Death of Ilse Koch
- Bestial Nazi guard & Sexual Deviant - Buchenwald & Sachsenhausen - Holocaust

16 October 2022

Category: Female Nazi Guards

Ilse Koch was born Margarete Ilse Köhler on the 22nd of September 1906 in Dresden. In 1932, one year before Adolf Hitler came into power, Ilse had joined the Nazi Party. In 1936 Ilse got married to the commandant of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Karl Otto Koch. Ilse Koch worked at Sachsenhausen as a guard and secretary. In August 1937 Karl Otto was assigned to build a new concentration camp in Buchenwald. While he was known for his personal greed in the camps that he worked in, Ilse was feared for her brutality. At Buchenwald, Ilse became known as the witch.

She was obsessed with tattoos and used to ride her horse around the Buchenwald looking for tattooed prisoners. When she found one, she sent them to their death but before they were killed and burned, she would carve out the part of their skin where the tattoo was located. She used to call these pieces of skin her “ trophies”. She would go on to collect lampshades, book covers as well as gloves a handbags – all made of human skin. She shared her obsession with tattoos with Dr. Erich Wagner, allegedly her lover, who wanted to find the connection between tattoos and criminal tendencies.

Despite having her 3 of her own children, she hated pregnant women and she used to beat them with whip along the entire length of which pieces of a razor were inserted. Koch also found pleasure in beating children inmates. She would laugh loudly when seeing them going to the gas chambers.

Orgies with SS men and their wives

She was also a sexual deviant. She not only organized numerous orgies with SS men and their wives but also forced male prisoners to rape female prisoners in front of her. She enjoyed walking around the camp half-naked or in skimpy clothes, provoking prisoners to make eye contact with her. When they did, they were taken by the guards and shot in the head. She was also reported that she had ordered prisoners to serve her while she was nude and enjoyed sexually humiliating the sex-starved prisoners.

In 1941, Buchenwald caught the attention of Josias Waldeck, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar who in this position had supervisory authority over Buchenwald concentration camp. Ilse was accused of the embezzlement of over 700,000 Reichsmarks and Karl Otto was charged with both embezzlement and the unauthorized murder of three prisoners. When it was revealed that the Kochs had used the massive Nazi apparatus to gain an enormous amount of wealth, their downfall became inevitable as all the possessions stolen from murdered Jews was regarded as the property of the Reich. While Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence, Karl-Otto Koch was executed by firing squad on 5th of April 1945.

Two Trials

The Buchenwald camp, place of Koch’s atrocities, was liberated in April 1945. Ilse Koch was then tried at the Buchenwald trial which began on the 11th of April 1947 in the internment camp of Dachau, where the former Dachau concentration camp had been located until late April 1945. Out of 31 defendants, Ilse Koch was the only woman. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and her son Uwe, conceived while in custody, was born in October 1947. Uwe’s father was another German prisoner. Her sentence was initially commuted to four years, but after a general outcry, she was immediately indicted by a German court for instigation to murder in 135 cases.

The hearing of the Second Trial opened on 27th of November 1950 and lasted seven weeks, during which 250 witnesses were heard, including 50 for the defense. Koch collapsed and had to be carried from court in late December 1950 and again in January 1951. At least four witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had seen Koch choose tattooed prisoners, who were then killed, or had seen or been involved in the process of making human-skin lampshades from tattooed skin When on the 15th of January 1951, the Court pronounced its verdict in a 111-page-long decision sentencing Ilse Koch to life imprisonment, she was not present in court.

She made several petitions for a pardon, all of which were rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. Ilse Koch was 60 years old when she hanged herself with a bedsheet after which she was buried in an unmarked grave. There were no tears shed for Ilse Koch.

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