During World War II, Nazi criminals ruled in Germany. Women among them, oddly enough, also met. So, Ilsa Koch, nicknamed Frau Abajur, is considered the brightest brutal overseer. From a young age, the girl was an active participant in the National Socialist Workers Party. She joined the NSDAP in 1932.
During the period of work as a prison guard in concentration camps, Ilsa committed a huge number of crimes against humanity. The worst of them is that she and her husband made various products from human skin. However, to this day there are disputes regarding the veracity of all the crimes attributed to this odious couple.
The childhood of the warder of the concentration camp of World War II
In 1906, a beautiful daughter appeared in an ordinary German family in the city of Dresden. Parents had high hopes for the future of their child. The ordinary family of the future "Buchenwald witch" did not suspect that their lovely girl, who brought only joy, in the future will receive the terrible nickname Frau Abajur. The young girl studied well at school, which gave her parents another reason to be calm about her future. Upon graduation, Ilsa Koch got a job in the library. The turning point in the girl’s life came with the advent of Adolf Hitler in 1932. It was then that she, while still cheerful and modest, joined the National Socialist Party, which in the near future led to her acquaintance with Karl Koch, Ilsa’s future husband.
Husband of the Buchenwald Witch
Karl Koch's father was an official from Darmiggadt. He was 13 years older than his mother. He died when the boy was eight years old. The future commandant of the concentration camps did not please her mother with good grades at school. And after some time he completely dropped out of school and got a job as a messenger in a local factory. As soon as he turned seventeen, the guy immediately enlisted in the army as a volunteer.
By then, World War I had already swallowed Western Europe . However, due to the intervention of the mother, the guy was returned home directly from the recruiting station. But already in 1916, when Karl was nineteen, he still managed to get to the front. The young recruit went through all the horrors of the trench life on the most tense section of the Western Front. Karl Koch finished the war in a prisoner of war camp, and when he returned to Germany, he immediately received the post of bank clerk, and in 1924 he got married.
But two years later the bank went bankrupt, at the same time the marriage of the future overseer collapsed.
The young man solved his problems with the help of the Nazis. He just joined the SS. And already in 1936, Karl Koch led the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. His abilities in this area were rated above average, because it was here that he was himself - a notorious sadist. It was precisely this quality of his character that helped Koch win the favor of Ilsa.
Today, it is believed that all commandants of concentration camps are Nazi criminals. Women zealously helped serve their husbands. And Elsa and Karl just found each other. And already in 1937, having tied himself up by marriage, a pair of Kokhov swore allegiance to the devil and embarked on official duties with even greater cruelty and bloodthirstiness.
First brutal work
Karl and Ilsa Koch became the first employees of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen in the city of Oranienburg. The man became a commandant, and his faithful wife was a guard and acted as secretary.
A year later, for exemplary service and excellent work, the couple was transferred to the Buchenwald camp. It is here that the potential of a brutal woman is fully revealed. Fulfilling the role of warden Ilsa Koch - a she-wolf of the SS - arranged daily torture sessions for prisoners. Not trusting anyone even the most terrible work, Ilsa personally beat people with a whip or a whip. The only woman the woman could entrust her work with was her hungry shepherd, which ate the Buchenwald prisoners to death.
German concentration camps did not yet know such cruelty and ruthlessness on the part of a fragile woman.
Frau Lampshade
The commandant's wife was seriously interested in prisoners whose bodies were decorated with tattoos. Unfortunately, they were the first in line for imminent death. The thing is that from the skin of prisoners, Koch Ilse, whose biography is already full of terrifying facts, did various crafts: from gloves and book bindings to lampshades or even underwear. The fantasy of this woman knew no bounds.
In 1941, Frau Abajur was appointed to the position of senior overseer, which gave her even more power, and her powers made unlimited. Since then, Ilsa Koch has allowed herself almost everything.
“Victims of the slander”
His ill-treatment of prisoners, as well as "tricks," Ilsa boasted to other overseers. Therefore, higher authorities soon learned about this. We must give them their due - rumors served as the reason for the arrest of the couple for abuse of authority. However, for the first time, sadists were released without punishment, believing that they were victims of a slander from ill-wishers.
For some time, Karl Koch "atoned for sins" - he served as an adviser in another concentration camp, but soon the couple returned to their native Buchenwald.
Other crimes
In the autumn of the same year, Karl was appointed commandant of a concentration camp in Majdanek, where Elsa Koch, the “Buchenwald witch,” continued her mockery of prisoners with even greater excitement. In 1942, her husband was convicted of corruption. This was the reason for his immediate removal from his post.
Medieval torture
Nazi criminals took unprecedented pleasure from tormenting and torturing prisoners. One of the couple’s favorite weapons was a scourge, along the length of which pieces of a sharp razor were inserted. With such an instrument it was possible to hammer a person to death.
