The guards of the concentration camps were known for their brutal and barbaric treatment of inmates and prisoners during the Second World War.
After the war a number of them were sentenced to death and were executed for their evil actions at camps such as Auschwitz concentration camp, Ravensbrück concentration camp, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
When Belsen was liberated by the British they found a number of the guards hidden within the prisoner population trying to escape any form of punishment.
And one of those who was found was Irma Grese.
She would later be executed for her crimes and she became known as one of the most evil women that worked inside of the concentration camps.
Irma Grese was just 22 when she went to the gallows inside Hamelin Prison.
She was referred to as the “Hyena of Auschwitz” or “The Beautiful Beast.
”But what was her story and what did she do inside of the concentration camps.
Join us today as we look at the story of Irma Grese.
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Irma Grese was born on the 7th of October 1923 inside of a small village named Wrechen.
It was a very rural upbringing for her and she was raised around 50 miles north of Berlin.
Her father Alfred was a farmer and her mother took her own life in 1932 when she was nine years old.
And it was believed the marriage problems that she had with her husband may have led to this.
But this left Irma and her four siblings without a mother.
Her father was considered a man who regularly visited church but he was very strict and stern with his children and he often beat them.
But he was a man who had a lot of bad feelings towards the Nazis and his dislike of Adolf Hitler.
And he banned his daughters from joining the League of German Girls the Nazi youth group for young women where they were taught how to be a housewife and a mother.
But Irma and her sister Helene joined the group against her father’s wishes and she became brainwashed by the Nazis and indulged in many of their policies.
Irma began her indoctrination at the age of 10 when Hitler came into power and her father had no choice over this as at the time Nazi education was introduced in all elementary schools.
Irma would become an ardent Nazi even at a young age.
And at the age of 14 she left school.
After leaving home she then worked as a farmhand for six months before working in a shop as a retail sales clerk.
She may have left home due to the rift which was opening up between her and her father as he was disgusted by Irma’s influence inside of the Nazi Party and how she was beginning to venerate Hitler.
Irma Grese was a girl who was not considered the most violent at a young age and would often run away from fights and not get involved in them.
But at some point she changed completely.
In 1939 she went to study nursing but she went to do this at the Hohenlychen Hospital.
A place where SS members would go to convalesce around 20 miles from her hometown.
This was where many top ranking Nazis would go to be treated.
And she trained it is believed under Karl Gebhardt who would during the Second World War become known as a disgusting and evil doctor who performed shocking medical experimentation.
He too would later be executed for his crimes.
But it is believed that Irma may have been party to some of these experiments and may have watched as she tried to become a nurse whilst here.
It is likely she became further indoctrinated with the SS also.
But she apparently was not good enough to be a nurse and it was said she was best fit for other lines of work.
She was around 17 at the time.
But Irma spoke to one of Gebhardt’s friends at Ravensbrück an all female concentration camp.
She went there for work in April 1941 and was told to come back in six months when she was 18.
In the meantime she worked at a dairy farm and as a machinist.
But she then went back to Ravensbrück and joined the SS as an SS Helferin or female concentration camp guard.
Women were asked to work in this line of employment from all over Germany and around two and a half thousand would serve during the Second World War.
Irma had to pass a number of exams and was also asked questions to ensure she was a Nazi and a strong one who knew about the party and the race laws.
She then was hired to train as a concentration camp guard and went through three weeks of hard and difficult training.
On one of her first days she actually apologized to a prisoner who stepped out in front of her and this was deemed not good enough.
She was then told how to brutally deal with inmates and how not to be polite to them.
She around this time began to have relations with the SS male officers at the camp.
And it was said that it appeared that all Aufseherinnen married or unmarried had one or more constant SS lovers.
She would have indulged in the drinking bouts and parties that the SS had in the evening.
But after three weeks she was trained.
She then went to participate in many of the beatings at Ravensbrück.
And each month she was making 54 Reichsmarks in salary.
She was trained by other sadists.
But at the age of 19 it was time for her to move on.
She received orders that she was going to be transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp near Kraków.
Before this move she went home and Irma visited her father whilst wearing her full SS uniform.
She had a huge argument with him.
Her father allegedly struck her during this and he then told her never to come home.
But when she got to Auschwitz Irma Grese was assigned to the women’s camp at Birkenau.
This was the main extermination part of the site where thousands were killed in the gas chambers.
She had a number of duties there including commanding the gardening squad working on the telephones and even being in control of the mail.
She then in May 1944 became an Oberaufseherin.
And she was given the task of commanding over 30,000 female prisoners in Birkenau’s BII C Camp.
She then in this role became infamous.
And she would wear heavy boots and would carry her pistol and whip at all times.
Grese became known as a “Beautiful Beast” or the “Blonde Angel of Hell.
”And she often wore expensive perfumes and tormented the women on a daily basis.
One former doctor of Auschwitz described her as “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Her face had an angelic clarity and her blue eyes were the liveliest and most innocent eyes imaginable.
”Another said it defied belief that such a pretty girl could be so cruel.
When she walked through the camp with a whip in her hand she was surrounded by a cloud of choice perfume.
Grese often stole valuables and clothing from the prisoners inside Auschwitz.
But she would use her weapons to kill.
