The 30th of January 1933, Germany. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party,
is appointed chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazi regime
quickly begins to restrict the civil and human rights of the Jews and opens first concentration
camp – Dachau – situated near Munich. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its European
allies would establish more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites, including ghettos.
The perpetrators would use these locations for forced labor,
detention of people deemed to be "enemies of the state," and the mass murder of millions.
One such perpetrator is a German Nazi Commandant Karl-Otto Koch.
Karl-Otto Koch was born on the 2nd of August 1897 in
Darmstadt, then part of the German Empire. His father
was a civil servant and died when Karl was only 8 years old. After graduating
from high school, Karl-Otto completed an apprenticeship as an accountant.
The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914. Against the will of his mother,
Koch enlisted in the German army and served from March 1916 as a rifleman in the 153rd Infantry
Regiment. On the western front, Koch was wounded twice and was also awarded the Iron Cross Second
Class. After scouting enemy lines towards the end of the war, he was taken prisoner of war by
the British and was released in October 1919. After the end of the war, Koch worked briefly
as an accountant and in the early 1920s he was given a permanent job as a bank clerk.
From 1922 to 1930 Koch was employed by at least seven companies, and in 1928 petty
cash thefts were proven against him. Due to forged documents and embezzlement, Koch was
sentenced to a short prison sentence in 1930 and after his release from prison, he was unemployed.
In 1931 he divorced his wife whom he had married in 1924. The marriage had produced one son.
In 1931 Karl-Otto Koch joined the Nazi Party and the SS.
The Nazi Party, founded in 1920, sought to woo German workers away from socialism
and communism and commit them to its antisemitic and anti-Marxist ideology.
After Hitler became the Führer or Leader of the Nazi Party,
he turned it into a mass movement. He aimed to lead the German “master race” to victory
in the "racial struggle" against those deemed as “inferior” peoples, especially the Jews.
The Nazi Party won little popular support until the crisis of the Great Depression
When in January 1933, the German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor,
non-Nazis dominated Germany’s government. However, the Nazis used emergency decrees,
violence, and intimidation to quickly seize control of all levels of government. The
Nazi Party also worked to control all aspects of German economic,
social, and cultural life. This process was called "coordination."
In the new Nazi Germany, Karl Otto Koch served in senior positions at several concentration
camps. Among these was Esterwegen, located near the German-Dutch border,
where Karl-Otto Koch arrived in April 1936. Most of the prisoners in Esterwegen were political
prisoners, many of them Communists. For a time the second largest concentration camp after Dachau,
the Esterwegen camp was closed in summer of 1936. In October 1936, he became a camp commandant
of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Located near Oranienburg, north of Berlin,
the Sachsenhausen camp opened on the 12th of July 1936, when the SS transferred 50
prisoners from the Esterwegen concentration camp to begin construction of the camp.
The SS established the Sachsenhausen as the principal concentration camp for the Berlin area.
In November 1936, the camp headquarter's staff of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp consisted of
70 SS personnel. In the early stage of the camp's existence the SS and police incarcerated mainly
political opponents and real or perceived criminal offenders in Sachsenhausen. By the end of 1936,
the camp held 1,600 prisoners. Between 1936 and 1945, however, Sachsenhausen also held Jews,
homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti prisoners, and, later, Soviet civilians.
One of the camp’s most prominent prisoners was Yakov Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin's son,
who died at Sachsenhausen in 1943 after his father refused to make a deal to secure his release.
At Sachsenhausen in 1936 Karl-Otto Koch got married to Ilse Köhler who
worked in a camp as a guard and secretary.
In August 1937 Karl Otto was assigned to build a new concentration camp in
Buchenwald. While in the camps that he worked in, Karl-Otto was known for his
personal greed, Ilse was feared for her brutality. Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration
camps established within German borders. At Buchenwald, Karl-Otto and Ilse lived
in the largest villa on the site known as “ Villa Koch” together with their
three children – Artwin, Gisela and Gudrun who were born in the camp between 1938 and
1941. Gudrun died unexpectedly before her first birthday while on a skiing holiday.
At least twelve prisoners worked regularly as their servants in the Villa Koch washing,
cleaning and cooking. Kurt Titz was one who survived.
According to his statements, he was taken to Villa Koch by an SS guard from the prisoner
area at five in the morning. He had to wake up the children and dress them, then do housework
and at around 7 PM, after 14 hours of work he was taken back to the prisoner area.
Prisoners lived in the Buchenwald main camp which was surrounded by an electrified
barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with automatic machine guns.
At the entrance to the main camp, there was a notorious punishment block, known as the Bunker,
where prisoners who violated the camp regulations were punished and often tortured to death.
Among them was Kurt Titz. On one occasion when he drank something in the Koch’s kitchen,
Ilse saw him. The result was terrible: Titz was punished with 25 strokes of the cane on his bare
bottom and then he was sent to the Bunker where he was beaten and tortured by Martin Sommer,
one of the most sadistic guards in Buchenwald. After that, Titz continued working at Villa Koch.
