Why is the Nazi Ilse Koch called the Skin Lady?

In the concentration camps established by Nazi Germany for genocide, there was no shortage of inhumane executioners. Names like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele have long been known to the public. In fact, there was no shortage of female guards and service personnel in the Nazi concentration camps. And Ilse Koch was the “best” of the bunch. Her cruelty and crimes were so heinous that she was called "The Whore of Buchenwald" and "The Lady of Human Skin" by the victims of the concentration camp.

On September 22, 1906, "Mrs. Skin" was born in Dresden - a city that would later become world-famous for its destruction. Her life experience is not prominent, her father is a small foreman in a factory. Like many German girls, she was polite and had a happy childhood. When she was 15 she went to accounting school. By the time he graduated, it was already after the First World War. Making a living as an accountant amid Germany's economic revitalization.

The real turning point in her life was in the 1930s. When Hitler took over the power and started causing trouble, she and many other German youths at that time were deceived by Hitler's lies, joined the Nazi Party, and became a pawn of the Nazis in the upcoming war. At first, the targets of their struggle were members of the Weimar Communist Party and other democratic parties. But when the Nazi Party came into power, they targeted minorities in Germany, especially the Jews.

As an accountant, the weakness of the German economy cannot escape Iles's eyes. Like thousands of Germans, she had lost hope in Weimar. Instead, she listened to Hitler and devoted herself to the so-called "revival of Germany." It was also in the Nazi Party that she met Karl-Otto Koch, her future husband and an equally heinous executioner. In 1936, the pair of devils officially got married.

The following year, Karl-Otto became the commander of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. This concentration camp was one of the earliest and largest concentration camps in Germany, opening only slightly later than the equally notorious Dachau concentration camp. And its slogan "Everyone gets what he deserves" is as shameless a lie as the Auschwitz phrase "Labor creates freedom"! Koch followed her husband to Buchenwald, where she naturally became a female guard and the commander's wife. In the years that followed, the name came to represent Buchenwald's most feared Nazi figurehead. The first thing she did when she took office was to spend a huge sum of $25,000 to build an indoor gymnasium so that she could practice horseback riding there. There is no doubt that this money was robbed and looted from prisoners. Her early accounting studies and working life did not teach her to be thrifty, but instead encouraged her extravagant style. However, although she built a gymnasium, she did not use it often, preferring to ride a horse around the camp like a queen rather than riding a horse alone in the gymnasium. Buchenwald survivors alleged after the war that Ilse would raise her riding crop to any prisoner she displeased, while spewing an unimaginable variety of obscenities. It was as if these prisoners were the slaves of an ancient lord. What's even more irritating is that when she coaxed the children into the gas chambers, you couldn't detect a trace of uneasiness on her face. Her face was filled with the same smile as when she was chatting with relatives and friends. .

When the concentration camp was liberated by the U.S. military on April 11, 1945, the U.S. military discovered a large number of exquisite "crafts" including beautifully bound books, gorgeously patterned lampshades, and lifelike miniature human heads. . But who would have thought that every piece of art like this contains the ghosts of one or more prisoners who were tortured to death! The lampshade and the cover of the book are all made of human skin, and the human head is even more terrifying. It was made from the head of a Soviet prisoner of war through a series of complicated processes. And these are undoubtedly the "masterpieces" of Ilse Koch. She has also become a real-life version of "Mrs. Skin". The survivors discovered that some of their tattooed companions often "disappeared" inexplicably, and these people were naturally Ilse's prey.

Some prisoners believed that when the concentration camp commander Karl-Otto was away, Ilse would take the tattooed prisoners away, cut off their skin after forcing them to have sex with her, and then throw the bodies into the incinerator and burn them.

In August 1943, Ilse and her husband were arrested by the Nazi authorities in Buchenwald. This was certainly not because the fascists were benevolent and thought they were inhumane, but because they had appropriated information from prisoners. The money stolen from the robbery was used to line his own pockets. However, even the Nazis responsible for the search and evidence collection failed to discover Ilse's unusual "collection". Eales claimed that the lampshades and book covers were made of goatskin.

On April 6, 1945, Karl Otto was executed by firing squad. At this time, Iles had been released last year and was transferred to work in Dachau. When Victory Day arrived in 1945 and the Allies began to liquidate the war crimes committed by the Nazis, Ilse Koch was re-arrested by the US military due to the evidence of survivors. At her trial in 1947, she claimed that she was eight months pregnant. She was now 41 years old and had had almost no contact with anyone before her trial. In view of this, the US military claimed that she "abetted and participated in the massacre in Buchenwald". In fact, many heinous crimes were committed by her, and more often than not she was the executor. She was therefore sentenced to life in prison.

Long before the couple were arrested, she had a son with Carl Otto. The father of the second child is still undetermined, in order to prevent the child from being cast aside because of his parents. , they were all sent to other families.

Only two years after her conviction, the US military authorities commuted Eales' sentence on the grounds of "insufficient evidence." The famous Nazi witch was released after just two years in prison. However, it was clear that the Germans, who had clearly seen the nature of the Nazis, rearrested her. In the trial on January 15, 1951, the court sentenced Eales in absentia in a 111-page trial document for "crimes against humanity, massacre, and intentional injury" and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. On September 1, 1967, Iles, who had committed countless crimes, committed suicide in prison. Her son found her body the next day. Iles himself was buried in an inconspicuous pit in the prison, and was slowly forgotten in the corner of history.

If people like Mengele and Eichmann could barely excuse themselves by using the so-called "obeying orders", then what "Mrs. Skin" did was entirely out of her own initiative. Pathological psychology. Because even for a devil like Hitler, it is difficult to imagine that he would sleep peacefully with a human skin lampshade beside his bed.