Ilse Koch – war crimes

Known as "the concentration camp murderess", Ilse Koch, was one of the numerous nazis prosecuted for committing horrific war crimes during the Holocaust. Koch began working in 1936 as a guard at Sachsenhausen, where her husband, Karl-Otto, was the camp commander. Although she rejects such claims, the following year Koch was suspected to have taken part in a inhumane experiment in which she was accused of taking souvenirs from the tattooed skin of murdered jews. In 1940, she moved to Buchenwald and built an indoor sports arena using $62,500 that she had taken from the inmates. When Karl Otto was transferred to Lublin in 1941, Ilse Koch remained at Buchenwald until 1943, the year of her arrest. The charges held against both the Kochs consisted of private enrichment, embezzlement, as well as the murder of helpless prisoners. Ilse Koch was imprisoned until 1944 after being acquitted for lack of evidence. Being left a widow once her husband had been executed for his acts of crime, Koch went to live in Ludwigsbur with her surviving family, where she was arrested again by US authorities a year later in 1945.