Ilse Koch
German war criminal, wife of camp commandant Karl-Otto Koch (1906-1967) · Germany · Died at 60
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Something wrong?Wife of the Buchenwald commandant, she became one of history's most widely known Nazi figures through sensational postwar accusations - lampshades made from human skin, selections for death - that two separate courts found unsupported by evidence. The rumors persisted anyway.
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Spouse: Karl-Otto KochAbout this person
Margarete Ilse Koch was born 22 September 1906. She held no official position in Nazi Germany but lived at Buchenwald concentration camp while her husband Karl-Otto Koch commanded it. Survivors testified to sadistic acts; newspapers around the world reported in 1947 that she had ordered prisoners killed to make lampshades and other objects from tattooed skin. Her U.S. military commission trial at Dachau that year drew global attention. Yet American Army lawyers reviewing the conviction noted the record contained little convincing evidence, and "in regard to the widely publicised charges that she ordered inmates killed for their tattooed skin, the record is especially silent." A 1950-1951 West German trial reached the same conclusion. Inmates had called her "The Witch of Buchenwald." She hanged herself at Aichach women's prison on 1 September 1967, a day before her sixty-first birthday.
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