The guards of the concentration camps were known for their brutal and barbaric treatment
of inmates and prisoners during the Second World War.
After the war a number of them were sentenced to death and were executed for their evil
actions at camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen.
When Belsen was liberated the British found a number of the guards hidden within the prisoners
trying to escape any form of punishment, and one of those who was found was Irma Grese.
She would later be executed for her crimes, and she became known as one of the most evil
women that worked inside of many concentration camps.
Irma Grese was just 22 years old when she went to the gallows inside Hamelin Prison.
She was referred as the Hyena of Auschwitz or the Beautiful Beast, but what was her story,
and what did she do inside of the concentration camps?
Join us today as we look at the story of Irma Grese, remember to support our channel please
make sure to subscribe.
Irma Grese was born on the 7th October 1923 inside of a small village named Wrechen.
It was a very rural upbringing for her, and she was raised around 50 miles north of Berlin.
Her father Alfred was a farmer and her mother took her own life in 1932 when she was 9 years
old, and it was believed the marriage problems that she had with her husband may have led
to this.
But this left Irma and her four siblings without a mother, but her father was considered a
man who regularly visited church, but was very strict and stern with his children, and
he often beat the children.
But he was a man who had a lot of bad feelings towards the Nazi and the rise of Hitler, and
he banned his daughters from joining the League of German Girls, the nazi youth group for
young women where they would be taught how to be a housewife.
But Irma and her sister Helene joined the group, against her father’s wishes and she
became brainwashed by the Nazis and she indulged in many of their politics.
Irma began her indoctrination at the age of 10 when Hitler came into power, and her father
had no choice over this, as at the time Nazi education was introduced into all elementary
schools.
Irma would become an ardent Nazi even at a young age, and at the age of 14 she left her
school after leaving home.
She then worked as a farmhand for 6 months, before working in Luchen in a shop as a retail
sales clerk.
She may have left home due to the rift which was opening up between her and her father
as he was disgusted by Irma’s role inside of the Nazi Party and how she was beginning
to venerate Hitler.
Irma though was a girl who wasn’t considered the most violent at a young age, as she would
run away from fights and not get involved in them.
But at some point she changed completely.
In 1939, she then went to study nursing but she went to do this at the Hohelynchen Hospital,
a place where SS members would convalesce, around 20 miles from her hometown.
This was where many top ranking Nazis would go to be treated, and she trained under Karl
Gebhardt who would during the Second World War be known as a disgusting and evil doctor
who performed shocking medical experiementations.
He too would be executed for his crimes, but it’s believed that Irma may have been party
to some of these experiments, and may have watched as she tried to become a nurse.
Whilst here its likely she became further indoctrinated with the SS also, but she apparently
was not good enough to be a nurse and for this she was said she would be best working
in other lines of work.
She was around 17at the time, but Irma then spoke to one of Gebhardt’s friends at Ravensbruck,
an all female concentration camp.
She then went here for work in April 1941, and she was told to come back in 6 months
when she was 18.
In the mean time she worked at a dairy farm and as a machinist, but then she went back
to Ravensbruck and she joined the SS as an SS Aufseherinnen, or a female concentration
camp guard.
Women were asked to work in this line of employment from all over Germany, and around 2500 would
serve during the Second World War.
Irma had to pass a number of exams, and she also was asked questions to ensure she was
a Nazi, and a strong one who knew about the Nazi Party and the race laws.
She then was hired to train as a concentration camp guard, and she went through three weeks
of hard and difficult training.
On one of her first days she actually apologised to a prisoner who stepped out in front of
her, and this was deemed not good enough, and she was then told how to deal brutally
with the inmates, and how to not be polite too them.
She around this time began to have relations with the male SS officers at the camp, and
it was said that, ‘it appeared that all the Aufseherinnen married or unmarried, had
one of more constant SS lovers.’
She would have also indulged in the drinking bouts and parties that the SS had in the evening,
but after three weeks she was trained.
She then went on to participate in many inmate beatings at Ravensbruck, and a month she was
making 54 Reichsmarks in salary.
She was trained by other sadists, but at the age of 19 it was time for her to move on.
She received orders that she was going to be transferred to Auschwitz Birkenau near
to Krakow.
Before this move she went home, and Irma visited her father and whilst wearing her SS uniform,
she had a huge argument with her father.
Her father allegedly struck her during this argument, and then told her never to come
home.
But when she got to Auschwitz, Irma Grese was assigned to the womens camp at Birkenau,
and this was the main extermination part of the site where thousands were killed in the
gas chambers.
She had a number of duties there including commanding the gardening squad, working on
the telephones and even being in control of the mail.
She then in May 1944 became a Oberaufseherin, and she was given the task of commanding over
30,000 female prisoners in Birkenau’s B22/C camp.
She then in this role became infamous, and she would wear heavy boots and would carry
her pistol and a whip at all times.
She became known as the beautiful beast, of the Blond angel of hell, and she often wore
expensive perfumes and tormented the women on a daily basis.
One former doctor of Auschwitz described her as, ‘“She was the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.
Her face has an angelic clarity and her blue eyes were the liveliest and most innocent
eyes imaginable.”
