Ilse Koch, infamously known as the “Witch of Buchenwald” and the “Bitch of Buchenwald,” was one of the most notorious female figures of the Nazi regime. Married to SS commandant Karl-Otto Koch, she reigned over the Buchenwald concentration camp with a combination of sadism, sexual depravity, and an almost theatrical cruelty. Her death in 1967 was as dark and unsettling as the legacy she left behind.
Ilse Koch's cruelty was unmatched even among the depraved ranks of Nazi concentration camp personnel. Witnesses and survivors accused her of selecting prisoners with distinctive tattoos, having them killed, and using their skin to create lampshades, book covers, and other macabre trophies. Though direct physical evidence of the lampshades was never conclusively proven, the accusations became a lasting symbol of Nazi barbarity.
She was known for her sexual perversion and psychological torment of inmates. Prisoners recalled how she paraded around the camp in provocative clothing, flaunting her power and taking a disturbing pleasure in the suffering of others. Her beauty and charm masked a deeply twisted personality, one that used seduction and violence interchangeably to dominate both victims and fellow SS personnel.
After the war, Ilse Koch was arrested by American forces in 1945. At the Dachau Trials in 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes, particularly crimes against humanity committed at Buchenwald. However, in a controversial move, her sentence was later reduced to four years by General Lucius D. Clay, citing insufficient evidence. The public outcry was swift and furious, prompting German authorities to re-arrest her. In 1951, she was tried again by a West German court, this time receiving a life sentence that would stick.
For the next 16 years, Koch remained imprisoned in the Aichach women’s prison in Bavaria. Her mental state deteriorated steadily over the years. She continued to maintain her innocence, even as the world saw her as the embodiment of female evil under Nazism. In prison, she gave birth to a son fathered by another inmate, whom she was allowed to keep for two years before he was taken away—adding a disturbing human twist to her already grotesque story.
On September 1, 1967, Ilse Koch ended her life by suicide, hanging herself with bed sheets in her prison cell. Her death was as grim as the life she had led—a final act of control from a woman who had once relished wielding absolute power over life and death.