Frau is a lampshade, an angel of death and a beautiful ghost. A sophisticated sadist - a guard of Hitler's concentration camps, who took the lives of thousands of people (7 photos) Cruel guards of concentration camps

It’s no secret that in the concentration camps it was much worse than in modern prisons. Of course, there are cruel guards even now. But here you will find information about the 7 most cruel guards fascist concentration camps.

1. Irma Grese

Irma Grese - (October 7, 1923 - December 13, 1945) - warden of the Nazi death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Irma's nicknames included "Blonde Devil", "Angel of Death", and "Beautiful Monster". She used emotional and physical methods to torture prisoners, beat women to death, and enjoyed arbitrarily shooting prisoners. She starved her dogs so she could set them on victims, and personally selected hundreds of people to be sent to the gas chambers. Grese wore heavy boots and, in addition to a pistol, she always carried a wicker whip.

The Western post-war press constantly discussed the possible sexual deviations of Irma Grese, her numerous connections with the SS guards, with the commandant of Bergen-Belsen Joseph Kramer (“The Beast of Belsen”).

On April 17, 1945, she was captured by the British. The Belsen trial, initiated by a British military tribunal, lasted from September 17 to November 17, 1945. Together with Irma Grese, the cases of other camp workers were considered at this trial - commandant Joseph Kramer, warden Juanna Bormann, and nurse Elisabeth Volkenrath. Irma Grese was found guilty and sentenced to hang.

On the last night before her execution, Grese laughed and sang songs with her colleague Elisabeth Volkenrath. Even when a noose was thrown around Irma Grese’s neck, her face remained calm. Her last word was “Faster,” addressed to the English executioner.

2. Ilse Koch

Ilse Koch - (September 22, 1906 - September 1, 1967) - German NSDAP activist, wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps. She is best known by her pseudonym as “Frau Lampshaded.” She received the nickname “The Witch of Buchenwald” for her brutal torture of camp prisoners. Koch was also accused of making souvenirs from human skin (however, no reliable evidence of this was presented at the post-war trial of Ilse Koch).

On June 30, 1945, Koch was arrested by American troops and sentenced to death in 1947. life imprisonment. However, a few years later, American General Lucius Clay, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, released her, considering the charges of ordering executions and making souvenirs from human skin insufficiently proven.

This decision caused public protest, so in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested in West Germany. A German court again sentenced her to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1967, Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in the Bavarian prison of Eibach.

3. Louise Danz

Louise Danz - b. December 11, 1917 - matron of women's concentration camps. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but later released.

She began working in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then was transferred to Majdanek. Danz later served in Auschwitz and Malchow.

Prisoners later said they were abused by Danz. She beat them and confiscated the clothes they had been given for the winter. In Malchow, where Danz had the position of senior warden, she starved the prisoners, not giving food for 3 days. On April 2, 1945, she killed a minor girl.

Danz was arrested on June 1, 1945 in Lützow. At the trial of the Supreme National Tribunal, which lasted from November 24, 1947 to December 22, 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Released in 1956 due to health reasons (!!!). In 1996, she was charged with the aforementioned murder of a child, but it was dropped after doctors said Dantz would be too hard to bear if she was imprisoned again. She lives in Germany. She is now 94 years old.

4. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann - (May 30, 1922 - July 4, 1946) Worked as a fashion model from 1940 to December 1943. In January 1944, she became a guard at the small Stutthof concentration camp, where she became famous for brutally beating female prisoners, some of them to death. She also participated in the selection of women and children for the gas chambers. She was so cruel but also very beautiful that the female prisoners nicknamed her “Beautiful Ghost.”

Jenny fled the camp in 1945 when Soviet troops began to approach the camp. But she was caught and arrested in May 1945 while trying to leave the station in Gdansk. She is said to have flirted with the police officers guarding her and was not particularly worried about her fate. Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was found guilty, after which she was allowed to speak the last word. She stated, "Life is indeed great pleasure, and pleasure is usually short-lived."

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann was publicly hanged at Biskupka Gorka near Gdańsk on July 4, 1946. She was only 24 years old. Her body was burned and her ashes were publicly washed away in the latrine of the house where she was born.

5. Hertha Gertrude Bothe

Hertha Gertrude Bothe - (January 8, 1921 - March 16, 2000) - warden of women's concentration camps. She was arrested on charges of war crimes, but later released.

