate that led into the camp read Jedem das Seine, which literally meant “to each his own,” but was intended as a message to the prisoners: “Everyone gets what he deserves.”
Ilse Koch jumped at the opportunity to become involved in her husband’s work, and over the next few years gained a reputation for being one of the most feared Nazis at Buchenwald. Her first order of business had been to use money stolen from prisoners to construct a $62,500 (around $1 million in today’s money) indoor sports arena where she could ride her horses.
Koch would often take this pastime outside the arena and into the camp itself, where she would taunt prisoners until they looked at her — at which point she would whip them. Survivors of the camp recalled later, during her trial for war crimes, that she always seemed particularly excited about sending children to the gas chamber.
Life inside one of the concentration camps.
Her other hobby, which would later become a major point of contention during the Nuremberg Trials, was her collection of lampshades, book covers, and gloves, said to have been made from human skin.
Witnesses later recalled that Ilse Koch often took her horseback rides through the camps to scout out prisoners who had distinctive tattoos. The prisoner would be stripped of his or her skin before being incinerated, and Koch allegedly kept the skin on display in her home with the Commandant. These artifacts were recovered after the camp’s liberation and served as key evidence during her trial.
She and her husband were arrested on August 24, 1943 at Buchenwald on charges of embezzlement and murder of prisoners. Despite the Nazis’ mass murder of prisoners and their tortuous medical experiments, even they did not find the Kochs’ methods of torment suitable to their ideology — although mainly because any punishments had to be cleared by the main office in Oranienburg, and the Kochs were acting of their own accord.
It was also alleged that Commandant Koch had ordered the execution of the orderly who had diagnosed him with and treated him for syphilis so that the secret would never be revealed. Frau Koch, in the meantime, had taken several lovers at Buchenwald, and it was widely accepted that her marriage to the Commandant had been an open one.
While Commandant Koch was sentenced to death just a week before Buchenwald was liberated, Frau Koch was acquitted, mostly due to lack of evidence — specifically, that investigators could not prove the lampshades and other items were actually made from human skin. For her part, Ilse insisted they were made of goatskin.
Following the camp’s liberation in 1945, word began to travel about Frau Koch’s sadistic involvement, as survivors recalled her in interviews. The public pressured the court to bring her to trial again.
Ilse Koch was brought before the General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals in 1947. On the stand, she announced that she was eight months pregnant, which came as a shock for two reasons. Firstly, she had had no contact with any men except for American interrogators — many of whom were Jewish — before her trial, and secondly, she was 41 years old.
Despite her pregnancy, she was charged with “participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald” and sentenced to life in prison for “violation of the laws and customs of war.”
She had birthed one son with Commandant Koch before their arrest, and the second child, whose father was unknown, was born while she was imprisoned. Both of her children went to foster homes.
Two years after her conviction, her sentence was reduced to four years by General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany. According to Clay, the reduction came since “there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin.”
The court maintained that perhaps the items had been made of goatskin after all, and she was released. However, the General stated: “I hold no sympathy for Ilse Koch. She was a woman of depraved character and ill repute. She had done many things reprehensible and punishable, undoubtedly, under German law. We were not trying her for those things. We were trying her as a war criminal on specific charges.”
The public was aghast at her release, and she was rearrested shortly thereafter. Throughout her second trial, which began in 1950, she collapsed frequently and had to be removed from the court. Over 250 witnesses were heard throughout the trial — including 50 for the defense.
Four of the witnesses testified that they had seen Koch selecting prisoners specifically for their tattoos, or that they had seen or been involved in the manufacturing of the human-skin lampshades. As had happened due to lack of evidence before, this charge was eventually dropped.
On January 15, 1951, the Court gave its verdict in a 111-page decision. Koch was not present. She was convicted of “charges of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm,” and again sentenced to life imprisonment with permanent forfeiture of any civil rights.
During her time in prison, she petitioned for appeals several times but was always dismissed. She even protested to the International Human Rights Commission, but was rejected.
