According to statistics, the majority of maniacs and perverts are men. However, there are women who can give a head start to any maniac, whom one would dare not call the weaker or fairer sex. One of them is Ilse Koch, or "Frau Lampshaded", who, together with another SS woman, tops the list of the most terrible women of all time. world history.
To bring Hitler's ideas to life, executors were needed - people without pity, compassion and conscience. The Nazi regime painstakingly created a system that could produce them.
The Nazis created many concentration camps in the territory they occupied, intended for the so-called “racial cleansing” of Europe. The fact that the prisoners were disabled people, old people, and children did not matter at all to the sadists from the SS. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau and Buchenwald became the epitome of hell on earth, where people were systematically gassed, starved and beaten.
Ilse Köhler was born in Dresden into a working-class family. At school she was a diligent student and a very cheerful child. In her youth, she worked as a librarian, loved and was loved, enjoyed success with the village boys, but always considered herself superior to others, clearly exaggerating her merits. In 1932 she joined the NSDAP. In 1934 she met Karl Koch, whom she married two years later.
How did Ilse turn from a quiet, inconspicuous librarian into a monster who kept the entire Buchenwald in fear?
It’s very simple: “like attracts like” and when her egoism combined with the ambitions of the SS man Karl Koch, Ilse’s hidden perversity became obvious.
In 1936, Ilse voluntarily got a job at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where Karl served. In Sachsenhaus, Karl even among “his own people” acquired a reputation as a sadist. At that time, Koch reveled in power, observing the daily destruction of people, his wife received even greater pleasure from the torture of prisoners. In the camp they feared her more than the commandant himself.
In 1937, Karl Koch was appointed commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, where Ilse became notorious for her cruelty towards prisoners. The prisoners said that she often walked around the camp, dispensing lashes to everyone she met in striped clothes. Sometimes Ilse took a hungry, ferocious shepherd dog with her and set it on pregnant women or exhausted prisoners; she was delighted with the horror experienced by the prisoners. It is not surprising that behind her back they called her “the bitch of Buchenwald.”
Frau Koch was inventive and constantly came up with new tortures, for example, she regularly sent prisoners to be torn to pieces by two Himalayan bears in a regular zoo.
But this lady's true passion was tattoos. She ordered the male prisoners to undress and examined their bodies. She wasn't interested in those who didn't have tattoos, but if she saw an exotic pattern on someone's body, her eyes lit up, because it meant that there was another victim in front of her.
Ilse was later nicknamed "Frau Lampshaded". She used the tanned skins of murdered men to create a variety of household utensils, of which she was extremely proud. She found the skin of gypsies and Russian prisoners of war with tattoos on the chest and back most suitable for crafts. This made it possible to make things very “decorative”. Ilsa especially liked lampshades.
One of the prisoners, the Jew Albert Grenovsky, who was forced to work in the pathology laboratory of Buchenwald, said after the war that prisoners selected by Ilse with a tattoo were taken to the dispensary. There they were killed using lethal injections.
There was only one reliable way If you don’t let the “bitch” fall into the lampshade, you will disfigure your skin or die in a gas chamber. To some, this seemed like a good thing. Bodies of “artistic value” were taken to the pathology laboratory, where they were treated with alcohol and the skin was carefully torn off. Then it was dried, lubricated vegetable oil and packaged in special bags.
Meanwhile, Ilse improved her skills. She began to create from human skin gloves, tablecloths and even lacy underwear. “I saw the tattoo that adorned Ilse’s panties on the back of one of the gypsies from my block,” said Albert Grenovsky.
Apparently, the savage entertainment of Ilse Koch became fashionable among her colleagues in other concentration camps, which multiplied in the Nazi empire like mushrooms after rain. It was a pleasure for her to correspond with the wives of the commandants of other camps and give them detailed instructions, how to turn human skin into exotic book bindings, lampshades, gloves or tablecloths.
However, one should not think that Frau Lampshaded was alien to all human feelings. One day Ilse saw a tall, stately young man in a crowd of prisoners. Frau Koch immediately liked the broad-shouldered, two-meter hero and she ordered the guards to intensively fatten the young Czech. A week later he was given a tailcoat and brought to the mistress’s chambers. She came out to him in a pink peignoir, with a glass of champagne in her hand. However, the guy grimaced: “I will never sleep with you. You are an SS woman, and I am a communist! Damn you!
