Buchenwald Concentration camp was one of the biggest internment camps on German soil. It was established in July 1937 to imprison the political enemies of the Nazis- and any other groups who they considered ‘unfit.’ Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, resistance fighters, and communists were all interred at Buchenwald. The lack of gas chambers in the camp would have been small comfort to the prisoners as they acted as slave labor, were starved, beaten and used for experiments. These daily torments were made worse by the prospect of an encounter with one of the camps most sadistic overseers: Frau Ilse Koch, the ‘witch of Buchenwald”.
As the wife of the commandant Karl Otto Koch, IIse Koch did not need to work in Buchenwald. However, she saw it as less of a job and more of a sadistic hobby. An attractive redhead, she delighted in patrolling Buchenwald, tormenting the prisoners with her beauty while punishing any who reacted to her, earning herself the title the ‘bitch’ or ‘witch of Buchenwald.’ Koch even managed to cross the line with the Nazis, who arrested her and her husband in 1943. However, it was not until after the war that Koch was indeed made to face her crimes.
Life before Buchenwald
Margarete IIse Kohler was born in Dresden on September 22, 1906, the daughter of a factory foreman. Her early life was happy and normal. She grew up in a stable home and was popular and successful at school. At fifteen, she progressed onto an accounting college where she qualified as a bookkeeping clerk. However, some discontent was gnawing at Ilse because in 1932, when she was working for a Dresden accountancy firm that she developed an interest in the Nazi party and began to attend local meetings. It was there she met her future husband, Colonel Karl Otto Koch.
Koch was an SS officer, nine years older than Ilse. He had joined the Nazi party in 1924 after his first marriage failed. Koch was ‘a born criminal’ according to Dr. Georg Konrad Morgen who presided over Koch’s trial in 1943. “In his youth, he started with thefts of postal banks. Then he and his brother were stool pigeons for the police. The whole family is criminal, ” Dr. Morgan later declared. The SS, however, gave Koch a focus for his ‘talents’ and enabled him to let his brutal nature off the leash.
According to The Buchenwald Report, which was compiled by American officers from the testimony of prisoners after the War, Koch was particularly sadistic. While at the notorious Columbia Street Prison in Berlin, he had his prisoners locked in doghouses, chained by the neck and forced to eat out of dog bowls. “Anyone failing to bark when Koch walked by received twenty-five lashes with a cane, ” claimed the report. One prisoner was beaten senseless and had hot asphalt stuffed into his anus, after which he was forced to drink castor oil. In this way, Koch managed to “distinguish himself” and become commander of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
If Ilse was aware of this side of Koch, it did not seem to bother her. In 1936, she abandoned her bookkeeping post to become first a secretary and later a female guard at Sachsenhausen. On May 29, 1937, she and Koch married. Only a few months later, in August 1937, Colonel Koch was assigned a brand new camp: Buchenwald. Opened in July 1937, it was situated 4.5 miles northwest of Weimar. Specifically designed as a work camp for political and social ‘undesirables,” the first thing that greeted new prisoners was the sign over the gate: “Jedem das Seine” -‘To each his own.” The implication was, everyone who entered Buchenwald got what they deserved.
For Ilse Koch, this initially involved a luxurious house out of sight of the camp’s barracks and her own horse-riding arena, built for her by her husband from funds stolen from the prisoners. During their time at Buchenwald, the Koch’s had three children: Artwin, Gisele, and Gudrun. However, IIse was not content to be a dutiful German housewife. With the approval of her husband, in 1941 she began to play a more active role in the camp as SS Oberaufseherin or overseer.