While in prison, her son Uwe, who had been conceived during her imprisonment at Dachau, discovered that she was his mother. He came to visit her in prison often over the next several years at Aichach, the prison where she was serving her life sentence.
On September 1, 1967, Ilse Koch committed suicide in prison. The next day, Uwe arrived for their visit and was shocked to find that she had died. She was buried in an unmarked, untended grave at the prison’s cemetery.
Human remains and images of tattoos from Buchenwald. Image Source: Wikipedia
The lampshades have never been recovered, and many historians seem to doubt their existence. However, a writer — also Jewish — named Mark Jacobson has made it his mission to authenticate their existence. His grim quest began when a man named Skip Hendersen purchased a lampshade touted as a Nazi relic at a post-Hurricane Katrina garage sale.
Hendersen sent it to Jacobson, who even traveled with it to Buchenwald, but has been unable to definitively determine its origin. DNA testing conducted initially revealed that the lampshade was likely made of human skin, but later testing revealed that the shade is more likely made of cowskin. It seems, in the end, that this was one secret the Bitch of Buchenwalk took with her to the grave."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury Maj Marty Hogan SPC Michael Terrell
Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
During the Holocaust, Ilse Koch lived in the Buchenwald concentration camp with her husband. She would order the deaths of prisoners at-will, and even enjoyed watching people being tortured and killed. Her home was filled with momentos made from human skin. Ilse Koch just may have been responsible for more deaths than your average serial killer. She is considered to be one of the most evil women that ever lived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox6J4vlrfF8
1. Ilse Koch and her husband Karl Otto Koch.
2. Human remains and images of tattoos from Buchenwald
3. Ilse Koch in 1947, popularly known as the 'The Bitch of Buchenwald.'
4. Ilse Koch faces the judge to hear her sentence, August 1947 at Dachau.
Background from {[https://allthatsinteresting.com/ilse-koch}
The Bitch of Buchenwald”: The Story Of Ilse Koch, One Of The Holocaust’s Biggest Monsters
By Abby Norman Published April 12, 2016
Updated July 20, 2020
Ilse Koch may not be as famous as the Holocaust's ringleaders, but she was every bit as evil.
We’ve written twice before about women who not only survived the Holocaust, but saved the lives of fellow prisoners with their superhuman courage and will to survive. The stories of Gisella Perl and Stanislawa Leszczyńska highlight one vital aspect of human nature: Our ability to persevere and care for others in even the most harrowing and cruel of circumstances.
But the Holocaust also presented many opportunities for humanity’s terrible dark side to run wild, as well. While Adolf Hitler, Josef Menegle, and Heinrich Himmler are rightly remembered as its figureheads, there were others just as villainous, but their names didn’t quite make the history books.
One of these individuals was Ilse Koch, whose sadism and barbarism would lead to her to receive the nickname The Bitch of Buchenwald.
Ilse Koch, born Margarete Ilse Köhler, was born in Dresden, Germany on September 22, 1906, to a factory foreman. Her childhood was completely unremarkable: Teachers noted her as being polite and happy, and at age 15 Koch entered accounting school, one of just a few educational opportunities for women at the time.
She began working as a bookkeeping clerk at a time when Germany’s economy was struggling to rebuild itself after WWI, and in the early 1930s, she and many of her friends joined the Nazi Party. The party, and Hitler’s ideology, was attractive to Germans first and foremost because it seemed to offer solutions to the myriad difficulties the country faced after losing the Great War.
In the beginning, the Nazi Party focused mainly on turning the German people against democracy — specifically, the Weimar Republic’s first politicians — which they felt was at the root of why they had lost the war.
Hitler was a compelling speaker, and his promise to abolish the deeply unpopular Treaty of Versailles — which demilitarized part of the country, then forced it to pay massive, unaffordable reparations while trying to recover from the calamities of war — appealed to many Germans who were struggling both with identity and making ends meet.
Koch, who was already well aware of the penurious economic climate, likely felt that the Nazi Party would restore and perhaps even bolster the fraught economy. In any case, it was her involvement in the party that introduced her to her future husband, Karl Otto Koch. They were married in 1936.