In 1942, she received an invitation to work as a guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After four weeks of preliminary training, Bothe was sent to Stutthof, a concentration camp located near the city of Gdansk. In it, Bothe received the nickname "Sadist of Stutthof" due to her cruel treatment of female prisoners.

In July 1944, she was sent by Gerda Steinhoff to the Bromberg-Ost concentration camp. From January 21, 1945, Bothe was a guard during the death march of prisoners from central Poland to the Bergen-Belsen camp. The march ended on February 20-26, 1945. In Bergen-Belsen, Bothe led a detachment of 60 women engaged in wood production.

After the liberation of the camp she was arrested. At the Belsen court she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Released earlier than stated on December 22, 1951. She died on March 16, 2000 in Huntsville, USA.

6. Maria Mandel

Maria Mandel (1912-1948) - Nazi war criminal. Occupying the post of head of the women's camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the period 1942-1944, she was directly responsible for the death of about 500 thousand female prisoners.

Mandel was described by fellow employees as an "extremely intelligent and dedicated" person. Auschwitz prisoners called her a monster among themselves. Mandel personally selected the prisoners, and sent thousands of them to the gas chambers. There are known cases when Mandel personally took several prisoners under her protection for a while, and when she got bored with them, she put them on the list for destruction. Also, it was Mandel who came up with the idea and creation of a women’s camp orchestra, which greeted newly arrived prisoners at the gate with cheerful music. According to the recollections of survivors, Mandel was a music lover and treated the musicians from the orchestra well, personally coming to their barracks with a request to play something.

In 1944, Mandel was transferred to the post of warden of the Muhldorf concentration camp, one of the parts of the Dachau concentration camp, where she served until the end of the war with Germany. In May 1945, she fled to the mountains near her hometown of Münzkirchen. On August 10, 1945, Mandel was arrested by American troops. In November 1946, she was handed over to the Polish authorities at their request as a war criminal. Mandel was one of the main defendants in the trial of Auschwitz workers, which took place in November-December 1947. The court sentenced her to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948 in a Krakow prison.

7. Hildegard Neumann

Hildegard Neumann (May 4, 1919, Czechoslovakia - ?) - senior warden at the Ravensbrück and Theresienstadt concentration camps, began her service at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in October 1944, immediately becoming chief warden. Due to her good work, she was transferred to the Theresienstadt concentration camp as the head of all the camp guards. Beauty Hildegard, according to the prisoners, was cruel and merciless towards them.

She supervised between 10 and 30 female police officers and over 20,000 female Jewish prisoners. Neumann also facilitated the deportation of more than 40,000 women and children from Theresienstadt to the death camps of Auschwitz (Auschwitz) and Bergen-Belsen, where most of them were killed. Researchers estimate that more than 100,000 Jews were deported from the Theresienstadt camp and were killed or died at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, with another 55,000 dying in Theresienstadt itself.

Neumann left the camp in May 1945 and faced no criminal liability for war crimes. The subsequent fate of Hildegard Neumann is unknown.

The next trial related to Nazi crimes may take place in Germany. As TASS reports with reference to the prosecutor's office of the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, a 91-year-old woman who from April to July 1944 served in a concentration camp located in Poland as a signalman and “provided assistance to criminals and their accomplices in the systematic murders of those brought from Jews of all Europe." Law enforcement agencies believe that this woman assisted in the murder of 260 thousand prisoners of Auschwitz. The name of the 91-year-old suspect has not been released.

A new round of investigation into cases related to Nazi crimes began after the verdict in the case of a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp Ivan Demjanjuk, who was found guilty of complicity in the murder of 28 thousand people.

In the Demjanjuk case, the court considered information about “indirect participation” in the crime sufficient to find the defendant guilty. This precedent made it possible to bring to justice those elderly Nazis who had previously escaped responsibility.

When it comes to talking about Nazi criminals whose atrocities shocked the world, they are most often called male names. However, the history of World War II knows examples when heinous crimes were the work of women.

Irma Grese. "Blonde Devil"

The warden of the death camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen went down in history under the nicknames “Blonde Devil” and “Angel of Death”.

