On April 15, 1945, southwest of Bergen in Nazi Germany, the British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen, one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. The camp embodied the true brutality of the regime and its extermination system.
British troops found 13,000 unburied bodies and nearly 60,000 sick and starving prisoners. Thousands more would die in the months after liberation from diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis.
The British captured the men and women of the Nazi personnel responsible for these horrors and forced them to help bury the dead in mass graves. Among them was a woman who would become one of the most infamous faces of the criminal Nazi regime: Irma Grese.
Irma Grese was born on October 7, 1923, in Wrechen, part of the Weimar Republic that governed Germany from 1918 to 1933. She was the third of five children, and both of her parents worked in the dairy industry.
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in January 1933. The Nazis were skilled propagandists who used sophisticated advertising techniques and the most modern technology of the time to spread their ideas.
The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were created as youth organizations of the Nazi Party to introduce children and young people to Nazi ideology and politics. These groups also prepared German youth for war.
Irma's father was not a sympathizer of Nazism and despised everything connected with the Nazis. He never allowed his children to join the Nazi youth organizations, even though they wanted to.
Nazi indoctrination, however, could not be avoided. Schools played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas among German youth. German children like Irma Grese were initiated into the cult of Adolf Hitler from their first days at school, and his portrait was a common feature of every classroom.
While censors removed some books from classrooms, German educators introduced new textbooks that taught pupils love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism.
In 1936, when Irma was 13, her mother committed suicide after revealing her husband's affair with the daughter of a local innkeeper. After that, Irma was raised only by her father, Alfred Grese, a devout Christian who was very strict with his children and often used physical violence as a means of discipline.
At school, Irma Grese had poor academic results. According to Irma's sister Helene, Irma was a target of bullying at school and left prematurely at the age of 14.
She then spent six months working in agriculture on a farm and moved to Lychen, where she worked for half a year in a small retail shop. In 1939, when she was 15, Grese entered the Hohenlychen Sanatorium.
There she worked for about two years as a nurse's assistant and trained under the chief physician of the sanatorium, Karl Gebhardt, a Nazi doctor who later during World War II conducted medical experiments on female prisoners at the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Grese wanted to become a fully qualified nurse at the sanatorium, but because her academic results were not good enough, she was sent in 1941, at the age of 17, to a dairy farm in Fürstenberg, where she operated a butter-making machine.
Her criminal career in the concentration camps began in July 1942, when she arrived at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Ravensbrück, opened in May 1939, was the only large women's camp established by the Nazis. About 132,000 women from all over Europe passed through it, among them Poles, Russians, Jews, Roma, and others. Of that number, more than 92,000 women died.
Both male SS members, who served as guards and administrators, and women worked there. The camp had 150 female guards. These overseers were either SS volunteers or women who accepted the work because of good pay and working conditions.
Ravensbrück was also a training camp for SS overseers under the leadership of Dorothea Binz, a sadistic and cruel German Nazi officer. Guards were instructed in how to treat the prisoners they would supervise. These prisoners had to work until death, and the task of their superiors, such as Irma Grese, was to extract maximum labor from them while they were alive.
Ravensbrück became a training center, a school of violence, for about 3,500 female guards, who then served either there or in other concentration camps. From the summer of 1942, SS doctors subjected female prisoners at Ravensbrück to unethical medical experiments.
The main coordinator of these experiments was Karl Gebhardt, and his assistants included doctors Herta Oberheuser and Fritz Fischer. They often used a hammer to break prisoners' legs, then infected the open wounds with aggressive bacteria and observed the healing process.
They compared the development of infection after the application of various chemical substances, for example the early antibiotic sulfanilamide, and without them. Believing it might help treat soldiers with amputated limbs, they also tested various methods of bone grafting and transplantation.
These experiments included amputations and were often performed without any anesthesia. The SS selected almost 80 women for these experiments, mostly Poles. Many of them died; those who survived often suffered permanent consequences.
SS doctors also conducted sterilization experiments, often on Roma women and children, trying to develop an effective method of sterilization. They also took part in forced abortions on women who were already in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. In addition to these forced abortions, there were also known cases of beating pregnant women to induce miscarriage and killing newborns.
