Irma Ida Ilse Grese was employed at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz,
and was a warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen.
Grese was convicted for crimes against humanity at the Belsen Trial and sentenced to death.
Executed at 700122000000000000022 years, 700167000000000000067 days of age, Grese
was the youngest woman to die judicially under British law in the 20th century. She was nicknamed
"the Beast of Belsen", "The Beautiful Beast", "The Blonde Angel of Auschwitz" and "Die Hyäne
von Auschwitz".
Background Irma Grese was born to Alfred Grese, a dairy
worker and a member of the Nazi Party from 1937, and Berta Grese. Irma Grese had four
siblings. In 1936, her mother committed suicide. Grese left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen,
owing to a combination of a poor scholastic aptitude, bullying by classmates, and a fanatical
preoccupation with the League of German Girls, a Nazi female youth organization, of which
her father disapproved. Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in
the sanatorium of the SS for two years and unsuccessfully tried to find an apprenticeship
as a nurse, after which she worked as a dairy helper.
Quoted below is Irma Grese's testimony, under direct examination, about her background:
I was born on 7 October 1923. In 1938 I left the elementary school and worked for six months
on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which I worked in a shop in Lychen for six months.
When I was 15 I went to a hospital in Hohenlychen, where I stayed for two years. I tried to become
a nurse but the Labour Exchange would not allow that and sent me to work in a dairy
in Fürstenberg. In July, 1942, I tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange
sent me to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, although I protested against it. I stayed
there until March, 1943, when I went to Birkenau Camp in Auschwitz. I remained in Auschwitz
until January, 1945.
Having completed her training in March 1943, Grese was transferred as a female guard to
Auschwitz, and by the end of that year was Senior Supervisor, the second highest ranking
woman at the camp, in charge of around 30,000 Jewish female prisoners.
In January 1945, Grese briefly returned to Ravensbrück before ending her wartime career
at Bergen-Belsen as a Work Service Manager from March to April. She was captured by the
British on 17 April 1945, together with other SS personnel who did not flee.
War crime trial
Grese was among the 45 people accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial. She was tried
over the first period of the trials and was represented by Major L. Cranfield.
The trials were conducted under British military law in Lüneburg, and the charges derived
from the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding the treatment of prisoners. The accusations
against her centred on her ill-treatment and murder of those imprisoned at the camps. These
included: setting guard dogs on inmates to savage them, arbitrary shootings and sadistic
beatings with a whip. Survivors provided detailed testimony of murders, tortures, and other
cruelties, especially towards women, in which Grese engaged during her years at Auschwitz
and Bergen-Belsen. They testified to acts of sadism, beatings and arbitrary shootings
of prisoners, savaging of prisoners by her trained and allegedly half-starved dogs, and
to her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. Grese was reported to have habitually worn
heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol. Witnesses testified that she took pleasure
in using both physical and psychological methods to torture the camp's inmates and enjoyed
shooting prisoners in cold blood. They also claimed that she beat some women to death
and whipped others using a plaited whip. Grese inspired virulent hatred in prisoner
Olga Lengyel, who in her memoir, Five Chimneys, wrote that selections in the women’s camp
were made by SS Aufseherin Elisabeth Hasse and Irma Grese. The latter was visibly pleased
by the terror her presence inspired in the women at roll call. She had a penchant for
selecting not only the sick and the weak but any woman who had retained vestiges of her
former beauty. Lengyel said that Grese had several lovers among the SS in the camp, including
Josef Mengele. After Grese forced the inmate surgeon at the infirmary into performing her
illegal abortion, she disclosed that she planned a career in the movies after the war. Lengyel
felt that Grese’s meticulous grooming, custom fitted clothes, and overuse of perfume were
part of a deliberate act of sadism among the ragged women prisoners.
After a fifty-three day trial, Grese was sentenced to hang.
Execution Grese and ten others were convicted for crimes
against humanity in both Auschwitz and Belsen and then sentenced to death. As the verdicts
were read, Grese was the only prisoner to remain defiant; her subsequent appeal was
rejected. The Daily Mirror reported: Despite being dressed
in drab prison garb, the vain Grese - dubbed "the Beautiful Beast" by inmates - used rags
to put ringlets in her hair. And, "The night before her execution Grese laughed and sang
Nazi songs with fellow SS torturer Elizabeth Volkenrath."
On Thursday, 13 December 1945, in Hamelin Jail, Grese was led to the gallows. The women
were hanged singly first and then the men in pairs. Regimental Sergeant-Major O'Neil
assisted the noted British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint:
... we climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting. A German officer
at the door leading to the corridor flung open the door and we filed past the row of
faces and into the execution chamber. The officers stood at attention. Brigadier Paton-Walsh
stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave me the signal, and a sigh of released breath
was audible in the chamber, I walked into the corridor. 'Irma Grese', I called.
The German guards quickly closed all grilles on twelve of the inspection holes and opened
one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside, and
I had to pinion her in the corridor. 'Follow me,' I said in English, and O'Neil repeated
the order in German. At 9.34 a.m. she walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment
at the officials standing round it, then walked on to the centre of the trap, where I had
made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark very firmly, and as I placed the white cap
over her head she said in her languid voice, 'Schnell'. [English translation: 'Quickly.']
The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After
twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.
Dramatizations Angel: A Nightmare in Two Acts is a drama
by playwright Jo Davidsmeyer based on the life and execution of Irma Grese and holocaust
survivor Olga Lengyel. First staged in 1987, it has been produced at many regional colleges;
in September 2006 it had its professional debut at the New City Stage Company in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The play was published in 1995 by Wildside Press in the anthology Reader's
Theatre: What it is and how to stage it, edited by Marvin Kaye.
Irma Grese has been portrayed as a minor character in Out of the Ashes as well as Pierrepoint,
which details her execution following the Belsen war crimes trial. Both films feature
additional female guards in much smaller roles. Grese is also briefly portrayed in a non-speaking
re-enactment in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'.
She was also one of the inspirations for the Nazi exploitation film, Ilsa, She Wolf of
the SS. See also
Maria Mandel Ilse Koch
Therese Brandl References
External links The Belsen Trial, Law-Reports of Trials of
War Criminals, The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume II, London, HMSO, 1947,
retrieved on 22 December 2006. Biography in German PDF (63.8 KB)
SS-Frauen am Galgen, max.mmvi.de, retrieved on 22 December 2006.
Irma Grese, Capital Punishment U.K., retrieved on December 6, 2009.
Irma Grese, Auschwitz.dk, retrieved on December 22, 2006.
Auschwitz: Inside The Nazi State; Corruption: Episode 4, PBS.org, retrieved on December
22, 2006. Excerpts from The Belsen Trial - Part 5 of
5: Testimony of and concerning Irma Grese,The Nizkor Project, retrieved on December 22,
2006. Angel: A Nightmare in Two Acts, jodavidsmeyer.com,
retrieved on 11 February 2012. "Nazi women exposed as every bit as bad as
Hitler's deranged male followers", The Daily Mail, 12 February 2009.