In addition to the punishment block, the main camp included 33 wooden barracks, disinfection
buildings, a brothel, and a crematorium. Most of the early inmates at Buchenwald were
political prisoners, people who had been arrested for some form of political opposition to the Nazi
regime. In addition to the political prisoners and Jews, Buchenwald prisoners also included
repeat offenders, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma people and German military deserters.
Buchenwald was one of the only concentration camps that held so-called “work-shy” individuals. These
were people whom the regime incarcerated as “asocials” because they could not,
or would not, find gainful employment. The Nazi regime used prisoners in the
Buchenwald camp system as forced laborers. SS authorities and firm executives,
both state-owned and private, deployed Buchenwald prisoners to camp workshops, armaments factories,
stone quarries and construction projects as well as the German Equipment Works - an
enterprise owned and operated by the SS. The SS earned huge sums of money from the work of the
prisoners because the prisoners worked for more than 100 different companies around the camp.
Of course, the Nazis enriched themselves thanks to confiscated valuables as well.
One of the prisoners who survived the war recalled how Karl-Otto Koch welcomed them in Buchenwald:
“So now you are here, you Jewish pigs. Once you get in this camp,
there is no way out. Remember that – you won't get out of here alive.”
Periodically, the SS physicians conducted selections throughout the Buchenwald camp system
and dispatched those too weak or disabled to work to so-called euthanasia facilities.
Karl-Otto Koch, as the camp’s commandant was responsible for all the atrocities
within the camp, including the ones committed by his wife Ilse who became
known as the “Witch of Buchenwald”. She was obsessed with tattoos and used to
ride her horse around the Buchenwald looking for tattooed prisoners. When she found one,
she sent them to their death but before they were killed and burned, she would carve out the part
of their skin where the tattoo was located. She used to call these pieces of skin her “ trophies”.
She would go on to collect lampshades
and book covers as well as gloves a handbags – all made of human skin.
She shared her obsession with tattoos with Dr. Erich Wagner, allegedly her lover,
who wanted to find the connection between tattoos and criminal tendencies.
Despite having 3 on her own children, she hated pregnant women and she used to beat
them with whip along the entire length of which pieces of a razor were inserted.
Koch also found pleasure in beating child inmates.
She would laugh loudly when seeing them going to the gas chambers.
She was also a sexual deviant. She not only organized numerous orgies with SS men and
their wives but also forced male prisoners to rape female prisoners in front of her.
She enjoyed walking around the camp half-naked or in skimpy clothes, provoking prisoners to
make eye contact with her. Karl knew about his wife's propensity to wear see-through
clothes in front of the prisoners while riding horseback throughout the camp. If a prisoner
dared to look at her, Karl allowed her to have the prisoner whipped
or shot in the head by Martin Somer. While Karl-Otto and Ilse did have a sex
life fathering three children, he may not have always satisfied her intimately. It is widely
believed that he may have given Ilse permission to see other men while he looked the other way.
Based on various reports, it is alleged that Karl Koch may have been homosexual or at the
very least bisexual. It could be one of the reasons why he let Ilse organize sex orgies
in which he also took part. Together, they enjoyed having "fun" with men they were both attracted to.
Ilse was also reported that she had ordered prisoners to serve her
while she was nude and enjoyed sexually humiliating the sex-starved prisoners.
While initially, the SS had the bodies of persons who had died in the camp incinerated
at the Weimar municipal crematorium, in 1940, Buchenwald Concentration Camp had its own
crematorium constructed. The incineration had been developed specifically for the needs of the SS.
The work was carried out by inmates who also had their living quarters in the building.
Another section of the building housed the dissection rooms of the pathology department.
There the SS had the corpses plundered before incineration. The gold fillings
of the dead were removed and medical specimens were made from their skin, organs and skeletons.
The dead were collected in the mortuary cellar and were transported to the oven
room with the aid of a lift. One of the camp’s execution sites was likewise located
in the cellar. There the SS had some 1,100 men, women and adolescents – concentration
camp inmates and Gestapo prisoners – hanged on hooks in the walls.
In 1941, Buchenwald caught the attention of Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck
and Pyrmont. This higher SS and Police Leader for Weimar had in this position supervisory
authority over Buchenwald concentration camp. Waldeck, when glancing over the camp's death list,
came across the name of Walter Krämer, a head hospital orderly at Buchenwald whom
Waldeck recognized because Krämer had successfully treated him in the past.
Waldeck investigated the case and discovered that Karl-Otto Koch had ordered both Krämer
and Karl Peix, a hospital attendant, killed as "political prisoners" because
they had both treated him for syphilis. A fact that Koch wished to keep secret.
Waldeck also received reports that a certain prisoner had been shot while attempting to escape.
Waldeck confronted Karl-Otto Koch who was disarmed and arrested.
An investigation before the SS and Police Court was opened. However, Heinrich Himmler,
the head of the SS, ordered Koch to be released from prison immediately and
decreed that in the future no high-ranking SS leader should be arrested without his order.
