Irma Grese and the Holocaust

What sort of people took part in carrying out the Holocaust?

Case Study

Irma Grese

This is Irma. From her appearance what do you think she was like?

Childhood

Irma's childhood was unremarkable:I was born on 7th October, 1923. In 1938 I left the elementary school and worked for six months on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which I worked in a shop in Luchen for six months. When I was 15 I went to a hospital in Hohenluchen, where I stayed for two years. I tried to become a nurse but the Labour Exchange would not allow that and sent me to work in a dairy in Fürstenburg. In July, 1942, I tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent me to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, although I protested against it.Extract from Irma’s Testimony at

the Belsen trial

Indoctrination

Like many other young people, she was swayed by Hitler's oratory and shocked by the corruption of the Weimar Republic government. She joined a Nazi youth group, The League of German Maidens (right with their pennant) and wholeheartedly embraced their ideas.

Where did Irma train?At age 19, she found herself a supervisor at Ravensbrück (top right) which was used as a training camp for many female SS guards, just at the time the Nazi anti-Jewish programmes were at their height in July 1942. In March 1943 she was transferred to Auschwitz. She later did a further spell at Ravensbrück and then went to Bergen-Belsen (Bottom right with fellow camp guards after liberation – note that none appear malnourished) March 1945.

Irma’s Career in the campsIrma rose to the rank of Oberaufseherin (Senior SS-Supervisor) in the autumn of 1943, in day to day control of around 30,000 women prisoners, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jews. She was the second most senior female guard there.

Do you think she has changed?

What did Irma do in the Camps?• Whilst at Birkenau I have seen Grese making selections with Dr.

Mengele of people to be sent to the gas chamber. On these parades Grese herself chose the people to be killed in this way. In one selection about August, 1944, there were between 2000 and 3000 selected. At this selection Grese and Mengele were responsible for selecting those for the gas chamber. People chosen would sometimes sneak away from the line and hide themselves under their beds. Grese would go and find them, beat them until they collapsed and then drag them back into line again. I have seen everything I describe. It was general knowledge in this camp that persons selected in this way went to the gas chamber.

Deposition of Ilona Stein at the Beslen trial

SIDE TRACK!!!Who was mengele?

• An SS officer in the Nazi concentration cap at Auschwith-Birkenau

• Initially responsible for the selection of the arriving transports of prisoners, determining who was to be killed and who was to go into forced labour. Look carefully at

Mengele’s picture. Which branch of the SS did he belong to?

Infamy...• He was infamous for

performing experiments on camp inmates, for which Mengele was called the Angel of Death.

• Most of the experiments were associated with aspects of heredity. Most notorious was his gruesome work on twins.

Why might he be interested in Heredity?

Experiments included:• attempts to take one

twins eyeballs and attach them to the back of the other twin's head, so humans could fight better in war, and;

• attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes.

The search for Mengele• Once Irma Grese was

responsible for rounding up 14 pairs of gypsy twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly. Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each and every piece of the twins' bodies.

www.wiesenthal.com

As you could imaging it did not take long for Mengele to make it onto the list of those most wanted by the Allies and other Nazi hunters responsible for rounding up war criminals.

How did he get away?• Mengele left Auschwitz disguised

as a member of the regular German infantry.

• He turned up at the Gross-Rosen work camp and left well before it was liberated on February 11, 1945.

• He was then seen at Matthausen and shortly after he was captured as a POW and held near Munich.

• He was released by the allies, who had no idea that he was in their midst.

By the fall of 1948, Mengele had made up his mind to leave Germany and build a life elsewhere. Argentina was the preferred

choice of sanctuary for many Nazis.

• He lived in South America for 35 years.He constantly moved around, afraid of being caught.There were many warrants, rewards, and bounties offered, but he was lucky.

• One afternoon, living in Brazil, he went for a swim. While in the ocean he suffered a massive stroke and began to drown. By the time he was dragged to shore, he was dead.

SIDE TRACK OVERBack to Irma

The Belsen Trial• Josef Kramer, the Commandant

of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and 44 other staff members were brought before a British Military Tribunal on September 17, 1945 at Luneburg (see courthouse top right), a city that is a few miles north of the former concentration camp.

