She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet Irma Grese was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative pervert I ever came across.”—Dr. Gisella Perl
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That is how Gisella Perl, a female inmate doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau, remembered Irma Grese. The blond, blue-eyed epitome of a Nazi Aryan poster child, Grese became the second-highest ranking SS Aufseherin (SS Female Overseer) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau murder camp in 1943 at age 20––and stirred panic and fear in every prisoner so unfortunate to have been deported there during the Holocaust.
Irma Grese committed innumerable acts of sadism and roamed the women’s camps at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen looking for female victims to abuse. Her career of crime caught up with her at the end of the war, and she was arrested, tried, and executed by the British. Long after her death the question remains: How could a woman achieve such a horrendous reputation and commit such heinous crimes?
Irma Grese was born Irma Ilse Ida Grese on October 7, 1923, in the small village of Wrechen (pronounced “Vreken”) in the beautiful rural Mecklenburg region of northern Germany. Wrechen is 50 miles north of Berlin and south of the Baltic Sea. It borders the Holstein region to the west and Pomerania to the east. Ravensbrück, the infamous concentration camp for women, lay not far from Wrechen.