Ilse Koch

Famous Figures: Western Europe (89 items)
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Famous Figures: Criminals (47 items)
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Ilse Koch was a German war criminal who was an overseer at Nazi concentration camps run by her husband, commandant Karl-Otto Koch. Working at Buchenwald and Majdanek, Koch became infamous for her sadistic, brutal treatment of prisoners. In 1947, she became one of the first prominent Nazis tried by the U.S. military. After the trial received worldwide media attention, survivors' accounts of her actions resulted in other authors describing her abuse of prisoners as sadistic, and the image of her as "the concentration camp murderess" was current in post-war German society.