On April 8, 1945, about eight kilometers northwest of the city of Weimar in Nazi Germany, prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp used a secret shortwave transmitter and a small generator to send the following Morse code message: “To the Allies. To General Patton’s army. This is Buchenwald concentration camp. SOS. We are asking for help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to exterminate us.” Three minutes after the transmission, the desperate prisoners received the reply: “Hold on. We are rushing to your aid. Staff of the Third Army.” Three days later, on April 11, the 6th US Armored Division liberated Buchenwald and found more than 21,000 weak and emaciated survivors there.
After inspecting the camp, General Patton ordered the mayor of the nearby city of Weimar to bring 1,000 citizens to Buchenwald to show them the crematorium and other evidence of Nazi atrocities. The Americans wanted to ensure that the German people accepted responsibility for the Nazi crimes instead of dismissing them as atrocity propaganda.
Many of them wept, and some even fainted, when they saw the corpses and the starving survivors behind the barbed wire fences, as well as a table displaying pictures on human skin, various body parts preserved in alcohol, and two heads shrunk to one-fifth of their normal size. One of the German Nazi perpetrators responsible for these atrocities was Ilse Koch. Ilse Koch was born Margarete Ilse Köhler on September 22, 1906, in Dresden, which was then part of the German Empire.
Ilse grew up with her two brothers in a Protestant household and was considered a polite and cheerful child. She attended elementary and commercial school and worked as a secretary and bookkeeper in various companies during the 1920s. In May 1932, at the age of 25, Ilse joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP). She was drawn to the movement through her social interactions with members of the local SS unit in Dresden.
The SS saw itself as the “racial elite” of the National Socialist future, and the young Ilse felt drawn to these uniformed, self-confident, and often ambitious young men. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power on January 30, 1933. In May 1934, Ilse met Karl Otto Koch, who on September 1, 1936, was appointed commandant of Sachsenhausen, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany.
Ilse and Karl married in Sachsenhausen on May 25, 1937. The marriage produced three children: a son, Artwin, born in 1938, and two daughters, Gisela, born in 1939, and Gudrun, born in 1940. Although Ilse Koch denied ever having entered the grounds of the Sachsenhausen camp, a number of survivors later testified that she had participated in its mistreatment.
Camp survivors later recalled how Ilse Koch watched the prisoners work from her window and berated anyone who dared to look in her direction. And if they did, she ordered the guards to beat them. In August 1937, Karl Otto Koch was tasked with building a new concentration camp—Buchenwald—which then became one of the largest concentration camps within Germany’s 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 increased significantly in 1944. At that time, Buchenwald took over subcamps of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which primarily held women.
Although Ilse Koch portrayed herself after the war as a loyal SS wife, mother, vacationer, caregiver, and horsewoman, her behavior in Buchenwald was characterized by frequent affairs, simultaneous lovers, and the sexual humiliation of prisoners. She ordered prisoners to serve her while she was naked and enjoyed sexually humiliating the sexually starved prisoners.
She had an open marriage with her husband, and in the camp she had numerous affairs with SS officers and their wives, who were not very different from Ilse. On a Sunday in February 1938, the prisoners had to stand naked on the roll call square for three hours while SS men searched their clothing.
During this time, Ilse Koch and four other wives of SS officers stood at the barbed wire fence and lustfully stared at the naked prisoners. Although Ilse Koch claimed after the war that she never told her husband how Buchenwald should be run or how the prisoners should be treated, a witness testified that in early 1941, Karl Otto Koch gave the order that his wife Ilse’s instructions were to be followed as if he had given them himself.
This gave her enormous power, which she used against the prisoners. She enjoyed walking through Buchenwald half-naked or in skimpy clothing, provoking the inmates into making eye contact with her. And if they did, they were taken away by the guards and shot in the head. Ilse Koch also sexually abused the camp inmates and forced male prisoners to rape female prisoners in front of her.
Although she herself had three children, she hated pregnant women and beat them with a whip lashed with razor blades embedded along its entire length. Ilse Koch also took pleasure in abusing children, which she did with a smile on her face. Among the prisoners, she was known as “The Witch of Buchenwald.” Her other nicknames were “The Beast of Buchenwald” and “The Slut of Buchenwald.”