Ilse slapped the impudent man in the face and immediately called security. The young man was shot, and Ilse ordered the heart, in which the bullet was stuck, to be taken out of his body and preserved in alcohol. She placed the capsule with the heart on her night table. At night, the light was often on in her bedroom - Ilse, in the light of a “tattooed” lampshade, looking at her dead heroic heart, composed romantic poems...
Soon the authorities drew attention to Ms. Koch’s “cannibalistic craft.” At the end of 1941, the Koch couple appeared before the SS court in Kassel on charges of “excessive cruelty and moral corruption.” However, that time the sadists managed to escape punishment. And only in 1944 a trial took place, at which they were unable to evade responsibility.
On a cold April morning in 1945, literally a few days before the liberation of the camp by the Allied forces, Karl Koch was shot in the courtyard of the very camp where he had recently controlled thousands of human destinies.
The widowed Ilse was no less guilty than her husband. Many prisoners believed that Koch committed crimes under the diabolical influence of his wife. However, in the eyes of the SS her guilt was insignificant. The sadist was released from custody. However, she did not return to Buchenwald.
After the collapse of the “Third Reich,” Ilse Koch hid, hoping that they would catch “ big fish"in the SS and Gestapo, everyone will forget about her. She remained free until 1947, when justice finally caught up with her.
Once in prison, Ilse made a statement in which she insisted that she was only a “servant” of the regime. She denied making things from human skin and claimed that she was surrounded by secret enemies of the Reich, who slandered her, trying to take revenge for her official zeal.
In 1951, a turning point came in Ilse Koch’s life. General Lucius Clay, High Commissioner of the American occupation zone in Germany, with his decision shocked the world on both sides of the Atlantic - both the population of his country and the Federal Republic of Germany, which arose from the ruins of the defeated “Third Reich”. He granted Ilse Koch her freedom, saying that there was only “slight evidence that she ordered the execution of anyone, and there was no evidence of her involvement in the manufacture of tattooed skin items.”
When the criminal was released, the world refused to believe the validity of this decision. Washington lawyer William Denson, who was the prosecutor at the trial that sentenced Ilse Koch to life in prison, said: “This is a terrible miscarriage of justice. Ilse Koch was one of the most notorious sadists among Nazi criminals. It is impossible to count the number of people who want to testify against her, not only because she was the wife of the camp commandant, but also because she is a creature cursed by God.”
However, Frau Koch was not destined to enjoy freedom, as soon as she left the American military prison in Munich, she was arrested by the German authorities and put back behind bars. The Themis of the new Germany, trying to somehow make amends for the mass crimes of the Nazis, immediately put Ilse Koch in the dock.
The Bavarian Ministry of Justice began searching for former prisoners of Buchenwald, obtaining new evidence that would allow them to lock up war criminal in a cell for the rest of her days. 240 witnesses testified in court. They talked about the atrocities of a sadist in a Nazi death camp.
This time, Ilse Koch was tried by the Germans, in whose name the Nazi, in her conviction, faithfully served the Fatherland. She was again sentenced to life imprisonment. She was firmly told that this time she could not count on any leniency.
That year, on September 1, in a Bavarian prison cell, she ate her last schnitzel and salad, tied up the sheets and hanged herself. The “bitch of Buchenwald” took her own life.
In 1941, Ilse became the senior guard among female guards. She often bragged about how she tortured prisoners, as well as “souvenirs” made from human skin, to her colleagues. In the end, information about what the Kokh couple was doing reached senior management. The Kochs were arrested. They were tried in Kassel for “excessive cruelty and moral corruption.” But the couple managed to whitewash themselves, saying that they were victims of slander on the part of ill-wishers.
In September of the same year, Karl Koch was appointed commandant of the Majdanek camp, where the couple continued their sadistic “activities”. But already in July next year Karl was removed from office, accused of corruption.
In 1943, the Koch couple were arrested by the SS for the murder of doctor Walter Kremer and his assistant. The fact is that doctors treated Karl Koch for syphilis and could have let it slip... In 1944, a trial took place. The Kokhs were also accused of embezzlement and misappropriation of prisoners' property. IN Nazi Germany this was a serious crime.
In April 1945, Karl was shot in Munich, shortly before American troops entered there. Ilse managed to get away with it, and she went to her parents, who at that time lived in Ludwigsburg.
However, on June 30, 1945, she was arrested again. This time it's the American military. In 1947, she was tried, but Ilsa flatly denied all the charges, insisting that she was just a “victim of the regime.” She also did not recognize the fact of using human skin for crafts.
