The Horrific Crimes of Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
Ilse Koch, notoriously known as the “Bitch of Buchenwald,” stands as one of the most infamous figures in the brutal history of Nazi Germany. Born Margarete Ilse Köhler on 22 September 1906, her life began unremarkably in Dresden, but she would go on to become a symbol of unimaginable cruelty and sadism during her time at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
As the wife of Commandant Karl Otto Koch, Ilse used her position to torment prisoners in ways that shocked even the Nazi regime itself. Accused of heinous crimes, including the collection of human skin for gruesome artefacts, Koch’s role in the atrocities of the Holocaust remains one of the darkest chapters of World War II history. Her life, trials, and mysterious legacy continue to raise questions about the depths of human depravity, earning her a place in history as one of the most feared women of the Third Reich.
Ilse Koch's early life was far from extraordinary. Raised by a factory foreman, her childhood was described as unremarkable, with her teachers noting her as polite and content. At the age of 15, she enrolled in accounting school—one of the few professional opportunities available to women at the time. She soon found work as a bookkeeping clerk in post-World War I Germany, a period marked by profound economic turmoil and social disillusionment.
In the early 1930s, as Germany's struggles deepened, Koch, like many of her peers, joined the Nazi Party. Hitler’s ideology, promising economic recovery and the restoration of German pride, resonated with a populace beleaguered by the Treaty of Versailles and the hardships following the Great War. The Nazi Party first focused on turning the German people against democracy and the Weimar Republic, blaming its politicians for Germany’s defeat and subsequent miseries.
Adolf Hitler, with his magnetic speeches and promises of abolishing the hated Treaty of Versailles, captivated Koch and others. The treaty had stripped Germany of its military might and forced it to pay enormous reparations, worsening the already dire economic situation. Many Germans, like Koch, were desperate for solutions, and the Nazi Party appeared to offer hope.
The Buchenwald Years
It was through her involvement in the Nazi Party that Koch met her future husband, Karl Otto Koch. They married in 1936, and the following year, Karl Koch was appointed Commandant of Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, located near Weimar. The camp, which opened shortly after Dachau, was marked by an iron gate inscribed with the words *Jedem das Seine*, meaning “to each his own.” However, for the prisoners, it carried a far more sinister implication: “Everyone gets what he deserves.”
Ilse Koch quickly embraced the chance to actively participate in her husband’s gruesome work at Buchenwald, seizing the opportunity to carve out her own place within the Nazi regime. Far from staying in the background, she became one of the most feared and sadistic figures at the camp. Her cruelty and desire for power were evident from the outset.
One of her earliest acts was to commission the construction of an extravagant indoor sports arena, costing $62,500—a fortune at the time, equivalent to roughly $1 million today. The money for this lavish project was stolen from the very prisoners she and her husband oversaw, highlighting her complete disregard for human life and suffering.
Koch’s love of horseback riding became another tool for her cruelty. She frequently rode not just within the arena but also through the camp itself, where her presence was met with terror. Prisoners who made the mistake of catching her eye were met with brutal consequences. She took pleasure in taunting those already enduring unimaginable conditions, sometimes whipping those who dared to look at her as she passed. Her actions, particularly towards children and the vulnerable, solidified her reputation as one of Buchenwald’s most merciless tormentors, a woman whose cruelty knew no bounds.
Survivors of Buchenwald would later claim during her trial that Koch took special pleasure in sending children to the gas chambers. Another horrifying aspect of her sadistic behaviour was her supposed fascination with human skin. It was claimed that she collected lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of prisoners—particularly those with distinctive tattoos. These prisoners were said to be skinned after execution, and their remains were then incinerated. Items reportedly made from human skin were found after the camp’s liberation and used as evidence during her trial.
This crime, however, has been said to be apocryphal. While various objects fashioned from human skins were discovered in Buchenwald's pathology department at liberation, their connection to Koch was tenuous, given that she had not been at the camp since the summer of 1943. The more likely culprit was SS doctor Erich Wagner, who wrote a dissertation while serving at Buchenwald on the purported link he saw between habitual criminality and the practice of tattooing one's skin.
Arrest and Trials
On 24 August 1943, both Karl and Ilse were arrested following an investigation led by SS judge Konrad Morgen. Morgen's indictment, issued 17 August 1944, formally charged Karl Koch with the "embezzlement and concealing of funds and goods in an amount of at least 200,000 RM," and the "premeditated murder" of three inmates - ostensibly to prevent them from giving evidence to the SS investigatory commission. Ilse was charged with the "habitual receiving of stolen goods, and taking for her benefit at least 25,000 RM..." While Ilse Koch was acquitted at the subsequent SS trial in December 1944, Karl was found guilty, sentenced to death, and ultimately executed at Buchenwald only days prior to its liberation.
Despite their numerous crimes, Ilse Koch was initially acquitted due to a lack of conclusive evidence. While the grisly lampshades and other items were recovered, investigators could not prove they were made from human skin. Koch herself insisted they were made from goatskin.
The liberation of the camp brought Koch’s sadistic actions into the public eye. Survivors gave interviews detailing her atrocities, and there was a public outcry for her to face justice. In 1947, she was brought before the General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals.
Koch conceived another child with a fellow German war crimes internee under murky circumstances while awaiting her trial at Dachau. Koch gave birth to a son she named Uwe Köhler while incarcerated at Landsberg prison in October 1947. The child was immediately handed over to Bavarian child welfare authorities. Uwe only discovered the identity of his mother as a teenager, and began to correspond with, and visit, his mother in 1966.
Clemency and Rearrest
In a controversial turn of events, General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, reduced Koch’s sentence to just four years in 1949.
The reduction of Koch's sentence to four years resulted in an uproar, when it was made public, but Clay stood firm by his decision. Years later, Clay stated:
There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lampshades were made out of goat skin. In addition to that, her crimes were primarily against the German people; they were not war crimes against American or Allied prisoners [...] Later she was tried by a German court for her crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment. But they had clear jurisdiction. We did not.
However, he added: “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 public was outraged by her release, and Koch was soon rearrested. During her second trial in 1950, she frequently collapsed and had to be removed from the courtroom. The proceedings saw over 250 witnesses testify, with four witnesses confirming they had seen Koch selecting prisoners for their tattoos or had been involved in creating human-skin lampshades. However, due to a lack of concrete evidence, the charge was once again dropped.
On 15 January 1951, Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment, convicted of “charges of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm.”
Final Years and Legacy
During her imprisonment, Koch appealed her conviction multiple times, but all were dismissed. She even petitioned the International Human Rights Commission but was again rejected. Her son, Uwe, born during her imprisonment at Dachau, discovered his mother’s identity later in life and visited her frequently in prison.
Koch hanged herself with a bed sheet at Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967 at age 60. She experienced delusions and had become convinced that concentration camp survivors would abuse her in her cell. Her suicide note was written to her son Uwe:
"There is no other way. Death for me is a release."
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. She was buried in an unmarked grave at the prison’s cemetery.
The mystery surrounding the infamous lampshades endures. While many historians doubt their existence, a Jewish writer named Mark Jacobson sought to verify the story after a man named Skip Hendersen purchased a lampshade said to be a Nazi relic. Initial DNA testing suggested the lampshade was made from human skin, but later tests pointed to it being cowskin. This uncertainty remains one of the many dark secrets Koch took to her grave, leaving behind a legacy of cruelty and horror that continues to haunt history.
Ilse Koch will forever be remembered as the Bitch of Buchenwald, a symbol of the extremes of human depravity and the unchecked cruelty that defined the Nazi regime.