After the war, numerous witnesses confessed to their actions. One prisoner testified that on one occasion in June 1940 he had drunk a glass of wine and that Ilse had reported him to her husband. As punishment, the prisoner was beaten and forced to walk barefoot over a pile of stones several times.
He also received 25 lashes and was later taken to the camp prison, where he was hung by his arms for three hours. After the war, she claimed that this prisoner had been her house servant, who had smashed glassware and wine bottles, broken into a cupboard, scattered her clothes, and was found completely drunk in the cellar.
She admitted to having called her husband to intervene, but stated that she had not suggested any punishment for him or the other prisoners. The aforementioned prisoner also testified that in early 1940, he and a Czech chaplain were digging a deep trench. They looked up and saw Ilse Koch standing with her legs spread wide over the trench. She was wearing a short skirt, but no underwear.
She asked, “What are you looking up at?” and then struck them with her riding crop, causing the Czech chaplain to bleed from his face and nose. After the war, Ilse Koch testified that she had never carried a riding crop and insisted that she had worn full riding attire, including breeches, boots, and a jacket.
Another witness testified that in the autumn of 1941, Ilse Koch said to her husband, “That filthy pig dared to look at me!” Her husband then beat the prisoner so severely that the victim had to be carried away. Ilse was present the entire time. A witness testified that in the spring of 1941, Karl Otto Koch severely beat and kicked an Austrian prisoner with a riding crop in Ilse’s presence. She said, “Look at that filthy pig over there, too lazy to work. I don’t want to see him again. He just stares at you anyway.”
On one occasion, Ilse Koch observed a prisoner with diarrhea defecating. She ordered the SS officer in charge to stop him immediately. The SS officer then overworked the prisoner for about an hour, causing him to collapse. The victim died the following day. Another witness testified that in the summer of 1942, Ilse Koch complained that a work detail of 11 prisoners, who were working near her house, had been picking berries.
As punishment, five of the prisoners received 25 lashes. The others received five blows to their naked bodies. A Buchenwald survivor testified that in the summer of 1942, on his way to the Kochs’ house, where he often worked, he saw Ilse Koch strike a Jewish prisoner in the face and body with a stick. In 1941 or 1942, columns of Jewish prisoners were forced to carry heavy stones from the quarry to the Kochs’ house. These prisoners were weak and unable to run.
Ilse struck some of them with her riding crop, causing several to fall and pull others down with them. Many severely injured Jewish prisoners were carried into the camp throughout the day. At Buchenwald, Ilse Koch developed an obsession with tattoos and rode her horse through the camp in search of tattooed prisoners.
After the war, a prisoner testified that in the summer of 1940, a French or Belgian prisoner named Jean worked shirtless. He had some excellent tattoos, including a colorful cobra winding its way up his entire left arm, and a particularly neatly tattooed four-masted sailboat on his chest. Ilse Koch rode up to him and said, “Let’s work faster, faster,” and then took down his number.
This prisoner was called to the gate during evening roll call and was never seen again. The witness testified that six months or more later, in the pathology department, he saw a skin bearing the same sailboat he had seen on Jean. He claimed that he later saw the same skin in an album belonging to Ilse Koch.
Another Buchenwald survivor testified that in 1941 he heard a lampshade made of tattooed human skin was delivered to Ilse Koch. It was common knowledge in the camp that tattooed prisoners, after Ilse Koch had seen them, were taken to the hospital and killed so their tattooed skin could be obtained. The fourth prisoner testified that there were two lampshades in Ilse Koch’s house that were allegedly made from human skin. One appeared to have tattoos on it.
According to various accounts, Ilse owned a photo album, a briefcase, and a pair of gloves made from tattooed skin. In 1941, Ilse and Karl Otto Koch attracted the attention of Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar, who in this position held supervisory authority over the Buchenwald concentration camp.