But hundreds of surviving former prisoners testified against the “Witch of Buchenwald.” For the atrocities and murders of prisoners, Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment. But several years later she was released at the request of General Lucius Clay, acting military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany. He considered the accusations that, on the orders of Ilse Koch, people were killed in order to make souvenirs from their skin, unproven...
However, the public did not want to put up with the “Frau Lampshaded” excuse. In 1951, a West German court sentenced Ilse Koch to life imprisonment for the second time. She never expressed remorse for what she did.
On September 1, 1967, Ilse hanged herself with sheets in her cell at the Bavarian women's prison at Aichach. In 1971, her son Uwe, who grew up in an orphanage, whom she gave birth to in custody from a German soldier, tried to restore his mother’s good name by going to court and the press. But nothing worked out for him. Although the name of Ilse Koch was never forgotten. In 1975, the film “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS” was made about her.
This woman went down in world history as one of the most sophisticated Nazi criminals. Reporters who were present at the court hearing in the case of the bloodthirsty sadist referred to her exclusively as the “Buchenwald bitch” and “Frau Lampshaded.” So, meet the infamous Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of one of the largest German concentration camps. A Nazi who made souvenirs from human skin.
At first there were no signs of trouble. Little Ilse Köhler (that was her maiden name) was born in Dresden. She did well at school and got a job in a library in her youth. Then no one could have thought that from a quiet, modest girl who spent most of her time among book shelves, it will turn out to be a real monster. The point of no return for Ilsa was joining the ranks of the NSDAP, a party headed by Adolf Hitler, who had not yet come to absolute power. The leader of the movement liked the girl, and he political program Köhler seemed competent and reasonable.
Since then, Ilsa’s life has changed dramatically: she immersed herself in party work. In 1936 professional activity Frau Koch also underwent significant adjustments: she now worked as a secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Soon after joining the NSDAP and successfully finding work, Ilse met and married Karl Koch, a party member. Previously, the woman’s husband traded in theft and fraud, and now, thanks to party acquaintances, he has moved up the career and social ladder and became the commandant of Sachsenhausen. It was there that the couple began a relationship. Soon Karl was transferred to the new, recently organized Buchenwald camp, and his faithful wife Ilse followed him.
At their new place of work, the Kokhov couple received almost unlimited power over the prisoners. It was then that their sadistic tendencies began to fully manifest themselves. Ilsa especially distinguished herself, appointed by her commandant husband to the position of senior warden among the female guards. Let us note that in intimate terms, Ilsa was not very lucky with her husband: it turned out that Karl had homosexual inclinations, and his wife was not attracted to him. The commandant became interested in the male prisoners, who had no opportunity to evade Koch's dirty advances. Ilsa began to have even more cruel entertainments.
The prisoners of Buchenwald were afraid of the senior wardress like fire. Even the commandant himself did not instill such animal fear in them. Frau Koch came up with chilling ways to abuse the camp prisoners: she sent them to clean the paths with a toothbrush, and then mercilessly beat those who did not meet the allotted time with a whip. As you might guess, no one could cope with Ilsa’s vile orders, so everyone got the lashes. Koch also chose the most attractive prisoners for lovemaking: she literally raped the men, forcing them to obey any of her orders. Ilsa was delighted with the opportunity to humiliate, hurt, insult and at the same time feel unpunished.
The miraculously saved prisoners of the terrible concentration camp recalled that the “Buchenwald bitch” loved to inspect the camp on a white horse, “treating” the prisoners with her favorite whip right from the saddle. Sometimes Ilsa left the horse in the stall and walked. On these occasions, Frau Koch was accompanied by a huge shepherd dog, as ferocious as its owner. Ilsa set the dog on the unfortunate prisoners, and she often bit them to death.
The perverted sadist also loved to annoy male prisoners by coming out to them in very revealing outfits: for example, in tight-fitting blouses or short skirts. This was quite cruel to men who had not been intimate with women for many months. However, this is exactly what Ilsa wanted. Also within the walls of Buchenwald, Frau managed to have affairs with several SS men.
However, the Koch couple paid for their atrocities long before the defeat of Hitler’s army. In 1942, the commandant of Buchenwald was accused of bribery, embezzlement of government property and the murder of Dr. Walter Kremer, who treated Koch for syphilis and could have spilled the beans about it to someone. In connection with these charges, Karl was arrested and soon shot. His wife was also taken into custody, but soon all charges against her were dropped and she was released.