The following year, Karl was made Commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. It was one of the first and largest of the camps, opened shortly after Dachau. The iron gate that led into the camp read Jedem das Seine, which literally meant “to each his own,” but was intended as a message to the prisoners: “Everyone gets what he deserves.”
Ilse Koch jumped at the opportunity to become involved in her husband’s work, and over the next few years gained a reputation for being one of the most feared Nazis at Buchenwald. Her first order of business had been to use money stolen from prisoners to construct a $62,500 (around $1 million in today’s money) indoor sports arena where she could ride her horses.
Koch would often take this pastime outside the arena and into the camp itself, where she would taunt prisoners until they looked at her — at which point she would whip them. Survivors of the camp recalled later, during her trial for war crimes, that she always seemed particularly excited about sending children to the gas chamber.
Life inside one of the concentration camps.
Her other hobby, which would later become a major point of contention during the Nuremberg Trials, was her collection of lampshades, book covers, and gloves, said to have been made from human skin.
Witnesses later recalled that Ilse Koch often took her horseback rides through the camps to scout out prisoners who had distinctive tattoos. The prisoner would be stripped of his or her skin before being incinerated, and Koch allegedly kept the skin on display in her home with the Commandant. These artifacts were recovered after the camp’s liberation and served as key evidence during her trial.
She and her husband were arrested on August 24, 1943 at Buchenwald on charges of embezzlement and murder of prisoners. Despite the Nazis’ mass murder of prisoners and their tortuous medical experiments, even they did not find the Kochs’ methods of torment suitable to their ideology — although mainly because any punishments had to be cleared by the main office in Oranienburg, and the Kochs were acting of their own accord.
It was also alleged that Commandant Koch had ordered the execution of the orderly who had diagnosed him with and treated him for syphilis so that the secret would never be revealed. Frau Koch, in the meantime, had taken several lovers at Buchenwald, and it was widely accepted that her marriage to the Commandant had been an open one.
While Commandant Koch was sentenced to death just a week before Buchenwald was liberated, Frau Koch was acquitted, mostly due to lack of evidence — specifically, that investigators could not prove the lampshades and other items were actually made from human skin. For her part, Ilse insisted they were made of goatskin.
Following the camp’s liberation in 1945, word began to travel about Frau Koch’s sadistic involvement, as survivors recalled her in interviews. The public pressured the court to bring her to trial again.
Ilse Koch was brought before the General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals in 1947. On the stand, she announced that she was eight months pregnant, which came as a shock for two reasons. Firstly, she had had no contact with any men except for American interrogators — many of whom were Jewish — before her trial, and secondly, she was 41 years old.
Despite her pregnancy, she was charged with “participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald” and sentenced to life in prison for “violation of the laws and customs of war.”
She had birthed one son with Commandant Koch before their arrest, and the second child, whose father was unknown, was born while she was imprisoned. Both of her children went to foster homes.
Two years after her conviction, her sentence was reduced to four years by General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany. According to Clay, the reduction came since “there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin.”
The court maintained that perhaps the items had been made of goatskin after all, and she was released. However, the General stated: “I hold no sympathy for Ilse Koch. She was a woman of depraved character and ill repute. She had done many things reprehensible and punishable, undoubtedly, under German law. We were not trying her for those things. We were trying her as a war criminal on specific charges.”
The public was aghast at her release, and she was rearrested shortly thereafter. Throughout her second trial, which began in 1950, she collapsed frequently and had to be removed from the court. Over 250 witnesses were heard throughout the trial — including 50 for the defense.
Four of the witnesses testified that they had seen Koch selecting prisoners specifically for their tattoos, or that they had seen or been involved in the manufacturing of the human-skin lampshades. As had happened due to lack of evidence before, this charge was eventually dropped.
On January 15, 1951, the Court gave its verdict in a 111-page decision. Koch was not present. She was convicted of “charges of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm,” and again sentenced to life imprisonment with permanent forfeiture of any civil rights.
During her time in prison, she petitioned for appeals several times but was always dismissed. She even protested to the International Human Rights Commission, but was rejected.