Another said, ‘“It defied belief that such a pretty girl could be so cruel.
When she walked through the camp with a whip in her hand, she was surrounded by a cloud
of choice perfume.”
She often also stole valuables and clothing from the prisoners inside Auschwitz, but she
would use her weapons to kill.
She would use her whip to attack the women, and sometimes these injuries led to infections
where women would suffer.
Doctors would then be forced to operate on the women with dirty equipment and no anaesthetics.
She would witness these operations, and it was said ‘ “Irma Grese invariably arrived
to watch the operation, kicking the victim if her screams interfered with her pleasure
and giving herself completely to the spasms which shook her entire body and made saliva
run down from the corner of her mouth.”She was known for also shooting inmates at will
whenever she felt like it.
But she also had dogs that she would use to strike fear into prisoners hearts.
During one incident she was on a bicycle with her dog at the side of her, and any prisoner
who could not keep up during a 16km walk to work was attacked by the canine.
One witness of her actions involving the dog said, ‘We were loading the lories.
Before noon we had an unexpected visitor: Aufseherin Irma with her two leashed dogs,
Frau Aufseherin Irma, blonde, with an angel face and snake eyes, the camp’s chief torturer.
We were very careful not to attract her attention.
We pushed and pushed.
It seemed to take an eternity to roll the car over the hill.
“The next team was unable to coordinate its efforts.
They were completely unnerved by our visitor.
They hesitated and lost control of their wagon.
It swayed, bowled down the hill, and capsized, scattering stone over the whole area.
“The prisoners were completely broken, in spirit.
Aufsherin Irma sicced the two police dogs on them.
The girls tried to escape their fangs, but the trained killers easily overtook them.
One grabbed a Polish woman who slipped on a rock.
The other fell upon a Russian girl.
At Irma’s orders, the Kapos’ underlings beat and kicked the girls still untouched
by the dogs.
The Kapo [an inmate overseer] wrote down the numbers of the delinquent team.
“The dogs were tearing at the girls’ bodies.
Irma came closer to observe what they were doing.
Her eyes were bloodshot.
The sight of the blood seemed to intoxicate her.
She panted.
She was sexually excited—everybody could see that.
We stood in a trance, as at a gladiatorial combat.”
Irma Grese was also involved in the selection processes, and she would regularly decide
with doctor such as Josef Mengele who would live and who would die.
She even its believed had an affair with Mengele, as well as other men and women including female
prisoners, and when she got bored of them she would send them to their deaths.
Grese did fall pregnant, and she forced the inmate doctor to perform a termination on
her, and Grese supplied the instruments required, and she did perform this procedure.
It’s believed that she did fall in love with an SS man though, Franz Wolfgang Hatzinger
who was the Chief Engineer of Auschwitz I’s Construction element, and the pair would meet
up in the evenings.
But as the Second World War had turned against the Germans, Irma Grese’s work at Auschwitz
came to an end, as the camp was evacuated with the Red Army on the horizon.
She was transferred to Ravensbruck briefly on the 18th January 1945, but then in March
1945 she arrived at Bergen Belsen.
Belsen was a site in complete breakdown as huge numbers of inmates were evacuated there,
and she was reunited with many of her former colleagues of Auschwitz such as Josef Kramer.
Whilst at Belsen, Irma Grese continued to be brutal, and she would force inmates to
stand or kneel for long periods of time, and at roll call they had to hold rocks above
their heads.
They were forced to stand in the cold, and then if someone struggled she would beat them
with her truncheon.
As the allies were even close to liberating Belsen, she was still brutalising inmates.
Irma Grese remained at the camp as the Allies seized control, and she was there to allegedly
maintain law and order.
She had the chance to run, but decided against it.
She was not immediately arrested and was forced to help bury the over 10,000 corpses that
were lying around.
She was then arrested on the 17th April 1945, and many heard about her evil actions, and
she was temporarily imprisoned in a Wehrmacht Tank training academy nearby.
She said, ‘It was out duty to exterminate anti social elements so that Germany’s future
would be assured.’
Further interrogation went on, and she was then a few months later indicted with others
on charges of execution, murder, ill treatment and barbarism at Belsen and Auschwitz.
She was brought to the Belsen trials, and during the trial it was said she was more
bothered by her appearance than the charges that was brought against her.
Throughout the trial she remained calm and she remained unemotional when the evidence
was put forward.
Witnesses described seeing Irma Grese shooting prisoners at point blank range, and one said
she was beaten by Grese and that some were once beaten to death.
When the trial came to an end, Irma Grese was sentenced to death alongside two other
women, Elisabeth Volkenrath and Juana Bormann.
She was taken to her cell, and following this Grese was known to be crying.
She was sent to Hamelin Prison to await her execution, and it was Albert Pierrepoint who
would take her life.
On the 13th December 1945 she was to face the hangman, and she was second to die that
day as Elisabeth Volkenrath was to die first.
It was said of her execution, ‘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 [sic] 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.
Irma Grese was one of the most notorious war criminals of the Second World War, and she
was known for being a murderer and a brutal guard who was too happy to beat people with
her whip.
She also took many lives with her pistol, and she was sentenced to death for her crimes.
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