Ilsa received her well-deserved punishment only after the end of the war. She was accused not only of all the cruelties mentioned, but also of something even more beyond the pale. The particular atrocity of which Frau Koch was suspected was the production various items everyday life (for example, lampshades for lighting fixtures) from human skin and bones. That is why Ilsa got another sad nickname - “Frau Lampshade”. A lot of witnesses were discovered who claimed that the commandant’s wife and her accomplice Dr. Kremer (yes, the same one killed by Karl Koch) were actually doing something similar. However, prosecutors failed to find physical evidence, so the “Witch of Buchenwald” was not sentenced to death. death penalty: He was just sent to prison. Ilsa spent about twenty years in prison, after which she hanged herself in her cell.
Ilse Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP leader, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. Included in the list of the most violent women in the world. Best known by her pseudonym “Frau Lampshaded”
It is also known that she willingly shared her secrets on “handicrafts” with her fellow guards. The greatest value for the devil needlewoman was the skin of gypsies and Soviet prisoners with tattoos on their backs and chests. Prisoners of war disfigured their skin in those places where they had tattoos, they preferred to die in gas chambers, just so as not to become part of " creative ideas Bitches of Buchenwald."
No wonder the prisoners called her a bitch. The devil in female form, she set dogs on emaciated, sick prisoners, pregnant women... Her fantasy in the field of causing suffering had no limits, she constantly came up with more and more sophisticated methods of murder and torture.
Karl Koch was less inventive in this regard than his wife. The prisoners were afraid of the “bitch” Koch much more than of himself. Such “entertainment” of the Koch couple did not go unnoticed by the authorities.
In 1941, the SS court accused Ilsa and Karl Koch of “excessive cruelty and moral decay,” but they were never punished. Three years later, in 1944, they were again brought to justice.
And this time one of them failed to escape punishment. Ironically, Karl Koch was shot in the same place where thousands of prisoners died at his hands. On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and in 1947 sentenced to life imprisonment. However, a few years later, American General Lucius Clay, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of ordering executions and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.
This decision caused public protest, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.
On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in the Bavarian prison of Eibach.
Collection of human skin samples with tattoos of Buchenwald prisoners
Ilse Koch at the trial of former Buchenwald personnel
This cannot be forgotten. Ilse Koch: what the “Witch of Buchenwald” and “Frau Lampshaded” did
Frau Lampshaded wore underwear made of human skin.
Ilse Köhler was not cruel or sadistic as a child. She was born in Dresden into the family of a factory worker: they lived not richly, but without poverty. Ilsa studied with excellent marks; eyewitnesses spoke of her as a cheerful and diligent child. After school, Fraulein Köhler went to work in the library. Visitors praised the new employee in unison: “sweet girl,” “helpful and friendly,” “pure angel.” However, in the soul of the angel, demons had already prevailed: in 1932, even before Hitler came to power, Ilse joined the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (NSDAP), and in 1934 she married SS officer Karl-Otto Koch (taking his last name ), and in 1936 she got a job as a matron in concentration camp Sachsenhausen. A year later, Koch was appointed commandant of the notorious Buchenwald: there, the “helpful and friendly” Ilse turned into a monster.
POW Bra
Thirty-year-old Ilsa immediately drew attention to prisoners with tattoos, first of all, former criminals, and then sailors who had previously sailed to Japan or Malaya: they made drawings on the skin with red or green ink, unusual for that time. The “librarian” was also interested in gypsies: their tattoos often depicted devils, devils or mermaids. One fine day (in December 1940), Ilse Koch appeared at a Christmas reception for SS officers and boasted there of a brand new handbag with a drawing of a red monkey: she did not at all hide the fact that the handbag itself and the thin ladies’ gloves “included” were made... from human skin .According to the testimony of former prisoners of Buchenwald, Ilse launched a real hunt for people with tattoos in the concentration camp. The victims chosen by her, under the pretext of a medical examination, were taken to the camp infirmary and there they were killed by lethal injection: the commandant forbade the execution so as not to spoil the “picture” with a bullet. Pathologists “skinned” the corpse, and then the skin fell into the hands of dressing specialists (also from among the prisoners). The wives of SS officers gasped enviously when they came to Ilsa’s home: she showed off her leather lampshades self made, book bindings, paintings on the walls and even a tablecloth for kitchen table from the back of a Parisian cabaret singer. In 1941, the commandant's wife received the rank of senior matron: although her husband was transferred to Majdanek, she remained working in Buchenwald. For her terrible hobby, the “pure angel” received the nickname “Frau Lampshade” among the prisoners.