Irma Grese knew Karl Gebhardt from the Hohenlychen Sanatorium. It is assumed that the atrocities she witnessed as an 18-year-old assistant nurse at Ravensbrück may have had a devastating effect on her personality and turned her into a violent sadist.
In 1943, Irma returned home and told her family that she had been supervising female prisoners working at the Ravensbrück camp. Her father drove her away with a whip or cane and forbade her to return home again.
In March 1943, Irma Grese was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in German-occupied Poland. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was the largest of more than 40 camps and subcamps that made up the Auschwitz complex.
It was divided into 10 sections separated from each other by electrified barbed-wire fences. It was guarded by SS guards, among whom after 1942 were also dog handlers. During three years of operation it fulfilled a number of functions.
When construction began in October 1941, it was intended as a camp for 125,000 prisoners of war. In March 1942 it was opened as a branch of Auschwitz and simultaneously served as a center for the extermination of Jews. In its final phase from 1944, it also became a place where prisoners were concentrated before transport to work in German industry deep inside the Third Reich.
According to Irma's sister Helene, as a small child Irma was afraid to stand up for herself and ran away to avoid a fight. At Auschwitz, however, Grese found herself for the first time in a position where she could strike people without them being able to strike back, and she enjoyed it.
Grese became one of the most hated and feared female guards. Her nicknames, the Hyena of Auschwitz and the Beautiful Beast, were earned through her cruelty and brutality.
Grese also had a reputation as a sexual deviant. She chose her lovers from both the male and female populations of Birkenau. She allegedly also had an affair with the notorious doctor Josef Mengele and with Josef Kramer, commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and later of Bergen-Belsen.
Dr. Gisela Perl, a former Auschwitz prisoner, said of Irma: "She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every curve, her face pure and angelic, and her blue eyes were the merriest and most innocent a person could imagine. And yet Irma Grese was the most depraved, cruel, and inventive pervert I have ever encountered."
Olga Lengyel, who survived Auschwitz, writes in her memoir Five Chimneys that Grese had an affair not only with Dr. Mengele but also with many other Nazis. Lengyel noticed that when the time came to select women for the gas chamber, Irma Grese deliberately chose beautiful female prisoners out of jealousy and malice.
There were, however, also prisoners whom Irma Grese favored. One such case was the then 16-year-old Nina Kalka, of whom Grese said she looked like her sister Helene. Irma used Kalesek as a messenger, and during lesbian orgies that Irma organized in the barracks, she stood guard so that no one would disturb them.
Grese had numerous love affairs with female prisoners, and when she tired of them she sent them to their deaths in the gas chamber. Her sexual objects were also men. When one handsome Georgian refused her advances, he had to watch as Irma dragged his girlfriend naked by the hair through the camp and then whipped her. After torturing his beloved woman, Grese had the man shot and sent the woman to the camp brothel.
When Mengele discovered that she had had affairs with Jewish prisoners, who were considered racially inferior, he ended his relationship with her. At Auschwitz, Grese fell in love with an SS member, Franz Wolfgang Hing, who was the chief engineer of the construction department of Auschwitz I. Despite this relationship, Grese had so many lovers that she developed sexually transmitted diseases, and according to Olga Lengyel she also underwent a number of abortions. One of these abortions was performed by Dr. Gisela Perl, and Irma's only concern was the pain she might feel.
After arriving at Auschwitz, Grese held various functions in the camp. She was first a telephone operator, then as a mild punishment for not wearing her cap she was transferred to lead a kommando that brought stones into the camp from outside. She was also in charge of a kommando that built roads inside the camp and did gardening work.
In May 1944, the extermination of Hungarian Jews was to take place. Over eight weeks, from May 15 to July 9, 1944, deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau took place. Under the supervision of Hungarian gendarmes and German SS, about 424,000 Jewish inhabitants of Hungary were transported to the camp. Most of them were killed in the gas chambers that same month.