While in prison, her son Uwe, who had been conceived during her imprisonment at Dachau, discovered that she was his mother. He came to visit her in prison often over the next several years at Aichach, the prison where she was serving her life sentence.
On September 1, 1967, Ilse Koch committed suicide in prison. The next day, Uwe arrived for their visit and was shocked to find that she had died. She was buried in an unmarked, untended grave at the prison’s cemetery.
Human remains and images of tattoos from Buchenwald. Image Source: Wikipedia
The lampshades have never been recovered, and many historians seem to doubt their existence. However, a writer — also Jewish — named Mark Jacobson has made it his mission to authenticate their existence. His grim quest began when a man named Skip Hendersen purchased a lampshade touted as a Nazi relic at a post-Hurricane Katrina garage sale.
Hendersen sent it to Jacobson, who even traveled with it to Buchenwald, but has been unable to definitively determine its origin. DNA testing conducted initially revealed that the lampshade was likely made of human skin, but later testing revealed that the shade is more likely made of cowskin. It seems, in the end, that this was one secret the Bitch of Buchenwalk took with her to the grave."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury Maj Marty Hogan SPC Michael Terrell
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LTC Stephen F.
The Most Evil Women In History Ilse Koch
The.Most.Evil.Women.In.History-Ilse.Koch.A video I created about some really scary and evil women from history, that are basically female serial killers. Wat...
The Most Evil Women In History Ilse Koch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUXp3KZBc2Q
Images:
1. Ilse Koch and her husband Karl Otto Koch
2. American clergymen at the trial of Ilse Koch.
3. Germans visit Buchenwald after its liberation.
4. Ilse Koch at her trial
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/GERkochI.htm]}
Isle Koch, the daughter of a laborer, was born in Dresden, Germany in 1906. She worked in a tobacco factory and joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in April 1933. Soon afterwards she began working as a secretary for the party.
Koch worked in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and in May 1937, married Karl Koch, the commandant of the camp. In August, 1937, her husband was appointed commandant of Buchenwald. She went with him and became a SS-Aufseherin (overseer) at the camp. Known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald" she liked to ride through the camp where she selected prisoners who displeased her to be whipped by Schutz Staffeinel (SS) guards.
According to Louis L. Snyder: "A strapping red-haired woman of ample proportions, she liked to ride on horseback, with whip in hand, through the prison compound, lashing out at any prisoner unfortunate enough to glance in her direction. Her hobby was collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skins of dead inmates. On occasion, she gave orders for new prisoners with 'interesting tattoos' to be reserved for her."
In August, 1943, Karl Koch was arrested by the Gestapo and charged with embezzlement and forgery. Found guilty, he was executed in April, 1945. Isle Koch was charged with receiving stolen goods but was acquitted. At the end of the war Koch was arrested and charged with "participating in a common criminal plan for encouraging, aiding, abetting and participating in the atrocities at Buchenwald." In 1947 Koch was found guilty and was sentenced to life-imprisonment. While in prison she gave birth to a son, Uwe. The father is unknown.
After serving only two years General Lucius D. Clay, the military governor of the American zone in Germany, ordered her release on the grounds "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin". As a result of the international condemnation this decision received, a United States Senate committee investigated her crimes. On 27th December, 1948, it reported that she had taken part in killing or beating hundreds of prisoners: "This bestial woman's guilt in specific murders is irrefutably established."
Rearrested in 1949, Isle Koch was brought to trial before a West German court for crimes against German nationals. Psychiatrists who examined her judged her to be "a perverted, nymphomaniacal, hysterical, power-mad demon". On 15th January, 1951, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Isle Koch committed suicide in Aichach Prison on 1st September, 1967. In her last note to her son, Uwe, she wrote: "I cannot do otherwise. Death is the only deliverance."
