On April 8, 1945, prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp about five miles northwest of the city of Weimar used a secret shortwave transmitter and a small generator to send an SOS in Morse code to the Allies, specifically to the army of General Patton.
The message asked for help and warned that the SS wanted to evacuate or destroy the prisoners. Three minutes after the transmission, the desperate prisoners received a reply: hold out, help is rushing to you.
Three days later, on April 11, 1945, the US 6th Armored Division liberated Buchenwald and found more than 21,000 survivors who were weak and emaciated.
After General Patton toured the camp, he ordered the mayor of nearby Weimar to bring 1,000 citizens to Buchenwald to be shown the crematorium and other evidence of Nazi atrocities.
The Americans wanted to ensure that the German people took responsibility for Nazi crimes instead of dismissing them as atrocity propaganda. Many of the citizens cried, and some even fainted after seeing dead bodies, starved survivors behind barbed wire fences, a table displaying paintings on human skin, various parts of the human body preserved in alcohol, and two heads that had been shrunk to one fifth of their normal size.
One of the Nazi perpetrators responsible for these atrocities was Ilse Koch. She was born as Margarete Ilse Köhler on September 22, 1906, in Dresden, then part of the German Empire.
Ilse, together with her two brothers, was raised by her parents, and she was known as a polite and happy child. She graduated from elementary and commercial school, and in the 1920s she worked in various companies as a secretary and bookkeeping clerk.
In May 1932, the then 25-year-old Ilse joined the Nazi Party. She was drawn to the movement through her social engagement with members of the local SS detachment in Dresden. The SS perceived themselves as the racial elite of the Nazi future, and young Ilse was attracted to these uniformed, self-confident, and often ambitious young men.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came into power on January 30, 1933. In May of 1934, Ilse met Karl Koch, who on September 1, 1936, was appointed commandant of Sachsenhausen, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany.
It was at Sachsenhausen where, on May 25, 1937, Ilse and Karl Koch got married. The marriage produced three children: a son, Artwin, born in 1938, and two daughters, Gisela, born in 1939, and Gudrun, born in 1940.
Even though Ilse Koch denied that she had ever entered the Sachsenhausen camp compound, a number of survivors later testified that she had participated in their abuse. Camp survivors recalled how Ilse would watch inmates work from her window, shouting reproaches at any who dared cast glances in her direction, and when they did, she would instruct guards to administer beatings.
In August 1937, Karl Koch was assigned to build a new concentration camp, Buchenwald, which then belonged to one of the largest concentration camps established within German borders during the Second World War, which began on September 1, 1939.
The Buchenwald main camp administered at least 88 subcamps. Women were not part of the Buchenwald camp system until 1943, and their presence significantly increased in 1944. At that time, Buchenwald took over subcamps from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which primarily imprisoned women.
Even though after the war Ilse Koch presented herself as a loyal SS wife, mother, holiday taker, caregiver, and horseback rider, her conduct at Buchenwald was one of frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. She ordered prisoners to serve her while she was nude and enjoyed sexually humiliating the starved prisoners.
With her husband, she had an open marriage, and in the camp she engaged in numerous affairs with SS officers as well as their wives, who were not much different from Ilse.
One Sunday in February 1938, the prisoners had to stand naked in the square for three hours while SS men searched their clothing. During this time, Ilse and four other SS officers' wives stood at the barbed wire fence and stared lewdly at the naked prisoners.
Though after the war Ilse claimed that she had never told her husband how Buchenwald should be run nor how inmates should be treated, one witness testified that at the beginning of 1941 Karl Koch issued an order to the effect that orders by his wife Ilse were to be obeyed to the same extent as if he had given them. This gave her enormous power, which she used against the prisoners.
She enjoyed walking around Buchenwald half naked or in skimpy clothing, provoking inmates to make eye contact with her, and when they did, they were taken by the guards and shot in the head.
Ilse also sexually abused the camp's prisoners and forced male inmates to rape female prisoners in front of her. Despite having three children of her own, she hated pregnant women and used to beat them with a whip along the entire length of which pieces of a razor were inserted.
Ilse also found pleasure in beating child inmates, which she conducted with a smile on her face. Among the inmates she was known as the Witch of Buchenwald. Her other nicknames were the Beast of Buchenwald or the Bitch of Buchenwald.
After the war, numerous witnesses provided testimony of her behavior. One prisoner testified that on one occasion in June 1940 he drank a glass of wine, and Ilse reported him to her husband. As punishment, the inmate was beaten and forced to run across a pile of rocks barefoot several times. He also received 25 lashes with a stick and was later taken to the camp prison, where he was hanged by his arms for three hours.
After the war, she claimed that this inmate had been her house orderly and that he had smashed glassware and bottles of wine, broken open a cabinet, scattered her clothing, and had been found lying in the basement completely drunk. She agreed that she had called her husband to intervene but said she did not suggest the punishment to be given, neither to him nor to the other inmates.
The aforementioned prisoner also testified how at the beginning of 1940 he and a Czech chaplain were digging a deep ditch. They looked up and saw Ilse standing above the ditch. She wore a short skirt but no underwear. She inquired, saying, what are you doing looking up here? Following which she beat them with her riding crop, causing the Czech chaplain to bleed from the face and nose.
After the war, Ilse testified that she never carried a riding crop and insisted that she wore complete riding dress, including riding pants, boots, and jacket.
Another witness testified that in the fall of 1941 Ilse told her husband, this dirty pig dared to look at me. Her husband then beat the inmate so severely that it was necessary to carry the victim away. Ilse was present the entire time.
One witness testified that in the spring of 1941 Karl Koch beat an Austrian inmate severely with a riding crop and kicked him in the presence of Ilse, who said, have a look at this dirty swine, he is too lazy to work, I don't want to see him anymore, all he does is stare at you anyway.