Irma Grese, concentration camp guard. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

She was born on October 7, 1923 into an ordinary family of German peasants. At the age of 15, the girl left school, devoting herself to a career in the Union of German Girls. She tried to become a nurse, but the career did not work out, and in 1942, 19-year-old Irma enlisted in the SS auxiliary units, starting with a post in the Ravensbrück camp. In 1943, she became the senior guard at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

Heavy boots, a wicker whip and a pistol - with the help of these things the young woman enjoyed her power over the prisoners. She beat women to death, personally selected people to be sent to the gas chambers, and shot prisoners in random order. One of Grese’s favorite pastimes was baiting prisoners with guard dogs, who were starved in advance.

On April 17, 1945, she was captured by British troops. In September 1945, Grese became one of the defendants in the trial of the administration of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, her last place of service. In November 1945, the "blond devil" was sentenced to death.

No remorse 22 year old Irma Grese I haven't experienced it. The night before her execution, she had fun and sang songs. The Nazi was hanged on December 13, 1945.

Irma Grese and Josef Kramer in captivity. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Ilsa Koch. "Frau Lampshaded"

Wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps Karla Koch Ilse Koch known as the "Witch of Buchenwald".

She was born on September 22, 1906 in Dresden, into a working-class family. In her youth, Ilsa studied diligently and was a cheerful girl. Already in adulthood, at 26 years old, she joined the Nazis on the eve of their rise to power. In 1936, Ilse began working as a secretary and guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In the same year, she married like-minded Karl Koch, who in 1937 was appointed commandant of Buchenwald.

Ilsa Koch. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

From the moment Ilse Koch appeared in Buchenwald, she became famous for her harshness towards prisoners. Surviving prisoners said that the “Witch of Buchenwald,” while walking around the camp, beat people she met with a whip and set a shepherd dog on them.

Another passion of Mrs. Koch was original crafts made from human skin. She especially valued the skin of prisoners with tattoos, from which gloves, book bindings and lampshades were made. This is how Ilse Koch’s second nickname appeared - “Frau Lampshade”.

In July 1942, when the Koch couple were already working in Majdanek, Karl Koch was accused of corruption and removed from office. In the summer of 1943, Ilse and Karl Koch were arrested by the SS. In addition to corruption, Koch was accused of murdering two prisoners who secretly treated the concentration camp commandant for syphilis. In April 1945, shortly before the fall of Nazi Germany, Karl Koch was executed and his wife was released.

Ilse Koch was again arrested by representatives of the American army in June 1945. In 1947, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against concentration camp prisoners.

A few years later, the military commandant of the American occupation zone in Germany, General Lucius Clay, who considered her guilt unproven and released Ilsa Koch.

This decision caused widespread outrage in Germany, and in 1951 Ilse Koch was arrested again and resentenced to life imprisonment.

On September 1, 1967, Ilse Koch committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in the Bavarian prison of Aichach.

Antonina Makarova. "Tonka the Machine Gunner"

The woman who became the executioner of the so-called Lokot district became notorious under the nickname “Tonka the Machine Gunner.”

She was born in 1920 in the Smolensk region, into a large peasant family. At the age of 8, Tonya and her parents, brothers and sisters moved to Moscow. After graduating from school, she entered college and then technical school, planning to become a doctor.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War 21 year old Antonina Makarova went to the front as a nurse. In October 1941, part of Makarova was surrounded near Vyazma. After a long wandering around the German rear and living in various villages, Makarova voluntarily entered the service of the German occupiers, becoming the executioner of the Lokot District, or the Lokot Republic, a puppet territorial formation of collaborators in the Bryansk region.

During her service as an executioner, Makarova shot about 1,500 people. After the executions, for which the woman received 30 Reichsmarks, she took the clothes and belongings of those executed.

By the time the territory of the Lokot District was liberated by Soviet troops, Makarova managed to go to the German rear. In 1945, in Königsberg, using stolen documents, she got a job in a Soviet military hospital. Married to a Soviet soldier Victor Ginzburg and taking her husband’s surname, Antonina Makarova fell out of sight of the intelligence services for many years.

“Tonka the Machine Gunner” was discovered and arrested only in 1978. On November 20, 1978, the Bryansk Regional Court sentenced Antonina Makarova-Ginzburg to death. On August 11, 1979, the sentence was carried out.

Maria Mandel. "Melomaniac"

Woman, during three years who headed the women's department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, was known as a music lover. On her initiative, a women’s orchestra was created from prisoners who had previously studied music, which at the gates of the concentration camp greeted people arriving to die with cheerful melodies.