Karl introduced into widespread use a vise for fingers, as well as branding with hot iron. Such punitive measures could be applied to any violators of the concentration camp order. In Germany, the orders were the same, but Koch's cruelty sometimes even struck like-minded people. The bloodthirstiness of the spouses frightened even the most cruel Nazis.
The German concentration camps had the same laws and orders: the weak and sick prisoners were killed immediately, and the able-bodied were forced to work for the benefit of the Third Reich, and in inhuman conditions. Hunger and overwork led the prisoners to death, but Koch, watching this, reveled in power, and Ilsa came up with new sophisticated ways of bullying.
The execution of Karl Koch
A year after the first trial, the Nazi criminals (though they were not considered then, because the Nazis themselves tried at that time) were charged with the murder of Dr. Walter Kremen. During the investigation, SS officers found that he was treating Karl for syphilis, and then was killed in order to avoid publicity.
At the trial, which took place in 1944, the fact of theft by Kokhov surfaced, and this was in the eyes of the highest ranks of the SS an unforgivable crime.
During the investigation, it became known about the secret accounts of a couple of sadists. So, the funds that were supposed to go to the safe of the Reichsbank in Berlin, settled at the Kochs. The former commandant took all his valuables and personal belongings, money from his prisoners, and even pulled out golden crowns from the dead. Thus, Karl Koch ensured the post-war welfare of his family.
And it was for this crime, and not for ill-treatment of prisoners or for inhuman behavior in the camps of the former commandant who was shot in April 1945. Before his death, Koch begged to let him serve his sentence in a hot spot in the penalty battalion, but the judge was implacable.
He was executed just a few days before the liberation of the camp by the allied forces. Ironically, this happened in the courtyard of that camp, where the monster himself over the course of several years disposed of thousands of human destinies. His widow Ilse Koch was no less guilty than her husband. Almost all surviving and released prisoners claimed that Karl committed crimes under the influence of a cruel and bloodthirsty wife. However, during the proceedings, she was acquitted. For a while, the woman moved to live with her parents.
First conclusion
But Ilse Koch still had to answer for the crimes committed. On June 30, 1945, she was again taken into custody; the investigation lasted two years. In 1947, the SS she-wolf was sentenced by the court to life imprisonment.
Until recently, the woman denied her guilt, saying that she was only a "victim of the regime." She refused to speak about involvement in the terrible and terrifying “crafts” of human skin, without acknowledging this at all.
To answer for her crimes, Ilsa Koch appeared before an American military tribunal in the city of Munich. For several weeks, former Buchenwald camp prisoners testified against this terrible woman. Their eyes glowed not from fear, but from anger.
The prosecutor stated that the blood of fifty thousand prisoners of Buchenwald froze in the hands of Frau Abajur. And the fact that a woman is pregnant cannot release her from punishment.
US General Emil Kiel read out the verdict: life imprisonment.
Ilsa Koch: SS wolf is free again
But here, luck did not leave the "Buchenwald witch." In 1951, General Lucius Clay, the prosecutor, shocked the whole world with his shocking statement. He released Ilsa Koch, motivating this act by the fact that there was not enough direct evidence against this woman. And the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who insisted on the bullying and sadism of the she-wolf, Clay considered insufficiently weighty for life imprisonment.
The liberation of Frau Abajur caused a wave of indignation from the people, so in the same 1951 the German government issued another order for her arrest.
Ilsa Koch, out of habit, began to deny any accusations, explaining them by the fact that she was held hostage to circumstances, a servant of a strict regime. She did not want to plead guilty and said that all her life she was surrounded by secret enemies of the Reich, who stipulated her.
Last conclusion
New Germany sought to atone for the massive and brutal crimes of the Nazis, and therefore the conclusion of Ilse Koch was a matter of principle. Immediately she was placed in the dock, all the forces of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice were cast in search of new evidence in the Koch case.
As a result, 240 witnesses testified in her case. All these people again told about the atrocities of the sadistic family, called Buchenwald the death camp. And this time, Ilsu Koch was not judged by the Americans, but by the Germans, whom, according to Frau Abajur herself, she once served faithfully.
The court sentenced the war criminal to life imprisonment. And this time was the last one: it was firmly stated that now Ilse Koch will not be able to count on any leniency.
Suicide "Witches of Buchenwald"
In 1967, Ilsa Koch wrote a letter to her son Uwe, who was born shortly after the first sentence. In it, she complained about the injustice of the judicial decision and wrote that now she has to answer for other people's sins. In all her letters to her son there was not a hint of repentance for the crimes committed.
On September 1 of the same year, the Buchenwald witch, while in the cell of a Bavarian prison, dined for the last time, wrote a farewell letter for her son, and, tying up the sheets, hanged herself.
In 1971, the son of Ilse Koch, whom she gave birth to from a German soldier, tried to restore the unkind name of his mother. He took her last name and appeared before the court, addressing this with a well-felt letter to the editors of the New York Times. However, his attempts were unsuccessful.