Random Female Concentration Camp Guard So Depraved Even The Nazis Arrested Her (12 items)

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  (#1) 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.
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  (#3) 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. 
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  (#10) 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.
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  (#12) 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.
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  (#5) 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.
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  (#11) 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. 

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