He discovered that Karl Otto Koch had ordered the killing of at least three prisoners because they had treated him for syphilis, and he feared this would be discovered. Based on this investigation, which was based on allegations of Karl Otto Koch’s inappropriate behavior at Buchenwald—including corruption, fraud, embezzlement, drunkenness, sexual offenses, and murder—Karl Otto Koch was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in German-occupied Poland in September 1941. During this time, Ilse was still living in the commandant’s house at Buchenwald. Waldeck ordered a comprehensive investigation of the camp by Georg Konrad Morgen, an SS officer who was also an SS judge in the SS Main Office.
Morgen also examined Karl Koch’s order to kill the three aforementioned prisoners, as well as evidence of the embezzlement of property stolen from the prisoners. Thanks to this money, he was able to have a riding hall built for himself and his wife Ilse in May 1940, costing over 250,000 Reichsmarks – the equivalent of almost 2.4 million US dollars today. Karl Koch also bought a luxury car and opened Swiss bank accounts with money he had extorted from the prisoners.
The Kochs were accused of embezzling over 700,000 Reichsmarks—equivalent to more than $6.7 million today—and Karl was charged with both embezzlement and the unauthorized murder of three prisoners. The investigation also uncovered further orders from Koch to kill prisoners at the camp. Having exploited the massive Nazi apparatus to amass a vast fortune, the Kochs were both arrested in August 1943 to await trial before an SS court.
While Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence, Karl-Otto Koch was executed by firing squad on April 5, 1945. Buchenwald concentration camp, the site of the Kochs’ atrocities, was liberated on April 11, 1945. Ilse Koch spent the last months of the war in Ludwigsburg, where part of her family lived.
Due to her lifestyle, characterized by sexual and alcoholic excesses, her relatives attempted to revoke her custody of the children, but due to the chaos of war, this only occurred after she was arrested by US authorities at the end of June 1945. Ilse Koch was then charged in the Buchenwald Trial, which began on April 11, 1947, at the Dachau internment camp, the site of the former Dachau concentration camp until the end of April 1945. Of the 31 defendants, Ilse Koch was the only woman.
During the trial, Koch denied any involvement in or knowledge of the mistreatment and murder of camp inmates. William Denson, the chief prosecutor at the trial, said that Koch was “a creature from another, tormented world” who had transgressed the boundaries of womanhood. He added that she was “nothing less than a sadistic pervert of monumental proportions, unparalleled in history.”
While the 30 male defendants in the trial received little or no media attention, reporters emphasized that Ilse Koch was a woman, that she had red hair, that she was the “slut of Buchenwald,” or other similar information. They also described her as a psychopath, an arrogant woman, and that she had collected human lampshades made of tattooed skin.
While the other defendants were just ordinary people to the media, Ilse Koch was much more than that. She was a monster. When the verdicts were handed down on August 14, 1947, Koch was in the advanced stages of pregnancy. The chief prosecutor in Koch’s 1947 case said that the only reason she was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death was her pregnancy.
Ilse Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment, and her son Uwe, conceived in prison, was born in October 1947. Uwe’s father was another German prisoner. Ilse Koch’s sentence was initially reduced to four years, but following a public outcry, she was immediately charged in 1950 by a German court with incitement to murder in 135 cases.
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 at the end of December 1950 and again in January 1951 and had to be carried from the courtroom. At least four prosecution witnesses testified that they had seen Ilse Koch select tattooed prisoners to be killed, or that they had been involved in or witnessed the process of making lampshades from tattooed skin.
When the court delivered its verdict in a 111-page ruling on January 15, 1951, sentencing Ilse Koch to life imprisonment, she was not present in the courtroom. She submitted several petitions for clemency, all of which were rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice.
Artwin, the only son of Ilse and Karl Koch, could not live with the shame of his parents’ crimes and committed suicide in 1967. At that time, Ilse Koch was suffering from delusions and was convinced that concentration camp survivors were abusing her in her cell.
Furthermore, she complained that the dead prisoners of Buchenwald came to her through the walls, demanding their skin back. On September 1, 1967, shortly after the death of her son Artwin, the mentally ill Ilse Koch committed suicide. She was 60 years old when she hanged herself with a bedsheet and was subsequently buried in an unmarked grave. No tears were shed for Ilse Koch.