Maria Mandel, concentration camp guard Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Maria Mandel born in Austria, in the city of Munzkirchen, on January 10, 1912. In the 1930s, Maria joined the growing Nazis, and in 1938 she entered service in the auxiliary units of the SS. For several years she served as a supervisor in various women's concentration camps and has proven herself to be a “dedicated professional.”

The pinnacle of her terrible career was her appointment in 1942 to the post of head of the women's department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. She held this post for three years.

Mandel was personally involved in the selection of prisoners sent to the gas chambers. Having fun, the Nazi took some of the doomed under her protection, giving people hope for salvation. After a while, when she got bored with the game, Maria Mandel sent the “rescued” to the gas chamber, dialing new group"lucky ones"

At one time, it was Maria Mandel who provided protection for the promotion of another murderer, Irma Grese.

In 1944, Maria Mandel was transferred to Dachau, where she served until the end of the war. In May 1945, she tried to take refuge in the mountains near her hometown of Münzkirchen. In August 1945, Maria Mandel was arrested by representatives of American troops. At the request of the Polish authorities, Mandel was extradited to this country, where the trial of the Auschwitz-Auschwitz workers was being prepared.

At the trial, which took place at the end of 1947, Maria Mandel was found responsible for the extermination of 500 thousand women prisoners and sentenced to death. The Nazi was hanged in Krakow prison on January 24, 1948.

Hermine Braunsteiner. "Trampling Mare"

Deputy Commandant of the Women's Section Majdanek was born in Vienna on July 16, 1919, into a working-class family. Blue-eyed blonde Hermine I dreamed of becoming a nurse, but due to lack of funds I was forced to become a housekeeper. After the Anschluss of 1938, a native of Austria became a German citizen and moved to Berlin, where she got a job at the Heinkel aircraft plant.

Unlike many of her colleagues, Hermine became a supervisor not for ideological reasons, but for the sake of money, since the supervisor’s salary was four times higher than that of an aircraft factory worker.

Hermine Braunsteiner. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Braunsteiner learned the “basics of craftsmanship” in 1939 in Ravensbrück under the guidance of Maria Mandel. A few years later, they quarreled on official grounds; Braunsteiner achieved a transfer to Majdanek.

Here Hermine Braunsteiner received the nickname "Trampling Mare" for her penchant for trampling women with her boots. She beat prisoners to death, took children from their mothers and personally threw them into gas chambers. Surviving prisoners called her one of the most cruel guards.

The work of the Trampling Mare was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class.

At the end of the war, Braunsteiner worked as a guard at the Gentin camp, and with the arrival Soviet troops managed to escape to Vienna. Here she was arrested and put on trial.

The court examined the activities of Hermine Braunsteiner only at her last place of service, knowing nothing about the adventures of the “Trampling Mare” in Majdanek. As a result, she received only 3 years in prison, and was soon released under an amnesty.

Like Antonina Makarova, in later life Hermine Braunsteiner was helped by marriage. American citizen Russell Ryan, while in Austria, met her, after which a romance began. The couple moved to Canada, where Hermine and Russell married in 1958. In 1959, Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan entered the United States, and four years later she became an American citizen.

In the United States, everyone knew Mrs. Ryan as a sweet housewife, without knowing about her previous life.

In 1964, a Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal discovered the Trampling Mare in New York, reporting it to American journalists. In a conversation with one of the reporters, Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan admitted that she was the same warden from Majdanek.

After several years of proceedings, US authorities stripped Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan of her citizenship. On August 7, 1973, she became the first Nazi criminal to be extradited from the United States to Germany.

Hermine Braunsteiner became one of the defendants in the so-called “Third Majdanek Trial,” which took place in 1975-1981. She was accused of involvement in the murder of 200,000 people. Due to a lack of evidence, the court found the Nazi responsible only for the murder of 80 people, complicity in the murder of 102 children and assistance in the death of 1000 people. This, however, was more than enough to sentence her to life imprisonment.

But Hermine Braunsteiner was not destined to die in prison. In 1996, she was released due to a serious illness (diabetes, which led to the amputation of her leg). The Trampling Mare died in Bochum, Germany on April 19, 1999.

Jenny-Wanda Barkmann, who worked in the Stutthof concentration camp, was nicknamed Crazy Jenny and the Beautiful Ghost by prisoners. This beautiful girl was famous for her incredible cruelty. They say Barkmann was so hated that after her execution, her ashes were flushed down the toilet in the house where she was born.