However, she generally had plenty of nicknames: “Red Witch” (for her love of tattoos in red ink), “The Beast of Buchenwald”, “The Butcher’s Widow”. In her addiction, she reached complete madness: Ilse Koch even made her underwear from human skin. The number of people killed by her cannot be counted: there were probably hundreds of them. After the German attack on the USSR, Ilsa, in a conversation with her friends, rejoiced: Soviet prisoners of war began to arrive at Buchenwald, many had tattoos on their chests in the form of church domes or coats of arms Soviet Union. Such people were killed within 2-3 days after arriving in Buchenwald. Doctor Erich Wagner, bribed by Ilsa, helped hide the death, indicating a heart attack in the “cause of death” column.
Ilse Koch before the US military tribunal in Dachau, 8/7/1947
Poisoned pregnant women with a shepherd dog
Products made from human skin are not all that the commandant’s wife distinguished herself with. As a warden, she regularly beat the inhabitants of the camp with a whip, set a shepherd dog on pregnant women, receiving real sadistic pleasure from the sight of blood. According to Buchenwald prisoners, they were not as afraid of even the cruelest SS guards as they were of this crazy creature in black uniform. In addition to murders and lampshade production, Ilse Koch was engaged in “earning money.” Both she and her husband stole jewelry from dead people sent to the gas chamber: as a rule, these were gold teeth, earrings and wedding rings. In total, the SS couple stole gold worth a million Reichsmarks.The SS leadership turned a blind eye to the bloody massacres of prisoners in the concentration camp, but could not forgive the theft of finances. On August 24, 1943, Ilse and her husband were arrested on charges of “personal enrichment, causing economic damage to the Reich and physically eliminating witnesses to their crimes.” Frau Lampshaded was kept in prison for 16 months and eventually released: during this time, the camp priest, who promised to give necessary readings. Soon the Red Witch became a widow: for the theft of “funds belonging to Germany,” Standartenführer Koch was sentenced to death. The ex-commandant appealed to the judges, asking to be sent to a penal battalion on the Eastern Front, but they did not hear the request: on April 5, 1945, Koch was shot.
Exhibition of human remains and artifacts recovered by the US Army from the SS-run pathology laboratory at Buchenwald. These items were used as evidence of SS atrocities in the Buchenwald war crimes trial
Disappearance of “souvenirs”
The American soldiers who liberated Buchenwald were shocked by the prisoners' stories about Ilse Koch. In addition, they discovered in the guards' house a collection straight out of a horror movie: human internal organs in beautiful jars, tied with ribbons like gifts. On June 30, 1945, Ilse Koch was taken into custody by the American military administration, and in 1947 she was sentenced to life in prison. However, by this time she was eight months pregnant (she managed to get pregnant from a captured German soldier with whom she was sharing a cell).
Soon, General Lucius Clay, commandant of the US occupation zone in Germany, said: despite the testimony of dozens of eyewitnesses, there is no direct evidence that Ilse Koch skinned people and made handbags out of it. All the “souvenirs” mysteriously disappeared. And, according to Clay, the main thing: “She did not kill American or other citizens of allied countries, so there is no reason to keep her behind bars.” And Ilsa herself calmly told the press: yes, she was fond of making leather items for the home, but only from goat skins.
Frau Lampshaded was released, and this led to such widespread outrage that in 1949, West German authorities arrested Ilse Koch. Four witnesses testified at the trial: they personally saw how, on the orders of the commandant, they killed tattooed prisoners and removed their skin; they observed with their own eyes lampshades sewn from it. The court did not believe them. However, there were enough other crimes: the former librarian from Dresden was never released. On September 1, 1967, sixty-year-old Ilse Koch rolled a rope out of a sheet and hanged herself in her cell at the Aichach women's prison. Shortly before her death, she complained of hallucinations: dead Buchenwald prisoners came to her through the walls and demanded her skin back. Frau Lampshaded has simply gone crazy.
Ilse Koch leaves the courtroom
From Karl-Otto Koch, Ilse gave birth to two sons. One of them subsequently (twenty years after the war) committed suicide, leaving a note: “I cannot live with the knowledge of my parents’ crimes.” The third son, named Ove (from a soldier-prisoner of war), gave several interviews to Western newspapers in 1971, declaring that he was going to “clear the name of his mother, who had turned into a monster.” Fortunately, it turned out that no one around him cared about his revelations. Warden Ilse Koch remained in history as she was: a mentally ill, sadistic killer in the service of the Nazi regime.
N.B. And after this and a million other completely stubborn criminals of the Nazi regime, some arrogant, stupid and fucking foreign minister of England was beyond belief... The height of moral ugliness. You have to be so bitter