On one occasion, Ilse observed an inmate who had diarrhea relieving himself. She ordered the SS officer in charge of the detail to put a stop to it at once. The SS officer then overworked the inmate for about an hour, resulting in his collapse. The victim died the next day.
Another witness testified that in the summer of 1942 Ilse Koch complained that a detail of 11 inmates working near her house had picked berries. As punishment, five of the inmates received 25 lashes, and the rest received five blows on their nude bodies.
One Buchenwald survivor testified that in the summer of 1942, while proceeding to the Koch house in which he often worked, he saw how Ilse Koch hit a Jewish inmate in the face and on the body with a stick.
In 1941 or 1942, columns of Jewish inmates were forced to carry heavy rocks from the stone quarry to the Koch house. These inmates were weak and could not run. Ilse hit some of them with her riding crop, causing a number of them to fall and knock others down. Many severely injured Jewish inmates were carried into camp in the course of the day.
At Buchenwald, Ilse became obsessed with tattoos and used to ride her horse around the camp looking for tattooed prisoners. After the war, one prisoner testified that in the summer of 1940 a French or Belgian inmate named Jean was working without his shirt. He had some excellent tattoos, including a colored cobra winding all the way up his left arm and an especially cleanly tattooed sailboat with four masts on his chest.
Ilse rode over to him and said, let's work faster, faster, and then took his number. This inmate was called to the gate during the evening roll call and was not seen again.
The witness asserted that six months or more later, in the pathological department, he saw a skin with the same sailboat he had seen on Jean. He asserted that later he saw this same skin in an album belonging to Ilse.
Another Buchenwald survivor testified that in 1941 he heard that a lampshade of tattooed human skin was delivered to Ilse. It was common knowledge in the camp that after Ilse noticed tattooed inmates, they were called to the hospital and killed in order to obtain their tattooed skin.
A fourth inmate testified that there were two lampshades in the home of Ilse Koch said to have been made from human skin. One appeared to have tattoos on it. According to various testimonies, Ilse had a photo album, a briefcase, and a pair of gloves made from tattooed skin.
In 1941, Ilse and Karl Koch caught the attention of Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar, who in this position had supervisory authority over Buchenwald concentration camp.
He discovered that Karl Koch had had at least three prisoners killed because they had treated him for syphilis, and he feared this might be discovered. This investigation was based on allegations of Karl Koch's improper behavior at Buchenwald, which included corruption, fraud, embezzlement, drunkenness, sexual offenses, and murder.
In September 1941, Karl Koch was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. During this time, Ilse was still living at the commandant's house in Buchenwald.
Waldeck ordered a full-scale investigation of the camp by Georg Konrad Morgen, an SS officer who was an SS judge in the SS Court Main Office. Morgen further investigated Karl Koch's order to kill the aforementioned three inmates as well as evidence of embezzlement of the possessions stolen from prisoners.
Thanks to this, in May 1940 Karl Koch had an indoor riding arena built for himself and his wife Ilse, which cost over 250,000 Reichsmarks, an equivalent of almost 2.4 million United States dollars today. Karl Koch also bought a luxury car and opened Swiss bank accounts with money extorted from prisoners.
The Kochs were accused of embezzlement of over 700,000 Reichsmarks, an equivalent of more than 6.7 million United States dollars today, and Karl was charged with both embezzlement and the unauthorized murder of three prisoners.
As a result of the investigation, more of Koch's orders to kill prisoners at the camp were revealed. Because the Kochs had used the massive Nazi apparatus to gain an enormous amount of wealth, they were both arrested in August 1943 to await trial by an SS court. While Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence, Karl Koch was executed by firing squad on April 5, 1945.
The Buchenwald camp, the place of the Kochs' atrocities, was liberated on April 11, 1945. Ilse Koch spent the last month before the end of the war in Ludwigsburg, where part of her family lived. Because of her lifestyle, which was characterized by sexual and alcohol excesses, her relatives tried to withdraw her custody of the children, but due to the war turmoil this happened only after she had been arrested by the US authorities in late June 1945.
Ilse Koch was then tried at the Buchenwald trial, which began on April 11, 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 was the only woman.
During the trial, Koch denied being involved in any way or having any knowledge of the abuse and murder of camp inmates. William Denson, the chief prosecutor during the trial, said that Koch was a creature from some other tortured world who had overstepped the balance of womanhood. He added that she was nothing less than a sadistic psychopath of monumental proportions, unmatched in history.
While the 30 male defendants on trial received little or no media attention, reporters highlighted that Ilse Koch was a woman, that she had red hair, that she was the Bitch of Buchenwald, or other information of this kind. They also described her as a psychopath and an arrogant woman and reported that she collected human lampshades made out of tattooed skin. While to the media the other defendants were just other persons, Ilse Koch was much more than that. She was a monster.
When the sentences were handed down on August 14, 1947, Koch was in the advanced stage of pregnancy. The chief prosecutor in Koch's 1947 case said that the only reason she was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of to death was because she was pregnant.
Koch 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.
Koch's 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 November 27, 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 Ilse 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 January 15, 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 pardon, all of which were rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice.
Artwin, the only son of Ilse Koch, could not live with the shame of the crimes of his parents and committed suicide in 1967. At this time, Ilse Koch was experiencing delusions and had become convinced that concentration camp survivors would abuse her in her cell. In addition, she complained that the dead prisoners of Buchenwald came to her through the walls and demanded she return their skin.
On September 1, 1967, shortly after her son Artwin's death, the mentally ill Ilse Koch committed suicide. She was 60 years old when she hanged herself with a bed sheet, after which she was buried in an unmarked grave. There were no tears shed for Ilse Koch.