Ilse Koch was the wife of a Colonel who was in charge of the Sachsenhausen camp. In the summer of 1937 he was transferred to Buchenwald which at the time was a new concentration camp. What we know about her started upon her arival to the camp. According to sources she would go around the camp and choose prisoners with tatoo markings that she liked and would have officers take the prisoners away to be killed and have their skin with their tatoo cut off and tanned so that she could use it later. She used human skin to make Lampshades, bookcovers, and gloves and added them to her collection that she had now stareted to amass. In addition to using skin to make these items, she would have prisoners perfrom harsh physical actitivies to tire them for her won amusement.
After WWII Ilse and her children moved to a suburban neghborhood where she was rrested and tried for her crimes. HEr sentance was reduced to much outrage and then she was arrested once again for her treatment of prisoners. She would go on to hang herself in a women prison in 1967
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ilse-Koch
http://www.auschwitz.dk/Women/Koch.htm
This is very fascinating. It is interesting to see how treatment of soldiers varied on such a dramatic scale. And how due to her husband being a leader she probably grew accustom to treating the "inferior" race in that manor. Also that she ended up taking her life, why then? Did she feel guilt? If so why wouldn't have she hung herself sooner? Or was the the possibility of going to prison that sent her down that path?
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