Ilsa Koch: biography and crimes. Ilse Koch is a "Buchenwald witch"

During the Second World War, Nazi criminals ruled Germany. Women among them, strangely enough, also met. So, the brightest cruel warden is Ilsa Koch, nicknamed Frau Abazhur. The girl from an early age was an active participant in the National Socialist Workers Party. In the Nazi Party, she joined in 1932.
During the period of work as a prison warder in concentration camps, Ilsa committed a huge number of crimes against humanity. The most terrible of them is that they with the husband made various products from a human skin. However, to this day, disputes are being held about the truthfulness of all the crimes attributed to this odious couple.

Childhood warden concentration camp of World War II

In an ordinary German family in the city of Dresden in 1906, a beautiful daughter appeared. The parents had high hopes for the future of their child. The usual family of the future "Buchenwald witch" did not suspect that their lovely girl, who brought only joy, would in the future receive the terrible nickname of Frau Abajur. A young girl studied well at school, which gave her parents another reason to be calm for her future. After graduation, Ilsa Koch settled down to work in the library. A turning point in the life of the girl came with the coming to power of Adolf Hitler in 1932. It was then that she, still cheerful and modest, joined the National Socialist Party, which in the near future led to an acquaintance with Karl Koch, the future husband of Ilsa.

The husband of the "Buchenwald witch"

Karl Koch's father was an official from Darmiggadt. He was 13 years older than his mother. He was gone when the boy was eight years old. The future commandant of concentration camps did not please his mother with good grades at school. And after a while he dropped his studies altogether and got a job as a messenger for a local factory. As soon as he was seventeen, the boy immediately enlisted in the army as a volunteer.

By that time, Western Europe was already swallowed up by the First World War. However, because of the mother's intervention, the boy was immediately returned home from the recruiting station. But already in 1916, when Karl was nineteen, he still managed to get to the front. The young rookie went through all the horrors of trench life on the most tense section of the Western Front. Finished the war Karl Koch in the prisoner of war camp, and when he returned to Germany, he immediately received the post of bank employee, and in 1924 he married.

But two years later the bank went bankrupt, at the same time, the marriage of the future overseer also collapsed.

The young man solved his problems with the help of the Nazis. He just joined the SS. And already in 1936 Karl Koch headed the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen. His abilities in this sphere were evaluated above the average, because here he was himself - an out-and-out sadist. It was precisely this quality of his character that helped Koch gain the location of Ilsa.

To date, it is believed that all the commandants of the concentration camps are Nazi criminals. Women have diligently helped to serve their husbands. And Elsa and Karl just found each other. And already in 1937, having bound themselves by the bonds of marriage, the couple of Kokhs swear allegiance to the devil and proceeds to service duties with even greater cruelty and vampirism.

The first brutal work

Karl and Ilsa Koch became the first workers of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen in the city of Oranienburg. The man became the commandant, and his faithful wife was a guard and served as secretary.

A year later, for an exemplary service and excellent work, the couple was transferred to the Buchenwald camp. Just here, the potential of a brutal woman opened up to the full. Carrying out the role of the warder Ilsa Koch, the she-wolf of the SS, daily arranged for torture sessions for the prisoners. Not trusting anyone even the most terrible work, Ilsa personally beat with a whip or whip people. The only woman to whom she could trust her case was her hungry shepherd, who had bitten the captives of Buchenwald 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 became seriously interested in prisoners whose bodies were decorated with tattoos. To their great regret, they were the first in line for an imminent death. The thing is that from the skin of prisoners Koch Ilsa, whose biography is already full of horrifying facts, she made various crafts: starting from gloves and book covers, finishing with lampshades or even underwear. There was no limit to the fantasy of this woman.

In 1941, Frau Abajur was appointed as the senior guardian, which gave her even more power, and her powers made unlimited. Since then, Ilsa Koch has allowed herself practically everything.

"Victims of a Sentence"

With her cruel treatment of prisoners, as well as "tricks", Ilsa bragged at other warders. So soon the higher authorities learned about this. We must give them their due - rumors caused the arrest of a married couple for abuse of authority. However, for the first time the sadists were released without punishment, believing that they had been the victims of a conspiracy by ill-wishers.

For some time Karl Koch "prayed for sins" - 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 1941, Karl was appointed commandant of a concentration camp in Majdanek, where Elsa Koch - the "Buchenwald Witch" - continued her humiliation of the prisoners with even greater excitement. In 1942, her husband was convicted of corruption. This was the reason for his immediate dismissal from his post.

Medieval torture

Nazi criminals received unprecedented pleasure from torturing and torturing prisoners. One of the favorite tools of the pair was a whip, along the entire length of which pieces of an acute razor were inserted. Such an instrument could be used to kill a man to death.

