The Female Concentration Camp Guard So Depraved Even The Nazis Arrested Her
- Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0
She Married A Man As Evil As Herself
Ilse Köhler worked as a bookkeeping clerk in the 1930s before she joined the Nazi Party. It was in her time working for the Nazis that she met a man named Karl-Otto Koch. Karl-Otto was a sadistic sort of man who quickly rose through the ranks to become a commander, serving at several concentration camps. Ilse, rather than be horrified by the atrocities and crimes her husband was committing, instead involved herself in his work, supporting his actions.
In 1936, the pair were married, and less than a year later, Karl-Otto was made Commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp. This was one of the larger camps, focused on not only imprisoning but also exterminating Jews, Homosexuals, and other victims. The iron gates to the entrance touted a sadistic message to any who came in.
"To each their own" or more bluntly "you'll get what you deserve" was written across it. Ilse took the opportunity at Buchenwald to get involved on a more personal level, becoming a guard. She quickly gained a reputation for being even more sadistic than her husband.
She Collected Tattooed Skin
One particular bit of sadism that Ilse indulged in was the act of seeking out tattooed prisoners. Some accounts say that she did this at the request of a doctor at the camp, to do research on correlations between tattoos and criminality, which he later wrote a dissertation on. Some say it was for her own enjoyment.
Koch would ride her horse through the camp and when she saw a distinctive tattoo she liked, she would have the prisoner captured. The prisoner was then stripped of his or her skin, preserving the tattoos, before being killed and incinerated. Ilse didn't turn all of the skins over to the researchers.
She kept several patches as morose trophies in her home. Her skin samples would be a key part of her later trials.
She Loved Taunting Prisoners Who Were About To Be Tortured Or Killed
Above all else, Ilse Koch enjoyed seeing the prisoners suffer, both physically and emotionally. She would ride through the camp, taunting prisoners, and when one would dare to look up, she would brutally whip them with her riding crop. She would laugh at those who were being sent to gas chambers and her house was visible to the entire camp, as if always ominously looking down at them.
When she was selecting prisoners to be taken away to have tattoos removed, she would take her time in the selection, drawing out the prisoners' terror. Perhaps most distressingly of all, Ilse took her most sadistic pleasure in knowing children were dying.
Surviving prisoners later recalled that she had always seemed the most excited when children were about to be sent to the gas chambers.
- Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
She Made Household Items From Human Skin
Ilse Koch is perhaps best known for her love of human skin and the horrifying arts and crafts projects she used it for. She had a hobby of collecting not only skin, but also things made from skin. After prisoners with tattoos - or any that she just didn't like that day - were killed, the SS guards would tan their skin and then store it. They would later turn it over to Ilse who supposedly used it to make book covers, gloves, and lampshades for herself and the other officers.
She even took to making shrunken heads and skulls for display in her house. In her entire personal collection of ornamental human skin items, Ilsa had one item she was supposedly most proud of: a lady's handbag made. Ilse would happily carry the bag for officers and prisoners to see. Some accounts say it was made from tattooed skin.
While many of these items have been noted by others, none of the skin lamps were ever recovered.
She Forced Prisoners To Do Harmful And Sexual Things To Each Other
Whenever the fancy took her, Ilse enjoyed making the prisoners hurt one another. If she could not find a tattoo she particularly liked, she would sometimes make one of the prisoners tattoo another in a manner that pleased her. The tattooed prisoner would then be killed for their newly-inked skin.
However, one of her other interests involved sexually taunting and torturing the inmates. She would go out of her way to wear very short skirts, very tight sweaters, and would behave sexually openly around starved and tortured male prisoners. She'd watch as they performed exhausting activities, or flaunt and prance around like a movie star.
She would even, for her own amusement, force them to perform sexual acts on each other. This is one of the reasons the inmates began calling her the Witch (sometimes Bitch) of Buchenwald.
- Photo: Jule Rouard - Luc Viatour / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0
She Displayed Human Organs In Her Home
Although human skin may have been a preferred source of amusement, Ilse didn't stop there when it came to body parts. Maybe because of her close relationships to the doctors and guards of the camp, she began collecting human body parts and organs. She experimented with making shrunken heads andalso collected preserved organs. Lungs, brains, hearts, livers, and more, were all preserved and used as decorations in her home and in the homes of other guards.
