Ilse Koch

During her first trial, she announced in the courtroom about her pregnancy. It could have been Waldemar Hoven, the chief medical doctor’s or Hermann Florstedt, the Deputy Commandant’s baby.

This announcement of her pregnancy shocked the court because the 41 year old Koch was kept isolated during that time.

Ilse Koch was born Margaret Ilse Köhler on 22 September 1906 in Dresden, Saxony, German Empire, as the daughter of a factory supervisor.

Ilse was a happy and carefree child and led a peaceful childhood.

At the age of 15, she started studying in an accountancy school and started her career as a bookkeeping clerk.

In 1932, she became an affiliate of the rising Nazi Party.

In 1934, her friends in the SA and SS introduced her to Karl Otto Koch, head of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

In 1936, she started working as the guard and secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

In 1936, Ilse went with her husband Otto Koch to the newly built concentration camp in Buchenwald near Weimar where she took up the position of a SS-Aufseherin (supervisor).

While at Buchenwald, she was involved in a ghastly experiment when she conducted the murders of selected tattooed prisoners. Their tattooed skin were retrieved which used to help a prison doctor, Erich Wagner (de) in his thesis on tattooing and criminality.

In 1940, she built an indoor sports arena by the money looted from the prison inmates.

On 24 August 1943, she and her husband were arrested on the orders of Josias von Waldeck-Pyrmont, the SS and Police Leader for Weimar, Buchenwald.

In 1947, Koch was arraigned before the American military court at Dachau (General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals) and her prosecutor was Judge Robert L. Kunzig. She was accused of "participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald”.

On 19 August 1947, she was sentenced to life captivity for violating the laws and customs of war.

On 8 June 1948, after she had spent two years in prison, General Lucius D. Clay, the provisional military governor of the American Zone in Germany, cut down the judgment to four years of imprisonment because of a lack of evidence.

In 1949, Ilse Koch was arrested again. The trial opened on 27 November 1950 before the District Court at Augsburg in West Germany. It lasted seven weeks.

In late December 1950 and later on 11 January 1951, Koch collapsed in the courtroom and had to be carried away.