At the age of 20, Grese became a senior overseer in Camp C at Birkenau, where she supervised six to seven female guards who rotated every week. Camp C consisted of 28 blocks housing prisoners, plus other blocks such as a food block, two warehouses for fabrics and clothing, two or three blocks for latrines, and two washrooms.
Normally the accommodation would be suitable for only 100 or at most 300 prisoners per block, but the camp was so overcrowded that Grese had 1,000 prisoners in each block. In some blocks there were sleeping bunks large enough for five people, but in most blocks there were neither beds nor bunks.
In Camp C, which fell under Grese, there were approximately 30,000 prisoners, all of them Hungarians, but the function of block tester was held by Czechoslovaks. A block tester, or block leader, was a prisoner who had to ensure compliance with the rules in individual barracks and was also responsible for the prisoners in the barracks.
Given the overcrowding of the camp, hygienic conditions were appalling. The latrines stopped working, and Grese later described that wherever you went it looked as if the prisoners thought any place in the camp would serve well as a latrine.
Grese was notorious for wearing her braided leather whip coated with cellophane so that human blood could be easily wiped off. She stood at the gate when work details were leaving and returning and regularly lashed prisoners with her whip simply because she enjoyed it.
She later said proudly: "It was a very light little whip. But when I hit someone with it, it hurt." Irma Grese beat and tortured prisoners to such an extent that camp commandant Josef Kramer ordered her to stop, but she continued to use the whip anyway.
The most common reasons for whipping prisoners were that they stole food out of hunger or arrived late for roll call. During roll calls, which often lasted from 3 to 9 in the morning, prisoners had to stand in place. If they moved, they were either beaten or had to kneel for hours.
Grese explained the whipping by saying that they ran back and forth and she could not count them properly. Another of her specialties was making roll calls as difficult as possible for prisoners by ordering them to stand with a large stone in each hand above their heads, and if they staggered she beat them.
Once, prisoners cut up their blankets and made shoes or jackets from them. Grese issued a strict order that all kinds of items made from these blankets must be returned immediately. Because they did not comply, she ordered the blocks to be searched, and the prisoners who had these items were brutally whipped.
In addition to beatings, Irma also used a stick on prisoners. A favorite habit of Grese was to beat women until they bled and fell to the ground, and then kick them as hard as she could with her heavy boots.
Once she saw a woman talking to her daughter through a wire fence between two complexes. Grese beat her and kicked her so brutally that the prisoner remained lying on the ground.
She was also accused of selecting veteran female prisoners for the gas chambers together with her lover, Dr. Josef Mengele. These selections were often carried out together. When women were sent to the gas chamber, Grese recorded it in her books as special treatment.
Those who survived later recalled that these female prisoners were often presented naked and then inspected like cattle to determine whether they were capable of work in Germany or fit only for death. Grese supervised order there, and if a woman escaped she brought her back to be beaten.
When she saw that acquaintances were trying to get into the same group during a selection, she forced them to lie on the ground. Female prisoners who tried to escape these selections and were brought back were terribly beaten until they bled and re-entered into their ranks.
During one such selection, two girls tried to escape by jumping out of a window. They then lay on the ground, and Grese mercilessly shot them with her always-loaded pistol.
Grese, however, also helped some prisoners. This was the case with the then 14-year-old prisoner Alice Tenenbaum. Josef Mengele sent her to the gas chamber 16 times, and Grese saved her each time by entering the gas chamber and leading Tenenbaum out.
Only after the war did Alice learn that Grese had saved her so many times because she looked like Irma's sister Helene. At Auschwitz, Grese had two huge dogs that she kept hungry. Survivors recalled that she rode a bicycle around the camp with the dogs at her side and accompanied female prisoners on their 16-kilometer journey to work.
She set the dogs on those who could not keep pace with the column. Once, a women's kommando was bringing stones into the camp from outside. The prisoners hesitated and lost control of the cart. The cart swayed, rolled down a hill, and overturned, scattering stones all around.
One of the survivors later testified: "What happened next, Irma sent those two dogs at them. The girls tried to escape their fangs, but the trained killers easily caught them. The dogs began to tear at those girls. Irma came closer to watch what they were doing. Her eyes were bloodshot. The sight of blood seemed to intoxicate her. The whole time Irma Grese had a smile on her face."