Some had previously been experimented on, but most were taken solely for decoration. Because these organs were so well preserved, many were recovered and used as evidence in future trials.
She Used Money Stolen From Prisoners To Build A Sports Arena
Many of Ilse's atrocities are truly depraved, but one of her most brazen ones involved fraudulent dealings with money. Koch was very fond of horses and wanted a new place where she could ride them and hold other sporting events. She reasoned that the prisoners of the concentration camp had no need of their money anymore. So, right away, she stole the money collected from the inmates and used the funds to build herself a private stadium in which to ride. The amount of money she stole is impressive.
In the end, she spent $62,500 of prisoner money, which is about a million dollars by today's standards.
She Slept With A Lot Of People At The Concentration Camp
Ilse had a reputation at the camp for being a witch, which is bad enough, but she also had a reputation for being a nymphomaniac. Ilse was said to have been in an open-marriage of sorts. She kept doctors and guards for lovers, all without her husband complaining, and had several children possibly by different fathers. Her husband, it seems, was not only okay with this, but pretty sexually open himself. At the home they lived in, which looked out over the concentration camp, they would allegedly hold orgies for the SS officers and guards.
It was suggested that Ilse's husband had homosexual tendencies, or that he at least had sexual contact with both genders. This is supported by the fact that he caught Syphilis while Commandant but Ilse never had it.
- Photo: Dean L. Dennis / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
Even The Nazis Arrested Ilse And Her Husband
Given what horrible people the Nazis were, it would make sense that anyone arrested for abuse of power by Nazis had to have been really horrendous people. In 1941, Ilse and Karl-Otto were investigated for cruelty and black market activities, including fraudulent use of money. Seeing as the Koch's had been doing both of those things, they were arrested in 1943 for embezzlement as well as cruelty. Dr. Hoven, Ilse's lover and assistant in collecting tattooed skin, was also arrested for mistreatment and murder.
During the trial, Karl-Otto was found guilty of skimming money, as well as murder, and was sentenced to death. He was eventually executed.
She Killed Potential Witnesses And Hid Evidence Of Her Crimes
Amazingly, Ilse was not convicted of her crimes at the SS trial. There weren't enough witnesses to convict her and all the physical evidence seemed to have vanished. This was likely done with the help of doctors at the camp. According to a Buchenwald Report, Koch ordered the execution of a hospital orderly and his assistant. The two medical professionals had treated Karl-Otto Koch for syphilis and knew what was going on at the camp. They were killed so as not to reveal secrets. Allegedly Ilse also killed and incinerated prisoners who had witnessed the criminal things she had done.
This method of disposing of evidence proved effective and she was released, to the horror of many. Unfortunately for Ilse, Germany was not destined to win the war.
- Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/National Archives and Records Administration, College Park / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
She Was Tried For War Crimes
When the war concluded, the allies arrested Ilse. She was tried in 1947 for war crimes. This time a huge number of people came forward to the American Military court at Dachau. They testified to the tattoo collecting, the organ harvesting, the whippings, and even the orgies. This was enough for her to be found guilty at her first trial and sentenced to life in prison. Ilse had one last trick up her sleeve, though. She told the court she was expecting a child.
This came as a bit of a shock, not only because Ilse was 41 years old, but because she had been held in isolated confinement for much of the time. No one is entirely certain who the father was. It could have been her doctor friend, an American guard, or a fellow prisoner. Even so, it was not enough to sway the decision of the court, and she had her child while in prison.
Her sentence was later reduced until she was put through a second trial where more testimony and physical evidence was presented. Thus solidifying her lifetime imprisonment.
She Killed Herself, Possibly Haunted By Her Victims
Ilse Koch's ending feels oddly fitting. At her second trial in 1950, she fainted often, and seemed agitated. Once in jail, she was visited by her son, who said she was often distressed. She appealed several times to get out of prison, but her pleas fell on justly deaf ears. She said that the prisoners she had once kept and tortured would come to her in her cell and beat and abuse her at night. These delusions grew stronger and one night Ilse Koch could take it no longer.
She was found in 1967, at the age of 60, hung with her own bed sheets. Her death was ruled a suicide and she was buried in an unmarked, unattended grave at the prison cemetery. To this day, we do not know where she is buried, but can take heart that she is dead and gone, never to harm another person again.