Karl introduced the wide use of the vice for fingers, as well as branding with red-hot iron. Such measures of punishment could be applied to any violators of the concentration camp order. In the whole of Germany, the orders were the same, but the cruelty of Kokhov struck at times even their like-minded people. The bloodthirst of the spouses scared even the most cruel Nazis.

German concentration camps had the same laws and regulations: weak and sick prisoners were killed immediately, and the able-bodied were forced to work for the benefit of the Third Reich, and under inhuman conditions. Hunger and overwork led the prisoners to death, but Koch, while watching this, reveled in power, and Ilsa came up with new sophisticated ways of bullying.

Karl Koch's Execution

A year after the first trial, Nazi criminals (although they were not considered as such at that time, for the Fascists themselves judged them at that time) were accused of the murder of Dr. Walter Kremen. During the investigation, the SS staff found that he had treated Karl for syphilis, and then was killed in order to avoid publicity.

At the trial, which took place in 1944, the fact of stealing from Kokhov emerged outward, and this, in the eyes of the highest SS officials, was an inexcusable 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 with Kokhov. The former commandant took all his valuables and personal things, money from his prisoners, and even ripped out the golden crowns from the dead. Thus, Karl Koch provided the post-war welfare of his family.

And it was for this crime, and not for cruel treatment of prisoners or for anti-human behavior in the camps of the former commandant, that they were shot in April 1945. Before his death, Koh begged to allow him to serve his sentence in a hot spot in the penalty battalion, but the judge was implacable.

He was executed literally a few days before the liberation of the camp by the Allied forces. Ironically, it happened in the courtyard of the camp, where the monster himself had, for several years, disposed of thousands of human destinies. His widow, Ilsa Koch, was as guilty as her husband. Almost all surviving and released prisoners assured that Karl committed crimes under the influence of a cruel and bloodthirsty wife. However, during the proceedings it 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. June 30, 1945, she was again taken into custody, the investigation lasted two years. In 1947 the wolf SS was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Until recently, the woman denied her guilt, saying that she was only a "victim of the regime." About the involvement in the terrible and terrifying "hacks" of human skin to speak, refused, not recognizing this at all.

To answer for her crimes, Ilza Koch appeared before the US military tribunal in the city of Munich. For several weeks, former prisoners of the Buchenwald camp testified against this terrible woman. Their eyes burned no longer with fear, but with anger.

The prosecutor said that in the hands of Frau Abajur, the blood of fifty thousand prisoners of Buchenwald froze. And the fact that a woman is pregnant can not free her from punishment.

The American General Emil Kiel read out the verdict handed down: life imprisonment.

Ilsa Koch: SS wolf again at large

But even 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, claiming that there was not enough direct evidence against this woman. And the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who talked about bullying and sadism of the she-wolf, Clay considered insufficiently valid for life imprisonment.

The liberation of Frau Abajur caused a wave of indignation on the part of the people, so in the same year of 1951 the German government issued another order for her arrest.

Ilsa Kok, already out of habit, began to deny any charges, explaining to them that she was a hostage to circumstances, a servant of the strict regime. She did not want to admit guilt and talked about her life being surrounded by the secret enemies of the Reich, which stipulated it.

The last conclusion

New Germany sought to atone for the mass and severe crimes of the Nazis, and therefore the conclusion of Ilsa Koch was a matter of principle. Immediately she was placed in the dock, all the forces of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice were thrown in search of new evidence in the Koch case.

As a result, 240 witnesses testified on her case. All these people told again about the atrocities of the sadistic family, called Buchenwald the death camp. And this time Ilsa Koch was judged not by the Americans, but by the Germans, who, in the words of Frau Abazhur herself, at one time served as faith and truth.

The court sentenced a war criminal to life imprisonment. And this time was the last: it was firmly stated that now Ilsa Koch will not be able to count on any indulgence.

Suicide of the "Witch of Buchenwald"

In 1967, Ilsa Koch wrote a letter to her son Uwe, who was born shortly after the first verdict. In it, she complained about the injustice of the judicial decision and wrote that now she had to answer for someone else's sins. In all her letters to her son there was no hint of remorse for the crimes committed.

On September 1 of the same year, the "Buchenwald Witch", being in the cell of the Bavarian prison, last dinner, wrote a farewell letter for her son and, binding the sheets, hanged herself.

In 1971, the son of Ilsa Koch, whom she gave birth to from a German soldier, tried to restore the evil name of his mother. He took her name and appeared before the court, having addressed before this with a heartfelt letter to the editorial staff of the newspaper The New York Times. However, his attempts were unsuccessful.