At the end of 1941, through Himmler's intervention, Koch was transferred
from the Buchenwald to the Majdanek concentration camp, where he again became the camp commander.
At Majdanek, just as he had done at Buchenwald,
Karl-Otto Koch fell back in his sadistic ways and established the same reign of terror.
In the winter of 1941-1942, Majdanek camp authorities began to use Zyklon B gas to
murder prisoners too weak to work in a makeshift gas chamber. Mass murder operations using poison
gas began at Majdanek in October 1942 and continued until the end of 1943.
There appear to have been three gas chambers at Majdanek; at least two were shower rooms
reconfigured for use of Zyklon B gas. At least one of these two was used to kill human beings.
Majdanek also contained storage facilities for clothing and personal items stolen from
the Jews before their deaths in the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II killing centers.
The SS killed tens of thousands of Jews at Majdanek. The majority of them arrived in
the camp as forced laborers and either died as a result of the brutally inhumane living conditions
or were killed in the gas chambers after the Germans determined that they could no longer work.
One of the most sadistic of Majdanek’s guards was Hermine Braunsteiner who became known as ‘The
Stomping Mare” because she killed the prisoners by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots.
She would also whip several women, including those who were pregnant, and children, to death.
Karl Otto Koch’s reign of terror ended when he was removed from the command of Majdanek
in August 1942 after 86 Soviet prisoners escaped from the camp. Koch was charged
with criminal negligence and transferred to Berlin, where he worked at the SS Personnel
Main Office and as a liaison between the SS and the German Post Office.
The proceedings against Koch for negligently freeing prisoners were discontinued in February
1943, but his punitive transfer from the Waffen SS to the general SS remained in place.
Ilse, who belonged to the Buchenwald personnel, was still living at the Commandant's house in the
camp. Josias Waldeck had carried out further investigations into the corruption affair and
ordered a full-scale investigation of the camp. It was discovered that the prisoner who had been
"shot while trying to escape" had been told to get water from a well some distance from
the camp and was then shot from behind because he had also helped to treat Koch for syphilis.
Waldeck also interviewed members of the guards and prisoners. He sent the results
of the investigation to Heinrich Himmler, who allowed him to continue the investigation.
Throughout the investigation, more of Koch's orders to kill prisoners at the camp were
revealed, as well as evidence of embezzlement of possessions which had been stolen from prisoners.
When searching the accommodation of Koch's former employees, the criminal police found large sums
of money, jewelry and lumps of gold from the teeth of murdered prisoners. Karl Koch also
bought a luxury car and opened Swiss bank accounts with money extorted from prisoners.
Ilse was accused of the embezzlement of over 700,000 Reichsmarks and Karl Otto
was charged with both embezzlement and the unauthorized murder of three prisoners.
When it was revealed that the Kochs had used the massive Nazi apparatus
to gain an enormous amount of wealth, their downfall became inevitable as
all possessions stolen from murdered Jews was regarded as the property of the Reich.
On the 24th of August 1943, Koch was finally arrested again by the Gestapo for corruption
and the murder of three prisoners. His wife Ilse was also arrested. The couple was taken
to the police prison in Weimar. Karl Otto Koch confirmed the accusations against him.
In addition, other members of the commandant's office as well as the guards were arrested as
accomplices, such as Martin Sommer and Waldemar Hoven, a German medical doctor responsible for
performing medical experiments on camps’ inmates regarding typhus and the tolerance
of serums containing phenol and Evipan. It was revealed that Hoven, Ilse’s lover, injected an
SS man named Köhler with phenol because he was a potential witness in Koch’s investigation.
In September 1944, the trial against the accused began. During the trial, Karl Otto Koch said:
"I can't find an explanation for my actions, unless I was spoiled by my superiors.
Everything I suggested and did was approved. I got nothing but praise and laurels.
This got into my head. I became megalomaniac at the time.”
Karl Otto Koch was 47 years old when he was executed by firing squad on the 5th of April 1945,
one week before American allied troops arrived to liberate the camp. His last words were:
"Boys, shoot well!"
His body was subsequently burned in the camp's crematorium.
Even though wife Ilse was acquitted for lack of evidence, she did not escape justice.
After the war, she was tried at the Buchenwald trial but because she was
in the advanced stages of pregnancy, she was saved from the death penalty which had been
imposed on 22 of her 30 co-defendant. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and her son Uwe,
conceived while in custody, was born in October 1947. Uwe’s father was another German prisoner.
Artwin, the only son of Ilse and Karl Koch could not live
with the shame of the crimes of his parents and committed suicide in 1967.
At the time, his mother was experiencing delusions and had become convinced that the concentration
camp survivors would abuse her in her cell. In addition, she complained that the dead
prisoners of Buchenwald came to her through the walls and demanded to return their skin.
Mentally ill Ilse Koch committed suicide shortly after her son Artwin on the 1st of September 1967.
She was 60 years old when she hanged herself with a bedsheet after which she was buried in
an unmarked grave. Her suicide note was short: "I can't help it. For me, death is a salvation.”
There were no tears shed for Karl-Otto and Ilse Koch.
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