Sometimes when Grese went out with her work groups, she beat and kicked the women with her heavy boots. Another of her specialties was sending working women beyond the barbed-wire fence so that it looked as if they were attempting to escape. When one of the guards refused to shoot them on the grounds that she had sent them there deliberately, Grese testified against him during the investigation.
Thanks to looted goods, Irma could choose from the finest clothing from all over Europe. Grese had dresses tailor-made by the best Jewish seamstresses who had become prisoners of the camp, and she was particularly fond of a sky-blue jacket with a dark blue tie. She spent hours in front of the mirror fixing her hair and imagining herself as a film star.
Grese once declared: "When the war is over I will be in films. You will see my star name on the screens. I know life and I have seen many things. I feel that my experiences will be useful to me in an artistic career." She was, of course, mistaken.
Irma Grese left Auschwitz on January 18, 1945, when Soviet troops approached the concentration camp complex. The SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. These forced marches of concentration camp prisoners became known as death marches.
Prisoners had to march long distances under guard and in extremely harsh conditions. Grese accompanied one such forced transport from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück and from there to Bergen-Belsen. She arrived there along with a large number of prisoners from Ravensbrück in March 1945. Those who collapsed or could not keep pace were shot by SS members during these death marches.
During these death marches, prisoners received almost nothing to eat, and food was not available even after arrival at the camp. According to prisoners who were lucky enough to survive the war at Bergen-Belsen, the daily food ration consisted of watery soup made from various kinds of turnips boiled in water and 3.5 centimeters of bread per day.
Hygienic conditions at Bergen-Belsen were appalling. There was a shortage of water for drinking and cooking, and no water at all for washing. The camp was incredibly overcrowded. In the winter months during severe frosts, prisoners had to sleep sitting on the floor and somehow try to share only 200 blankets in a camp with tens of thousands of prisoners.
In March 1945, as a result of hunger, thirst, and an outbreak of spotted typhus, the average daily death rate ranged between 250 and 300 prisoners. At Bergen-Belsen, Grese continued to mistreat prisoners who, in her own words, were dirty and sick, until the bitter end.
Even here she amused herself not only by beating and kicking starving prisoners but also by forcing them to kneel and hold stones above their heads. They were also often forced to stand for hours in snow, ice, and rain from 3 to 9 in the morning.
Although people were dying all around her at Bergen-Belsen, Grese not only stripped female prisoners and beat them with a rubber truncheon but also subjected them to punitive physical exercise. Women had to march, run, or do frog jumps until they collapsed from exhaustion.
About two weeks before the arrival of British troops, when it was already clear that the war was over, she was seen beating a girl with a riding whip. On the eve of liberation, Grese knocked the heads of two sisters together when she caught them trying to eat leftover potato peels from the camp kitchen.
Although she worked in the camp for only about a week and a half, she was so cruel that prisoners nicknamed her the Beast of Belsen. On April 17, 1945, two days after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Irma Grese was captured by British forces along with other Nazi criminals such as Josef Kramer, commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the last commandant of Bergen-Belsen.
Grese and other SS female guards were temporarily imprisoned in a Wehrmacht tank training academy about 3 kilometers from Belsen. At this time, an English journalist interviewed her. He asked her why she had committed the crimes she had committed, and she answered without shame: "It was our duty to exterminate anti-social elements so that Germany would have a secure future."
Justice finally caught up with Grese when she was tried at the Belsen trial, which began on September 17, 1945. During it, witnesses claimed that she was the worst SS member in the camp. Grese responded that they were all lying, exaggerating, and making a mountain out of a molehill.
Grese admitted only to beating but claimed she never killed anyone. Her lies, however, did not help her escape justice. On November 17, a British military tribunal sentenced Irma Grese to death by hanging.
She was 22 years old when the British executioner Albert Pierrepoint carried out the execution on December 13, 1945. Her last and only word on the way to the gallows was "schnell," which means "quickly."
Grese was the youngest woman in the 20th century to be sentenced to death under British law. No tears were shed for Irma Grese.