FYI Sgt John H. SGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw MSgt Paul Connors SPC Matthew Lamb GySgt John Hudson SPC(P) (Join to see) SSG Robert WebsterSFC Bernard Walko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUXp3KZBc2Q
Images:
1. Ilse Koch and her husband Karl Otto Koch
2. American clergymen at the trial of Ilse Koch.
3. Germans visit Buchenwald after its liberation.
4. Ilse Koch at her trial
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/GERkochI.htm]}
Isle Koch, the daughter of a laborer, was born in Dresden, Germany in 1906. She worked in a tobacco factory and joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in April 1933. Soon afterwards she began working as a secretary for the party.
Koch worked in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and in May 1937, married Karl Koch, the commandant of the camp. In August, 1937, her husband was appointed commandant of Buchenwald. She went with him and became a SS-Aufseherin (overseer) at the camp. Known as the "Bitch of Buchenwald" she liked to ride through the camp where she selected prisoners who displeased her to be whipped by Schutz Staffeinel (SS) guards.
According to Louis L. Snyder: "A strapping red-haired woman of ample proportions, she liked to ride on horseback, with whip in hand, through the prison compound, lashing out at any prisoner unfortunate enough to glance in her direction. Her hobby was collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skins of dead inmates. On occasion, she gave orders for new prisoners with 'interesting tattoos' to be reserved for her."
In August, 1943, Karl Koch was arrested by the Gestapo and charged with embezzlement and forgery. Found guilty, he was executed in April, 1945. Isle Koch was charged with receiving stolen goods but was acquitted. At the end of the war Koch was arrested and charged with "participating in a common criminal plan for encouraging, aiding, abetting and participating in the atrocities at Buchenwald." In 1947 Koch was found guilty and was sentenced to life-imprisonment. While in prison she gave birth to a son, Uwe. The father is unknown.
After serving only two years General Lucius D. Clay, the military governor of the American zone in Germany, ordered her release on the grounds "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin". As a result of the international condemnation this decision received, a United States Senate committee investigated her crimes. On 27th December, 1948, it reported that she had taken part in killing or beating hundreds of prisoners: "This bestial woman's guilt in specific murders is irrefutably established."
Rearrested in 1949, Isle Koch was brought to trial before a West German court for crimes against German nationals. Psychiatrists who examined her judged her to be "a perverted, nymphomaniacal, hysterical, power-mad demon". On 15th January, 1951, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Isle Koch committed suicide in Aichach Prison on 1st September, 1967. In her last note to her son, Uwe, she wrote: "I cannot do otherwise. Death is the only deliverance."
FYI Sgt John H. SGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw MSgt Paul Connors SPC Matthew Lamb GySgt John Hudson SPC(P) (Join to see) SSG Robert WebsterSFC Bernard Walko
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LTC Stephen F.
War Crimes Trial: Buchenwald (Ilsa Koch)
German newsreel covering the Buchenwald Trial at Dachau. One of the principal defendants was Ilsa Koch. For further information, see www.roberthjackson.org.
War Crimes Trial: Buchenwald (Ilsa Koch)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK5JhqDgMdo
Image:
1. A young Ilse Koch
2. Ilse points to the location of her home on a map of the Buchenwald camp.jpg
3. Life inside one of the concentration camps
4. The Buchenwald camp was built in the spot where Goethe used to sit under this oak tree
Background from {[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ilse-koch]}
Ilse Koch
Ilse Koch was born in Dresden, Germany in 1906. A secretary by profession, Koch joined the Nazi party in 1932. Four years later, she married Karl Otto Koch (1897-1945), head of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, who in 1937 was assigned to build a new concentration camp in Buchenwald. Ilsa went with him and became a SS-Aufseherin (overseer) at the camp.
While Karl Otto was known for his personal greed in the camps he worked in, Ilse was known as the “Bitch of Buchenwald” for her bestial cruelty and sadistic behavior. She was especially fond of riding her horse through the camp, whipping any prisoner who attracted her attention. Her hobby was collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skins of specially murdered concentration camp inmates, and shrunken human skulls.
Ilse Koch would specially select prisoners with distinctive tattoos on her rides around the camp. These prisoners would be killed and their skin tanned and stored for later use by the SS guards.