• Irma is seated amongst the defendants (bottom right)

The Charges• There were two counts listed

in the charge sheet: Count One for crimes committed at Bergen-Belsen and Count Two for crimes committed while the guards were previously working at Auschwitz Birkenau.

• Of the 44 on trial 12 were charged with both counts Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath, one of her co-accused, were among them.

Elisabeth Volkenrath

COUNT ONE

At Bergen-Belsen, Germany, between 1 October 1942 and 30 April 1945, when members of the staff of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp responsible for the well-being of the persons interned there, in violation of the law and usages of war, were together concerned as parties to the ill-treatment of certain of such persons, causing the deaths of Keith Meyer (a British national), Anna Kis, Sara Kohn (both Hungarian nationals).... And 15 others.

Why might they only be charged for these few deaths?

• Count Two was worded similarly to Count one but for events that took place at Auschwitz.

Irma Grese on the witness stand

The charges against Grese

Many Survivours from areas under her control spoke of:

• beatings and the arbitrary shooting of prisoners and that she usually wore heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol to do so;

• savaging of prisoners by her trained and half starved dogs

• her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers

• Her apparent joy shooting prisoners in cold blood;

• that she beat some of the women to death and whipped others mercilessly using a plaited whip

• that in her hut was found the skins of 3 inmates that she had had made into lamp shades.

Her Testimony and defence

• She said in her defense that:

Himmler is responsible for all that has happened but I suppose I have as

much guilt as the others above me.

Did you carry a whip at Auschwitz?

Yes.... It was a very light whip, but if I hit somebody with it, it would hurt. After eight days Kommandant Kramer prohibited whips, but we nevertheless went on using them, I never carried a rubber truncheon.

• Excerpt from the Belsen trial tannscript.

Grese’s response (in bold italics) to the charge of selecting those to be killed in the gas chambers

Were you told anything about the gas chamber by your senior officers? No, the prisoners told me about it. You have been accused of choosing prisoners on these parades and sending them to the gas chamber. Have you

done that? No; I knew that prisoners were gassed. Was it not quite simple to know whether or not the selection was for the gas chamber, because only Jews had to

attend such selections? I myself had only Jews in Camp "C." Then they would all have to attend the selection for the gas chamber, would they not? Yes. As you were told to wait for the doctors you would know perfectly well what it was for? No. When these people were parading they were very often paraded naked and inspected like cattle to see whether

they were fit to work or fit to die, were they not? Not like cattle. You were there keeping order, were you not, and if one ran away you brought her back and gave her a beating? Yes.

So... Do you believe her? Is her answer to the 6th question revealing in any way?

Did she have a choice?• As of 2005, Herta Bothe

Another co-worker of Grese was still alive and still defensive about her job as a female guard at Bergen-Belsen, maintaining that she had been conscripted in September 1942, at the age of 21, to work in the concentration camps

• She claimed that she would have been put into a concentration camp herself if she had refused.

Herta Bothe

The End

• Grese was convicted under both Counts One and Two and was sentenced to death by hanging. After the trial, the 11 who had been sentenced to death, 8 men and 3 women, were taken to Hamelin jail in Wesfalia to await execution. (Hamelin is the town famous for the story of the Pied Piper.

She walked out of her cell and came towards us laughing. She seemed as bonny a girl as one could ever wish to meet. She answered O'Neil's questions, but when he asked her age she paused and smiled. I found that we were both smiling with her, as if we realised the conventional embarrassment of a woman revealing her age. Eventually she said 'twenty-one,' which we knew to be correct. O'Neil asked her to step on to the scales. 'Schnell!' she said - the German for quick.

Albert Pierrepoint.Professional Hangman.

Grese and Kramer (Commondant of Belsen)

Her Final Moments• The following morning we climbed

the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting 'Irma Grese,' I called. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion [bind the arms] her in the corridor. 'Follow me,' I said in English, and O'Neil repeated the order in German. At 9.34 a.m. she walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it, then walked on to the centre of the trap, where I had made a chalk mark.

• She stood on this mark very firmly, and as I placed the white cap over her hand she said in her languid voice 'Schnell'. The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.