Irma Grese is known throughout the world for her terrible actions while working as a warden in German death camps. For her character, she received the nickname Blonde Devil. Who was this young woman, and how did she become the very angel of death?
A family
Irma Grese was born on 10/07/1923, not far from Pasewalk (North-East part of Germany) in a peasant family. Berta and Alfred had five children. In 1936, all of them were left without a mother who committed suicide. Father since 1937 was recorded in the NSDAP and was engaged in raising children independently.
The beginning of the way
The family tragedy did not allow the girl to receive a proper education, and at 15, Irma Grese, whose photo has been preserved to this day, was forced to leave school. At the same time, she began to actively show her qualities in the Union of German Girls.
In the next three years, Irma Grese, whose story amazes with her terrible and cruel pages, tried herself in various specializations. For some time she was a nurse's assistant in one of the SS sanatoriums. She never became a paramedic. At 19, despite her father’s discontent, she became part of the SS auxiliary units.
Activities in a concentration camp
Irma Grese began her work in the auxiliary forces from the Ravensbrück camp. A year later, she was appointed to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In less than six months, she received the position of senior overseer. This made her second to the camp staff. Only the commandant was more important than her.
An interesting fact is the information that the 20-year-old girl was not going to be a guard over her whole life. She had a dream - to become a movie actress after the war.
In the spring of 1945, at her request, the young woman was redirected to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where they were transferred to commandant Joseph Kramer. A month later, she was captured by the British.
Cruelty of a young warden
During the investigation of the case of the Beautiful Monster, as it was sometimes called, many surviving prisoners confirmed with their testimonies the particular cruelty with which she worked in the camps of Irma Grese.
During torture, she used emotional and physical methods of humiliation. She personally beat the imprisoned women to death, selected people to kill them in gas chambers, enjoyed shooting prisoners, which was carried out in random order.
Among her favorite activities was setting up her dogs on prisoners. At the same time, she specially starved her own pets for more aggressiveness.
Many prisoners remembered her as a blonde in heavy boots with a pistol and a wicker whip in her hands.
In addition, the Western press wrote a lot about all kinds of sexual hobbies of the warden. She was credited with a connection with Joseph Kramer, Joseph Mengele, as well as sexual joys with the SS guards. There is no evidence of this.
Belsen process
Irma Grese, whose torture was particularly cruel, was taken to court after being captured. The process of crimes of camp workers was called Belsensky. Its initiator was the British military tribunal, which examined the affairs of 45 people who worked in the guards of the British-liberated camp. Half of them were women. The court worked from September to November 1945 in the city of Luneburg.
Initially, there should have been more defendants, but not all survived before the trial:
- seventeen people died of typhoid, which they contracted in Bergen-Belsen;
- three were shot dead while trying to escape;
- one person personally brought scores to life.
Interest in this court was incredible. This was due to the fact that most prisoners worked previously at Auschwitz. At trial, the world first learned about crimes against humanity such as selection, crematoria, gas chambers. Although there were no gas chambers in the camp itself, about 50 thousand people died in it.
Judges' verdicts were different depending on the gravity of the crimes. So, 11 people were sentenced to death by hanging, 20 received from ten to fifteen years in prison, the rest were acquitted. Among those released during the trial were small camp staff: an electrician, a cook, a storekeeper, and other state representatives.
The most sensational cases of the Belsen process:
- Joseph Kramer - the commandant of the Bergen-Belsen camp, whom the prisoners called the Beast. During his eleven-year career, he has worked in many concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The court accused him of killing 80 prisoners, whose bodies were later used by Dr. Augustus Hierz for their research.
- Fritz Klein, a camp doctor who, from the Romanian army, joined the SS and conducted experiments on camp prisoners. Also in his duties in the camp was to select Jews and Gypsies for gas chambers.
- Elizabeth Volkenrath - Nurses and assistants to Dr. Klein.
Execution
Overseer Irma Grese was sentenced to death by hanging, as her guilt was proven. The sentence was put into effect on December 13, 1945 in the Hameln prison. According to eyewitnesses, on the night before hanging out, she and her colleague in the camp, Elizabeth Volkenrath, sang songs and laughed.
The English executioner Albert Pierrepoint performed the procedure. When he threw a noose around the neck of the accused woman, she with a calm face said to him: “Faster.” At the time of her death, she was 22 years old. Thus ended the life of a beautiful and brutal warden, who, despite her young age, destroyed thousands of lives.