Product Code Database
Margarete Ilse Koch (; 22 September 1906 – 1 September 1967) was a German war criminal who committed atrocities while her husband Karl-Otto Koch was the commandant at Buchenwald. Though Ilse Koch had no official position in Nazi Germany, she became one of the most infamous Nazism figures at the war's end and was referred to as the "Kommandeuse of Buchenwald".
Because of the egregiousness of her alleged actions, including that she had selected Jewish prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades from human skin and other items from it, her 1947 U.S. military commission court Dachau trials received worldwide media attention, as did the testimony of survivors who ascribed sadistic and perverse acts of violence to Koch—giving rise to the image of her as "the concentration camp murderess".
However, the most serious of these allegations was found to be without proof in two different legal processes, one conducted by an American military commission court at Dachau in 1947, and another by the West German Judiciary at Augsburg in 1950–1951. Harold Kuhn and Richard Schneider, two U.S. Army lawyers tasked with conducting the official review of her conviction at Dachau, noted that "in spite of the extravagant statements made in the newspapers, the record contains little convincing evidence against the accused ... In regard to the widely publicised charges that she ordered inmates killed for their tattooed skin, the record is especially silent".
That the wild claims were dismissed as lacking evidence did little to sway public opinion. She was known as "The Witch of Buchenwald" (Die Hexe von Buchenwald) by the inmates of the camp because of her suspected cruelty and toward prisoners. She has been nicknamed "The Beast of Buchenwald", the "Queen of Buchenwald", the "Red Witch of Buchenwald", "Butcher Widow", and "The Bitch of Buchenwald".
She committed suicide by hanging at Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967 at age 60.
In 1936, she followed Koch to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, where he had been posted as Commandant. They requested permission to marry from the SS Office of Racial and Settlement Affairs, which investigated their "fitness for marriage". This was determined according to racial criteria and Ilse provided evidence of her Aryan ancestry. The couple married the following year at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In July 1937, Karl gave up his post at Sachsenhausen in order to establish and take command of Buchenwald. Karl and Ilse had two daughters and one son, who were all born on the Buchenwald concentration camp grounds from October 1937. The family lived in the camp commandant's three-story villa at Buchenwald and were regularly visited by SS officers Theodor Eicke and Richard Glücks, and on one occasion by the SS leader Heinrich Himmler.
However, authoritative testimony from numerous witnesses at Koch's postwar trials firmly established that she had made extensive use of slave labor at the camp; had assaulted inmates on several occasions; and had reported inmates to the camp Schutzstaffel for beatingsbeatings that resulted in death on at least one occasion. In 1940, Koch also commissioned the construction of an indoor riding arena which cost over 250,000 reichsmarks ($100,000 US as per 1940 exchange rates). Prisoners were reported to have died laboring to complete its construction.
Like each of her codefendants at the Buchenwald trial, Ilse Koch was ultimately found guilty by the court on 14 August 1947; she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She avoided a probable death sentence since she was seven months pregnant with her fourth child at the time, by an unknown father.
Upon receiving the reports of the War Crimes Review Board and his legal staff, and after reviewing the trial record himself, Judge Advocate Colonel J.L. Harbaugh noted, "I can't see anything on which we honestly can hold the accused. There is no question but that she was tried in the newspapers, and suffered both before and during her trial from her unique position as the only woman at the camp." Harbaugh labelled her sentence "excessive" and recommended that General Clay reduce her sentence to four years. Heeding the recommendations of the U.S. Army's judicial branch, Clay reduced the sentence on 8 June 1948, on the grounds that "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin".
However, Clay also suggested that Koch could be tried under West German law: "I hold no sympathy for Ilse Koch. She was a woman of depraved character and ill repute. She had done many things reprehensible and punishable, undoubtedly, under German law. We were not trying her for those things. We were trying her as a war criminal on specific charges."
