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"There is no other way out for me, death is the only liberation"

  • Full Name : Margaret Ilse Kohler
  • Date : 1906-1967

  • Nicknames : Buchenwald's Fox

  • Atrocities : torture, selective killings, ordering prisoners from the Buchenwald camp to be skinned to make objects such as lamps, gloves or book covers with their skin
  • Evil Level : 10/10

In the high spheres of the Third Reich there was no woman, beyond the wives of the Nazi jerifaltes, but the women were very present in the concentration and extermination camps, where guardians like Irma Grese, Maria Mandel and Herthe Bothe executed with sadistic precision your own macabre dance. Among them, there is one that stands out for the cruelty and determination with which he performed his sinister work: Ilse Koch , the Buchenwald Fox .

In his childhood and adolescence, nothing presaged that Ilse would become one of the greatest exponents of Nazi barbarism. If a reporter had gone to ask their neighbors, they would have said very convinced that she was an adorable red-haired girl with green eyes, very friendly to her friends and unable to hurt or mistreat another human being . Appearances, you know, cheat.

Ilse left the factory where he worked since the age of 15 and went on to work as a clerk in a bookstore. There he had a relationship with the high command of the newly created National Socialist Party. Among them was Karl Koch , a greedy climb of the SS who soon ascended the Nazi ladder by virtue of his friendship with Heinrich Himmler and his impeccable curriculum as a bloodthirsty jailer. The wedding between Ilse and Karl was held the same year in which he was assigned to lead the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen . There, both began to implement some of the atrocities that later became the norm in their next destination.

The Koch marriage participated in the design of Buchenwald , near Weimar, at whose entrance the inscription was read To each one what he deserves . For its construction, thousands of prisoners were used to deforest a vast area, in which only an oak known as Goethe was saved, under which, according to legend, the genius of the Germanic letters had worked in Faust . That tree would be a silent witness to the horrors committed by the Koch.

The wives of the Nazi commanders in charge of supervising the concentration camps had no duty other than to housewives, a kind of self-imposed blindness to the atrocities that took place in front of their arose noses. According to dozens of witnesses in the three trials he faced, Ilse Koch was different: he enjoyed getting involved in even the smallest details of Buchenwald's day-to-day life , especially those that had to do with torturing, humiliating and killing.

One of his favorite hobbies was to dress provocatively and show his charms to newcomers to the field . If any prisoner dared to look at her directly, she received a beating that used to end in death.

But his worst crimes were those he created and carried out with one of his supposed lovers, Waldemar Hoven, head of the Buchenwald medical research department. Ilse ordered the prisoners to form completely naked ranks and was pointing with his whip to those who had tattoos. Most of them were executed and their bodies taken to the operating room, where their skin was removed , which was used to make objects such as book covers, gloves or lampshades . His macabre aesthetic sense, only comparable to that of Ed Gein, also included reduced heads such as paperweight and, according to several witnesses, fingers closed as light switches.

In 1943, the Nazis themselves judged the Koch marriage . The charges were embezzlement, forgery, threats to officers and murder. During the trial, Karl was found guilty, among other things, for pocketing large sums by extorting the wealthiest Jewish prisoners. The Nazi court sentenced him to death, while his wife was sentenced to five years in prison for receiving stolen property. She staged a nervous breakdown that earned her acquittal and left Buchenwald with her two children to move to Ludwigsburg with her sister-in-law.

A year later, after the definitive liberation of the camp by the US troops in April 1945, some images taken by Billy Wilder went around the world: there was the table with reduced heads, human skins with tattoos used as decorative elements, the famous lamp that nobody could find and use as evidence in the trials of Dachau .

At the time of taking the stand, in 1947, Ilse was pregnant, despite the incommunicado regime ordered by the authorities. It is still unknown today if it was a strategy to avoid the death penalty and who was the father of his fourth child. Due to lack of evidence, the sentence was eventually reduced to four years, and his release by the Americans raised a strong popular outrage and inspired a song by Woody Guthrie . Soon, she was arrested again by the German authorities and sentenced to life imprisonment.

When he turned 20, Uwe, the son who was born during his stay in prison, discovered who his mother was and visited her in Aichach prison. A month later, on September 2, 1967, Ilse wrote a farewell note to his son and hanged himself by tying the sheets on his bed. "There is no other way out for me, death is the only salvation," said the note. He was wrong: his name remains one of the best synonyms for Nazi barbarism.

Villains of History

Next delivery: the Duke of Lerma

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