pWotD Episode 3079: Ilse Koch

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With 290,364 views on Monday, 6 October 2025 our article of the day is Ilse Koch.

Ilse Koch (22 September 1906 – 1 September 1967) was a German war criminal who committed atrocities while her husband Karl-Otto Koch was commandant at Buchenwald. Though Ilse Koch had no official position in the Nazi state, she became one of the most infamous Nazi 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 tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins, her 1947 U. S. military commission court trial at Dachau 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 lasciviousness 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 killed herself at Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967 at age 60.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:46 UTC on Tuesday, 7 October 2025.

For the full current version of the article, see Ilse Koch on Wikipedia.

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Until next time, I'm standard Joanna.