The reduction of Koch's sentence to four years resulted in an uproar when it was made public on 16 September 1948, but Clay stood firm by his decision.Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life. Years later, Clay stated:
News of Koch's sentence reduction created major controversy in the United States. Editorial pages in major newspapers asked whether the US Army had lost its capacity for sound judgment, while continuing to assert that Koch was a sexual deviant who had killed prisoners for their skins. The Miami Herald demanded to know "in the name of basic human justice and decency, what 'further' does the army need to slap Ilse into jail and keep her there?". The New York Post labeled the reduction of Koch's sentence "Clay's counter-atrocity" and described it as "almost beyond credence." Ed Sullivan, writing for the New York News, pondered whether "the Army reduced Koch's sentence ... so she could get back into the lampshade business."
Such protests in the press found their parallel on the streets of American cities. Rallies were organized by both veterans associations and the American Jewish Congress, while General Clay, who visited the United States in the midst of the controversy, was picketed by protesters, some of whom carried lampshades and demanded his removal from European command.
With pressure mounting from both the public and the press, a group of U.S. Senators resolved to investigate the circumstances of Koch's sentence reduction. The Senate investigation, led by Homer S. Ferguson, culminated in hearings at which major participants at Koch's Dachau trial were called to testify. Dachau trial chief prosecutor William Denson was particularly insistent that Koch's sentence reduction was unjust and that the witness testimony he drew upon was sufficient to secure her conviction and life sentence. Ultimately, the Senate investigation resulted in a recommendation that Koch be tried againnot by the U.S. Army, but by the newly independent West German judiciary. According to the committee's final report, in "being a woman" and in acting independently, Koch's perpetration of violence had been "more unnatural and more deliberate." It was, the report concluded, "highly important that Ilse Koch receive the just punishment she so justly deserves without further doing violence to long-established safe-guards of democratic justice".
Koch was immediately re-arrested following her release from Landsberg prison in 1949. Bavarian chief prosecutor Johann Ilkow indicted Koch for twenty-five misdemeanor counts of grievous bodily harm, incitement to grievous bodily harm in a number of cases "no longer determinable", sixty-five counts of incitement to attempted murder, and twenty-five counts of incitement to murder. The hearing opened on 27 November 1950 before the District Court at Augsburg and lasted seven weeks, during which 250 witnesses were heard, including 50 for the defense. Koch herself said during the trial that "I never saw anything at Buchenwald which might have been against humanity... I was too busy raising my two children." Her mental health began to suffer considerably during the trial, leading to her collapse in court in late December 1950, and again in January 1951. At least four witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had seen Koch choose tattooed prisoners, who were then killed, or had seen or been involved in the process of making human-skin lampshades from tattooed skin. However, this charge was dropped by the prosecution when they could not prove lampshades or any other items were actually made from human skin.
On 15 January 1951, the court pronounced its verdict, in a 111-page-long decision, for which Koch was not present in court. It was concluded that the previous trials in 1944 and 1947 were not a bar to proceedings under the principle of ne bis in idem, as at the 1944 trial Koch had only been charged with receiving stolen goods, while in 1947 she had been accused of crimes against foreigners after 1 September 1939, and not with crimes against German nationals. She was ultimately convicted of seven misdemeanor counts of incitement to grievous bodily harm, one count of incitement to attempted murder, and one count of incitement to murder. On 15 January 1951, she was sentenced to life imprisonment and the permanent forfeiture of her civil rights. In its written judgment, the Augsburg court labeled Koch's crimes at Buchenwald particularly egregious because she "consciously suppressed any feeling of compassion and pity she had as a woman", and instead gave "free rein to her pursuit of power and prestige, her arrogance and her selfishness." The court noted in particular Koch's "stubborn and irresponsible denial" and incapacity for even the "slightest admission of guilt."
Koch appealed to have the judgment quashed, but the appeal was dismissed on 22 April 1952 by the Federal Court of Justice. She later made several petitions for a pardon, all of which were rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. Koch protested her life sentence, to no avail, to the International Human Rights Commission.
In 1971, Uwe sought posthumous rehabilitation for his mother. Via the press, he used clemency documents from her former lawyer in 1957 and his impression of her based on their relationship in an attempt to change people's attitude towards Koch.
|
|