From models to wardens

Not much is known about Jenny-Wanda Barkmann's childhood and youth. She was born on May 22, 1922 in Hamburg into a rather poor family: her father was either a merchant seaman or a dock worker in the port.

At the age of 18, the girl decided to take advantage of her attractive appearance and went to work as a fashion model. But in January 1944, Jenny unexpectedly changed her profession and got a job as a guard at the Polish Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. What prompted her to do this? Perhaps a high salary and prospects for advancement through the ranks, or perhaps sadistic tendencies.

One way or another, Barkmann was distinguished by completely inexplicable cruelty towards prisoners. She loved to beat female prisoners, sometimes to death, and also personally sent prisoners, including women and children, to the gas chambers. If someone fell under her complete control, then she could subject her victim to brutal torture. Outwardly, Jenny was all charm and charm, and even with a touch of intelligence: she could rather be mistaken for a student at some university than for a matron.

Flight and trial

In 1945, on the eve of the arrival of Soviet troops, Jenny fled the camp. She was hiding somewhere for four months. It was never possible to find out who was hiding the Nazi criminal.

They began looking for her almost immediately. Former prisoners compiled a fairly accurate portrait of their tormentor. In addition, her personal file with a photograph was kept in the Stutthof archives.

Barkmann was eventually apprehended by a military patrol at a train station in Gdansk as she attempted to leave Poland. During interrogations, she said that she allegedly did not mock the prisoners, but, on the contrary, tried as best she could to ease their lot, since she always treated Jews well.

Jenny tried to win over to her side one of the prison guards - Corporal of the Polish Army Joseph Lyas, a Jew by nationality. She also told him stories about her saving prisoners and convinced him that she had been arrested by mistake. She said that if she were allowed to leave the cell for a while, she would be able to find documents indicating her innocence. At first, Lyas took a liking to the beautiful and modest girl. But soon he saw documents and photographs that were proof of Barkmann's atrocities. This made him furious, because Joseph’s mother and sister also died in the concentration camp.

At the trial, not only documents testified against Barkmann, but also surviving former prisoners who told what Crazy Jenny did to them and their comrades. The lawyer assigned to Barkmann tried to prove that she was insane, because her cruel behavior was in no way justified. But Jenny, hearing this, laughed loudly. She was tried and found guilty of war crimes. Unlike others, Barkmann did not cry or beg for mercy - she listened to the verdict calmly and without hysterics. When the former matron was given the last word, she said: “Life is indeed a great pleasure, and pleasure, as a rule, does not last long.”

Execution

Barkmann, 24, was publicly hanged at Biskupka Gorka near Gdańsk on July 4, 1946, along with 14 other war criminals. About 200,000 people attended the execution, among them was Corporal Lyas. The condemned were transported to the place of execution in trucks, a rope was put around their necks, then the truck drove away, and the rope strangled the hanged man. When the rope was put around Jenny Barkmann's neck, the truck's engine wouldn't start. And then one of the former prisoners of Stutthof ran up and pushed the ex-warden over the side. When it was all over, the spectators began to kick the hanged men and tear off buttons and scraps of clothing from them as “souvenirs.”
There is a legend that Jenny-Wanda Barkmann's ashes were flushed down the toilet in the restroom of her family home in Hamburg. But most likely this is just a rumor. In those days, cheap pathos were not in use, and no one would waste time and effort on burning a corpse and then bringing the ashes from Poland to Germany, and even to the native home of a Nazi criminal. According to official information, the bodies of all those executed were given to the anatomical theater in Gdansk so that they could be studied by medical students.

A British lawyer who worked at the Belsen trial has preserved photographs of some of the most brutal women of the Second World War. Documents and photographs from the archive helped the prosecution during the trial. Now these pictures will be sold at auction.

Irma Grese (left) and Hilde Lobauer (right).

Grese during the trial.

She went down in history as one of the most brutal women of World War II. Known as the Hyena of Auschwitz, Irma Grese was one of the most feared guards at the notorious concentration camp.

A nymphomaniac with sadistic tendencies had intimate relationships with camp guards, selected prisoners for the gas chambers and brutally abused prisoners.

Photos of her and other overseers who led the mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi camps death, are presented in the archive, which is put up for sale.