She would use her whip to attack the women and sometimes these injuries led to infections which women would suffer.
Doctors would then be forced to operate on the women with dirty equipment and no anesthetics.
She would then witness these operations.
And it was said Irma Grese invariably arrived to watch operations kicking the victim if her screams interfered with her pleasure and convulsing completely as spasms shook her entire body and made saliva run down the corner of her mouth.
She was also known for shooting inmates at will whenever she liked.
But she also had dogs that she would use to strike fear into prisoners’ hearts.
During one incident she was on a bicycle with her dog at the side of her.
And any prisoner who could not keep up during a 16 kilometer walk to work was attacked by the canine.
One witness of her actions involving the dog said.
“We were loading the lorries before noon.
We had an unexpected visitor Aufseherin Irma with her two Alsatian dogs.
Irma blonde with an angel face as the camp’s chief torturer.
We were very careful not to attract her attention.
We pushed and pushed.
It seemed to take an eternity to roll the car over the hill.
The next team was unable to coordinate its efforts.
They were completely unnerved by our visitor.
They hesitated and lost control of their wagon.
It swayed rolled down the hill and capsized scattering stone over the whole area.
The prisoners were completely broken in spirit.
Aufseherin Irma set the two dogs on them.
The girls tried to escape their fangs but the trained killers easily overtook them.
One grabbed a Polish woman which slipped on the rock.
The other fell upon a Russian girl.
At Irma’s orders the kapo underlings beat and kicked the girls still untouched by the dogs.
The kapo wrote down the numbers of the delinquent team.
The dogs were tearing at the girls’ bodies.
Irma came closer to observe what they were doing.
Her eyes were bloodshot.
The sight of the blood seemed to intoxicate her.
She panted.
We stood in a trance as if at a gladiatorial combat.
”Irma Grese was also involved in the selection processes.
And she would regularly decide with doctors such as Josef Mengele who would live and who would die.
She even it is believed had an affair with Mengele as well as other men and women including female prisoners.
Once she got bored of them she would send them to their deaths.
Grese did fall pregnant and she forced inmate doctors to perform a termination on her and she even supplied the instruments required and the doctor did perform this procedure.
She did fall in love with an SS man named Franz Wolfgang Hössler who was the chief engineer of Auschwitz’s construction element and the pair would meet up in the evenings.
But as the Second World War turned against the Germans Irma Grese’s work at Auschwitz came to an end as the camp was evacuated with the Red Army on the horizon.
She was transferred to Ravensbrück briefly on the 18th of January 1945.
But then in March 1945 she arrived at Bergen Belsen.
Belsen was a site in complete breakdown as huge numbers of inmates were evacuated there.
She was reunited with many of her former colleagues from Auschwitz such as Josef Kramer.
For long periods of time during roll call prisoners had to hold rocks above their heads.
They were forced to stand in the cold and if someone struggled she would beat them with her truncheon.
Even as the Allies were close by to liberating Belsen she was still brutalizing inmates.
Irma Grese remained at the camp as the Allies seized control and she was there to allegedly maintain law and order.
She had the chance to run but decided against it.
She was not immediately arrested and was forced to help bury the over 10,000 corpses that were lying around.
She was arrested on the 17th of April 1945.
And many heard about her evil actions.
She was temporarily imprisoned in a nearby tank training academy.
She said.
“It was our duty to exterminate antisocial elements so that Germany’s future would be assured.
”Her interrogations went on and she was a few months later indicted with others on charges of execution murder ill treatment and barbarism at Belsen and Auschwitz.
She was brought to the Belsen Trials.
And during the trial it was said she was more bothered by her appearance than the charges brought against her.
Throughout the trial she remained calm and unemotional when the evidence was put forward.
Witnesses described seeing Irma Grese shooting prisoners at point blank range.
And one said she was beaten by Grese and that some were even beaten to death.
When the trial came to an end Irma Grese was sentenced to death alongside two other women Elisabeth Volkenrath and Juana Bormann.
She was taken from her cell and following this Grese was known to be crying.
She was then sent to Hamelin Prison to await her execution.
And it was Albert Pierrepoint who would take her life on the 13th of December 1945.
Grese was to face the hangman and she was the second to die that day as Elisabeth Volkenrath was to die first.
It was said of her execution.
“We climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting.
A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung open the door and we filed past the pale faces and into the execution chamber.
The officers stood at attention.
Brigadier Paton Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised.
He gave me the signal and a sigh released breath was audible in the chamber.
I walked into the corridor.
‘Irma Grese’ I called.
The German warders quickly closed the spy hole and opened one door.
Irma Grese stepped out.
The cell was far too small for me to go inside.
I had to pinion her in the corridor.
‘Follow me’ I said in English and O’Neill repeated the order in German.
At 9:34 AM she walked into the execution chamber gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it then walked into the center of the trap where I’d made a chalk mark.
She stood on this mark very firmly and as I placed the white cap over her head she said in her languid voice ‘Schnell.
’ The drop crashed down and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead after 20 minutes.
Her body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.
”Irma Grese was one of the most notorious war criminals of the Second World War.
She was known for being a murderer and a brutal guard who was too happy to beat people with her whip and other weapons.
She took many lives with her pistol and was sentenced to death for her crimes.
