Ilse Koch - photos

[S. Wolff]

These are pieced together from screenshots of the program "The Most Evil Women in History" on Discovery Channel. I post them here because you cannot find many images of her online and the ones you do see are of her during her trial or imprisonment. Unfortunately no dates are given for any of the photos. No pictures of her in her Oberaufseherin uniform, either.


Ilse Köhler as a pretty young woman.


Young Ilse Köhler and her dog


Close up


Karl and Ilse Koch's wedding photo, this would be from 1936.


Ilse & Karl Koch, date unknown


Ilse & Karl Koch on a picnic, date unknown


Ilse & her baby playing in the garden


Karl & Ilse


Karl, Artwin, and Ilse Koch (this is probably near the camp if not inside the camp)


Close up


Karl & Ilse at the beach


Relaxing in her garden at her villa on Officer's Row, just near the Buchenwald complex


Ilse in her fur coat at winter time


Ilse doing her very Eva Braun-like exercise routine


Ilse in her bathingsuit


Mugshot


At her trial

[Potsdamerplatz]

Thanks for posting these. Very interesting photographs.

[GoldenGemster]

Thanks for posting those - I had only seen her mugshot before and could never understand why she was described as pretty - the same applies to Dorothea Binz and others of that ilk.

[J. Duncan]

Looks like Ilse Koch was a redhead. No, I don't find her very pretty either. The photos are interesting because they are so banal (ordinary). The Koch's seem like an ordinary, happily married couple and it's hard to reconcile these photos with the beastly image that the world knows them both to be. Stories abound about Ilse's nymphomania and her use and abuse of prisoners for sex and torture, the lampshades made of human skin, how she rode a white house and picked out prisoners at random for her sexual pleasures etc...the "Bitch of Buchenwald"....even a cheesy soft-porn movie was made about her in the 1970's - "Ilse: She Wolf of the SS" - in the flick, Ilse cuts off the sexual members of men who underperform. I personally do not believe all the stories written about her but it's true that even the SS charged them with corruption (Karl was hanged for theft and graft). They were investigated by SS Colonel konrad Morgen, who discovered that karl had tried to cover his tracks by having several witness prisoners murdered. He also killed Hermann Florstedt, who was his deputy (and one of Ilse's lovers - apparently the koch's had had an "open marriage"). Ilse survived the investigation and got away with her life, was captured by the Americans, got pregnant by a GI, and had a son named Ewe. Sentenced to long terms of imrisonment, she committed suicide in 1967 in prison. She wrote her son that "I'm sorry but it cannot be otherwise" (Louis Snyder: "Hitler's Elite")

[Grisu]

Pictures like these were indeed printed in the press, e.g. by Newsweek (July 1947) and Der Spiegel (February 1950) and thus contributed to the public image of Ilse Koch (who undoubtedly had a pathological and ill-natured side).

Anyone interested in this issue, I strongly recommend Alexandra Przyrembel, "Im Bann eines Bildes: Ilse Koch, die 'Kommandeuse von Buchenwald'", in Insa Eschebach et al. (eds.), Gedächtnis und Geschlecht: Deutungsmuster in Darstellungen des nazionalsozialistischen Genozids, Frankfurt/Main et al., pp. 245-267 (the information on the printing of the pictures is taken from there, as well).



[A now-unnecessary reply to Ripli was removed from this post. ~Vikki]

[David C. Clarke]

Really interesting photos!

She does though look to me so....hardened as to be insensible. Even smiling she seems cruel. Ask yourself if you would ever date a woman who wore that smile....

Bestens,
~D, the EviL

[planetar]

Look at this:

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... 8845c8e914

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... %26hl%3Dpl

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... l%26sa%3DN

Google -> Ilse Koch source:life -> search

[Annelie]

Would be interested to know who the other "nazi women" are in the other photos from

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... l%26sa%3DN

the photos are quite good.

[Grisu]

Would be interested to know who the other "nazi women" are in the other photos from

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... l%26sa%3DN

the photos are quite good.

What do you mean by "the other 'nazi women'" (my italics)? Women in related images? There is only one women in the picture you link.

[Annelie]

Yes, there is only one women but if you click on related images, there are quotation beneath photos saying,
"other nazi women".

http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l? ... e094faa949

[Grisu]

An answer to your question leads me off topic, I fear, since I do not know whether Ilse Koch was ever held in Lager 77 -- maybe forum staff could split it into a new topic.

As the tag says, these women would be related to Interniertenlager 77 (or simply Lager 77), which was a camp in Ludwigsburg where members of the NS-Frauenschaft were detained in the former army barracks of Fromann-Kaserne (formerly known as Osterholzkaserne or Eberhard-Ludwigs-Kaserne). The group of women would include several Gaufrauenschaftsleiterinnen and other women holding a function in the NSF - among a total of 1.506 female detainees were 463 leading women of that organization (figures from October 1946).

Source:
Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, Bestand EL 904: Interniertenlager und Interniertenkrankenhäuser. Verwaltungsakten, 9: Internierungslager 77.

Reference:
Michel, Anette, "'Führerinnen' im Dritten Reich: Die Gaufrauenschaftsleiterinnen in der NSDAP", in Sybille Steinbacher (ed.), Volksgenossinnen. Frauen in der NS-Volksgemeinschaft, Göttingen 2007, p. 115-137. (with numerous further bibliographical references)

[Annelie]

Sorry to lead you off this topic. Wasn't my intention.

Thankyou for your input and source.

[UnityMitford]

Anybody know what happened to her son Ewe that was born during her war crimes trial (and its been stated fathered by an American GI)? What a crazy situation to be born into. Your mother one of the most infamous nazi criminals, your father an American who was her captor! Where was this son raised? (Someone stated she wrote her son before her suicide (I assume the same son and not one with Koch) Did the american father acknowledge the son? I know many American servicemen got a bit of a hard time for bringing home german brides, but can you imagine fathering a son with the bitch of buchenwald? I would be very interested to know where this son is today and what happened to him. (Also if the American authorities did anything about a GI having sex with a captured German prisoner. Seems like a big no no.)

[Annelie]

J Duncan wrote

Stories abound about Ilse's nymphomania and her use and abuse of prisoners for sex and torture, the lampshades made of human skin

According to Jean Edward Smith in his biography, "Lucius D. Clay, an American Life," the general maintained that the leather lamp shades were really made out of goat skin. The book quotes a statement made by General Clay years later:

"There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald," had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin."

According to the Buchenwald Report, there was a factory at Buchenwald, which produced leather goods out of animal skins, but it had caught on fire during an Allied bombing raid on the camp on August 24, 1944.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScr ... Koch4.html

[chinacheeze]

Well, she certainly was a looker, at least in her younger years.

Her facial appearance , for whatever reason, seems to have
metamorphosed into a very unpleasant one, most noticeable perhaps in her mug shot,
being closer to the image of a madwoman if nothing else.
(Her one eye reveals an apparent imbalance of the psyche seen in overstimulated or
over medicated individuals - respectively, to suggest just two parallels. )

The pic of her and the dog gives away nothing of the infamous
future she would hold, nor of the apparent sadism she held
within her poisoned spirit.