Irma Grese
From Free net encyclopedia
JHMM13 (Talk | contribs)
/* The Irma Grese ghost legend */ removed this section for copyright violation - see talk page
Next diff →
Current revision
Irma Grese (October 7, 1923 – December 13, 1945) was a supervisor at the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
Contents |
Childhood
Irma Grese was born in Wrechen in southeastern Mecklenburg, close to Pasewalk, to Alfred Grese, a milker and member of the NSDAP since 1937, and Berta Grese. She had four siblings. In 1936, her mother committed suicide, allegedly because of marital problems.
Grese left school in 1938 at the age of 15, due to a combination of a poor scholastic aptitude, being bullied by classmates, and a fanatical preoccupation with the BDM, of which her father disapproved.
Casual jobs
Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in the SS sanatorium Hohenlychen for two years and unsuccessfully tried to find an apprenticeship as a nurse, after which she worked as dairy helper. In 1942, at age 18, she volunteered for SS-Helferinnen (Female Helpers') training at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her father did not approve of her new career, and ordered her to stay away from their house.
Having completed the training in March 1943, she was transferred as a Aufseherin to Auschwitz, and by the end of that year she was Oberaufseherin (Senior Supervisor), the second highest ranking woman at the camp, in charge of around 30,000 Jewish female prisoners.
The Beautiful Beast
At Auschwitz, she was one of the youngest female guards, and the most cruel, often whipping and kicking felled prisoners. The inmates dubbed the blue-eyed blonde the "Beautiful Beast," while Grese herself became obsessed with the idea of becoming a film star after the war. She also had a reputation as a nymphomaniac, sexually abusing male and female prisoners alike and taking many lovers, including the camp physician Josef Mengele and camp commandant Josef Kramer. In January 1945 she briefly returned to Ravensbrück before ending her wartime career at Bergen-Belsen as an Arbeitsdienstführerin from March to April, being captured by the British April 17, 1945, together with other SS-personnel who did not flee.
War crimes
She was among the 44 accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial. She was tried over the first period of the trials (September 17 - November 17, 1945) and was represented by Major L. Cranfield. The trials were conducted under British military law in Lüneburg, and the charges derived from the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding the treatment of prisoners. The accusations against her centred on her ill treatment and murder of Allied nationals imprisoned at the camps, including setting dogs on inmates, shootings and sadistic beatings with a whip.
She was convicted of crimes committed at both Auschwitz and Belsen and sentenced to death by hanging. Her subsequent appeal was rejected. Ten others were also sentenced to death including two other women, Juana Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath, with whom she stayed up the night before their execution, laughing and singing Nazi songs. Executed at Hameln jail by Albert Pierrepoint, she was the youngest woman to die judicially under English law in the 20th century. She showed no remorse, and her final words to Pierrepoint were: "Quick, get it over."