On This Day: The Witch of Buchenwald – who made lampshades from Jews’ skin – is sentenced to life in prison in West Germany

January 15, 1951: Ilse Koch, a Nazi nicknamed the Witch of Buchenwald after allegedly making lampshades from Jews’ skin, was sentenced to life in prison on this day in 1951.

The wife of Karl-Otto Koch, the commandant of the Buchenwald and Majdanek, was jailed by a West German court after being handed over by the Americans.

A British Pathé newsreel shows the promiscuous blonde, who had earlier given birth in prison, standing trial for the third time in Augsburg.

Her husband, who was nicknamed the Butcher of Buchenwald and was so vile that even the Nazis considered him worthy of execution, died at the end of World War II.

Together, the sadistic pair stole vast amounts of valuables and money from the Jews and others “undesirables” that they had ordered to be murdered.

Witnesses claimed that she specifically chose victims with tattoos, so that she could turn their decorated skin into gruesome lampshades, although none were ever found.

Among the terror endured by prisoners at Buchenwald, a camp near near Weimar in Germany, were routine beatings, starvation and being forced to march for hours.

But the punishment most feared by prisoners, who also included non-Jewish disabled people and homosexuals, was the Baumhängen, German for “hanging tree”.

Here the victim had his hands bound behind the trunk high up and often remained hanging until their arms popped out of their joints.

Prisoners who endured this typically slowly lost consciousness after suffering excruciating pain.

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Meanwhile, the Kochs, who terrorised Buchenwald between 1937 and 1941, lived a life of luxury – using prisoners’ cash to build their dream home and a sports hall.

Ilse’s husband, an SS Standartenführer (Colonel) whom she met and married while she was a guard at Sachsenhausen in 1936, was eventually transferred to Poland.

There, he established the Majdanek death camp, where 78,000 mostly Jews were killed by firing squads and later in newly built gas chambers.

Karl-Otto Koch, who again took his wife from him, was removed from his post in 1943 after the SS became worried that he was enriching himself.

The act of robbing their victims of all their possessions was not a crime, but the Nazis expected camp commandants to hand over their takings to the German war machine.

Both Kochs stood trial, although Isle was released in 1944 due to a lack of evidence.

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Karl-Otto, who was said to be gay and tolerated his wife’s many affairs with other SS officers, was sentenced to death and was executed by firing squad in April 1944.

Ilse, who was also nicknamed the Bitch of Buchenwald and the Butcher’s Widow, was captured by American troops in June 1945.

She stood trial the following year, accused of “participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald”.

At that trial she shocked judges by revealing that, despite being locked up in isolation for over a year, she was eight months pregnant at the age of 41.

Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment by military court and her newborn son – her second child, with her first committing suicide in shame – was taken away at birth.

But American military governor Lucius D Clay controversially reduced her sentence to four years due to a lack of more incriminating proof of some of her alleged deeds.

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While conceding that Koch was a “loathesome creature”, he said “there was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin”.

But, after her release, prosecutors in the newly independent West Germany called for her to stand trial again in November 1950 amid public protest.

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Despite four separate witnesses – among 250 who testified - insisting she had made lampshades from human skin, this charge was dropped again due to lack of evidence.

But she was convicted of charges of incitement to murder, incitement to attempted murder, and incitement to the crime of committing grievous bodily harm.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment and permanent forfeiture of civil rights following the seven-week trial and died at Aichach women’s prison aged 60 in 1967.