In her indictment, the prosecutor described Ilse Koch as “a sexy-looking depraved woman who beat prisoners, reported them for beatings, and trafficked human skin”.
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Ilse’s husband, Karl Koch, had been commandant of Buchenwald, one of the first and largest concentration camps within Germany’s 1937 borders, from August 1937 to October 1941. He would then briefly serve as a commander of Majdanek, another notorious concentration camp.
On 11 April 1947, two years to the day after American forces liberated the camp, the Buchenwald trials opened in a courtroom in the internment camp of Dachau, the site of the former Dachau concentration camp. The trials were run in the US-occupied zone, by American military tribunals.
The Kochs had initially been arrested in 1943 and tried before the SS military court. Charged with embezzlement and (in Karl’s case) the unauthorised murder of three prisoners, Karl Koch was convicted, and executed in 1945 for his crimes.
However, Ilse was set free due to the lack of evidence against her – and American forces later pursued her for her involvement with war crimes and crimes against humanity.