Her taste for collecting lampshades made from the tattooed skins was described by a witness at The Nuremberg Trials after the war:
"The finished products (i.e. tattooed skin detached from corpses) were turned over to Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and other ornamental household articles .."
In the book Sidelights on the Koch Affair by Stefan Heymann, the author pointed out that the fact that the Kochs had lamps made of human skin did not distinguish them from the other SS officers. They had the same artworks made for their family homes:
"It is more interesting that Frau Koch had a lady's handbag made out of the same material. She was just as proud of it as a South Sea island woman would have been about her cannibal trophies .. "
In 1942, the Kochs received a punative transfer to Majdanek. In August 1943, Karl Koch was arrested by the Gestapo at the request of SS judge Josias Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont. Karl Otto was charged with the unauthorized murder of three prisoners, while Ilse was accused of the embezzlement of more than 700,000RM. Though Ilse was acquitted, Karl Otto was convicted and shot in April 1945.
At the end of the war, Koch was arrested and charged with "participating in a common criminal plan for encouraging, aiding, abetting and participating in the atrocities at Buchenwald." In 1947, an American military tribunal found Koch found guilty and sentenced her to life-imprisonment.
She committed suicide in a Bavarian prison on September 1, 1967.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK5JhqDgMdo
Image:
1. A young Ilse Koch
2. Ilse points to the location of her home on a map of the Buchenwald camp.jpg
3. Life inside one of the concentration camps
4. The Buchenwald camp was built in the spot where Goethe used to sit under this oak tree
Background from {[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ilse-koch]}
Ilse Koch
Ilse Koch was born in Dresden, Germany in 1906. A secretary by profession, Koch joined the Nazi party in 1932. Four years later, she married Karl Otto Koch (1897-1945), head of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, who in 1937 was assigned to build a new concentration camp in Buchenwald. Ilsa went with him and became a SS-Aufseherin (overseer) at the camp.
While Karl Otto was known for his personal greed in the camps he worked in, Ilse was known as the “Bitch of Buchenwald” for her bestial cruelty and sadistic behavior. She was especially fond of riding her horse through the camp, whipping any prisoner who attracted her attention. Her hobby was collecting lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skins of specially murdered concentration camp inmates, and shrunken human skulls.
Ilse Koch would specially select prisoners with distinctive tattoos on her rides around the camp. These prisoners would be killed and their skin tanned and stored for later use by the SS guards.
Her taste for collecting lampshades made from the tattooed skins was described by a witness at The Nuremberg Trials after the war:
"The finished products (i.e. tattooed skin detached from corpses) were turned over to Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and other ornamental household articles .."
In the book Sidelights on the Koch Affair by Stefan Heymann, the author pointed out that the fact that the Kochs had lamps made of human skin did not distinguish them from the other SS officers. They had the same artworks made for their family homes:
"It is more interesting that Frau Koch had a lady's handbag made out of the same material. She was just as proud of it as a South Sea island woman would have been about her cannibal trophies .. "
In 1942, the Kochs received a punative transfer to Majdanek. In August 1943, Karl Koch was arrested by the Gestapo at the request of SS judge Josias Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont. Karl Otto was charged with the unauthorized murder of three prisoners, while Ilse was accused of the embezzlement of more than 700,000RM. Though Ilse was acquitted, Karl Otto was convicted and shot in April 1945.
At the end of the war, Koch was arrested and charged with "participating in a common criminal plan for encouraging, aiding, abetting and participating in the atrocities at Buchenwald." In 1947, an American military tribunal found Koch found guilty and sentenced her to life-imprisonment.
She committed suicide in a Bavarian prison on September 1, 1967.
FYI LTC John Shaw SPC Diana D. LTC Hillary Luton
1SG Steven ImermanSSG Pete FishGySgt Gary CordeiroPO1 H Gene LawrenceSPC Chris Bayner-CwikSgt Jim BelanusSGM Bill FrazerMSG Tom EarleySSgt Marian MitchellSGT Michael HearnPO2 Frederick DunnSP5 Dennis LobergerCPO John BjorgeSGT Randell RoseSSG Jimmy CernichSGT Denny EspinosaMSG Fred Bucci
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