Grese shortly after the start of the war.

Grese (second from left).

These brutal criminals were surrounded and captured when the British Army liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Three female overseers were executed for forming groups of prisoners for the gas chambers, abuse and murder.

Another woman who inspired terror was Hilda Lobauer, a mother of two children. She was a prisoner capo, that is, a privileged prisoner who worked for the administration and supervised forced labor. She unleashed dogs on sick and weak prisoners.

Another sadistic and ruthless guard who was feared by the Bergen-Belsen prisoners was Irene Haschke. She treated captive women harshly.

As a result of the trial, Grese was hanged, and Lobauer and Haschke received 10 years in prison.

Photos of three women are included in the archive historical materials, compiled by British lawyer Leo Genn, who served as assistant prosecutor during the Belsen trial. After working as a lawyer, Genn became a successful theater and film actor, but kept the archive of photographs. It will be sold by auction house Toovey. The sale is expected to fetch between five and seven thousand dollars.

“The value and importance of this archive lies in its connection with Leo Genn, famous actor theater and cinema, who was an assistant prosecutor during the Belsen trial. The archive includes personal items, copies of signed witness statements and attorney notes taken during the trial. The testimony reveals horrors that happened behind closed doors that the world did not know about at the time,” said Nicholas Toovey of auction house Toovey.

Photo of the Bergen-Belsen overseers: Harry Kaufmann, Herbert Buhr, Bernard Blank, Heinrich Hoppenstedt.

The archive also contains a photograph of Franz Stofel, commandant of the Dora-Mittelbau camp, shown with the camp guards.

Carl Schmitt, accused of the Nuremberg trials.

Genn was assigned to investigate Nazi crimes in Bergen-Belsen. He was sent to Germany with several investigators to obtain testimonies from thousands of concentration camp survivors. Evidence of the systematic genocide that Genn helped uncover led to the trials and executions of hundreds of perpetrators.

During the trial of Nazi criminals in 1945, one girl stood out among the accused. She was quite pretty, but sat with an inscrutable face. It was Irma Grese - a sadist, what else can you look for. She strangely combined beauty and extraordinary cruelty. Bringing torment to people gave her special pleasure, for which the concentration camp guard received the nickname “blond devil.”


Women's auxiliary units of the SS. Irma Grese in the center.

Irma Grese was born in 1923. She was one of five children in the family. When Irma was 13 years old, her mother committed suicide by drinking acid. She could not stand her husband's beatings.

Two years after her mother's death, Irma dropped out of school. She became active in the Union of German Girls, tried several professions, and at the age of 19, despite her father’s protests, she enlisted in the SS auxiliary units.


After the war, the warden was going to become an actress.

Irma Grese began her activities in the Ravensbrück camp, then at will she was transferred to Auschwitz. Grese performed her duties so zealously that within six months she became the senior warden, second in command after the camp commandant. Today it sounds quite funny, but Irma Grese said that she did not intend to remain an overseer all her life, but then wanted to play in films.

Irma Grese is the most brutal warden of the death camps during World War II.

For her beauty and terrible cruelty, Grese received the nicknames “Blonde Devil”, “Angel of Death”, “Beautiful Monster”. The matron with her beautiful hair and the aroma of expensive perfume emanating from her fully justified her nicknames. She dealt with prisoners with particular sadism.

In addition to weapons, Irma always had a whip with her. She personally beat female prisoners to death, arranged shootings during formation, and selected those who would go to the gas chamber. But what gave her the most pleasure was “fun” with dogs. Grese deliberately starved them and then set them against the prisoners. She even had a lampshade made from the skin of murdered women.


Warden Irma Grese and concentration camp commandant Josef Kramer.

Nazi atrocities in concentration camps.

In March 1945, at the personal request of Irma Grese, she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. A month later she was captured by British troops. The former guard, along with other concentration camp workers, appeared in court, which was called the “Belsen Trial.” She was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on December 13, 1945.

Irma Grese during the Belsen process.

According to eyewitnesses, on the night before the execution, Irma Grese, along with another condemned woman, Elisabeth Volkenrath, sang songs and laughed. The next day, when they put a noose around her neck, Irma, with an inscrutable face, said to the executioner: “Schneller” (German: “faster”). The “Angel of Death” was only 22 years old at that time. During its short existence, it took the lives of thousands of people.