Born Ilse Kholler in 1906, she would later become one of the most notorious female concentration camp figures of the 20th century under the name Ilse Koch. Not very well educated, she was employed in a tobacco factory as a typist at age 15. She joined the Nazi party in April 1932 and became a Nazi secretary. She met Karl Otto Koch while working at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a SS-Helferin (“Female SS Helper"). Koch was the camp commandant and an up-and-coming officer in the SS. He was ten years older than her and was a former insurance agent and WWI veteran from a poor background. Married in 1936 the couple was sent together on a new assignment.
Bitch of Buchenwald
In July 1937 Karl Koch was appointed as the commander of the newly opened Buchenwald Concentration Camp (Konzentrationslager or 'KZ' Buchenwald) outside of Weimar Germany. Ilse held no official position at Buchenwald but was an influence in several areas of the camp. She was referred to as the unofficial "Commandeuse" and called alternatively the ‘Witch of Buchenwald" ("Die Hexe von Buchenwald") “The Beast of Buchenwald" and "The Bitch of Buchenwald" behind her back by both inmates and elements of the staff. In postwar testimony the 'beautiful redhead" Ilse was often involved in torture and humiliation of prisoners, and making day-to-day managerial decisions. Although still a member of the SS from her previous service in Sachsenhausen she held no official rank but was seen as an Oberaufseherin (overseer) and often ordered guards to beat and torture inmates.
Harvesting Tattoos, Shrunken Heads and Human Lampshades
The pathology lab in Buchenwald produced several shrunken heads in the course of their research during Koch's time as commandant. Ilse became enamored with these artifacts and acquired a collection of them in her home. She also discovered a love of human tattooing. SS Colonel Dr. Lolling, chief of the SS doctors in the concentration camp system in 1940 began a program for the harvesting of human tattoos, ostensibly for research. The skins of dead prisoners with extensive tattooing would be flayed and tanned. These ghoulish items were perused and kept by Ilse and made often made into handbags, cigarette cases and other items. It was alleged that they were even made into lampshades. The lampshades in question were never entered in evidence in trial and even the US General in charge of the investigation declared that the lampshades in question were made from tanned goat skins.
In September 1941 Karl Otto Koch was sent to the open the new Majdanek (Konzentrationslager Lublin) camp in Poland. His wife Ilse stayed behind at Buchenwald living in the Commandants house with Deputy Commandant Hermann Florstedt and camp doctor Dr. Waldemar Hoven. She continued her previous assistance in running the camp in addition to allegedly becoming their lover. In July 1942 her husband returned and Florstedt was in turn soon promoted to commandant at Majdanek.
Arrests and Trails
In August 1943 Nazi SS criminal investigator Sturmbannführer Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen, a former judge, arrested both of the Kochs along with Florstedt and Hoven. They were tried on charges of embezzlement, illegal torture and the murder of capo Dr. Walter Kramer during their term at Buchenwald. Ilse was kept imprisoned in Weimar until the end of the war while the other three were held at Buchenwald itself. Former commandants Karl Otto Koch and Hermann Florstedt were killed by SS firing squads in April 1945 just before the end of the war. Dr Hoven was sentenced to death but given a stay of execution due to his medical background. Ilse Koch was found innocent and released. She was soon arrested just after the Allied occupation.
Her War Crimes trial was conducted at Dachau in 1947. She was found guilty by the Allied Tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1949 US General Lucius Clay commuted her sentence and released her. She was rearrested by West German authorities who held a criminal trial in the German legal system and found her guilty in 1951. Ilse Koch committed suicide in 1967 by hanging herself with her bed sheets while serving a life sentence in a German woman’s prison.
Less than a decade later her story would be the loose basis of the notorious exploitation film Ilse, She Wolf of the SS.
Sources
Hackett, David A The Buchenwald Report Westview Press, 1995
Smith, Jean Edward Lucius D. Clay: An American Life
Stein Harry and Gedenkstätte Buchenwald Buchenwald concentration camp 1937-1945: a guide to the permanent historical exhibition Wallstein Verlag, 2004
The Most Evil Women in History, Ilse Koch 1906-1967 Discovery Channel Documentary
US vs. Josias Erbprinz zu Waldeck-Pyrmont -The Trial of Ilse Koch at Dachau retrieved October 5, 2009
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