The Hanging of Nazi Guard Irma Grese _ Forgotten History

The Nazi regime's crimes didn't end with its generals and scientists. At the Nuremberg trials and beyond, justice sought the architects of genocide. But the spotlight rarely fell on the women who helped carry it out. When British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen in 1945, they found more than starving prisoners and mass graves. Among them were guards, some of them women, trying to blend in, One of them stood out. Young, sadistic, and fiercely loyal to the SS, Irma Grese would go on to earn names like the Hyena of Auschwitz and the Beast of Belsen. She didn't wear medals. She didn't bark orders from a command post. She wasn't a general, a scientist, or a mastermind. She was a 22-year-old woman in a sharp SS uniform with blonde hair, At Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, the name Irma Grese didn't just spark fear. It froze blood. Survivors said she picked victims for the gas chamber out of jealousy, that she beat women senseless for looking at her wrong, that she set her dog loose for sport. And yet, when the war ended, she was still standing at her post, defiant. Who was Irma Grese? What was her role in the Holocaust? How did a young farm girl become one of the most sadistic guards in Nazi Germany? What was her fate? And why is her name still whispered as a warning nearly 80 years later? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. Irma Grese was born on October 7, 1923, in the small village of Renschen, Germany, where Irma and her four siblings were raised on a farm. Her father, Alfred, was a philanderer, and her mother took her own life in 1932 upon discovering that her husband was cheating on her with a pub owner's daughter. Irma was only nine years old. When Hitler came to power, Nazi ideology and indoctrination became mandatory in all public schools, and Irma was ten years old and impressionable. She absorbed the racist doctrine, National Socialist Dogma, until she left school at age 14. She was a victim of severe bullying in school, which may have formed her temperament. Her father was a strict disciplinarian, and as time went by, he developed an intense dislike for Hitler and the Nazis, banning his daughters from joining the League of German Girls, the Nazi youth group for young women while the boys had the Hitler youth. However, Irma and her sister, Helena, joined anyway, against her father's wish. After leaving school, she worked as a farmhand for six months with her father until she was hired as a sales clerk and left the farm. In her own words given at her trial, 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 Luschen for six months. Irma was considered to be intelligent, and in 1939 she applied for nursing school and was accepted on a trial basis. She received her initial training under Dr. Karl Gebhardt, who would become as famous as Dr. Josef Mengele for his horrific experiments on living human subjects. She did her studies at the Hohentlusschen Hospital, which specialized in treating wounded and ill members of the various branches of the SS. But due to her lack of a solid formal education, she failed to pass her final exams for the first year and was dropped from the program. Gebhardt wrote in his letter that she would be suited for other work. She went back to farming temporarily. Her new career as a prison camp guard was interesting. As she herself stated, in July 1942, I tried again to become a nurse, but the labor exchange sent me to Ravensbruck concentration camp, although I protested against it. She applied to be a prison guard as women were being recruited. She arrived for training at Ravensbruck, which was a woman's camp. She was interviewed past the background check and was accepted on a probationary basis and completed the month-long training program. Her training included psychological as well as physical brutality to break the spirits of the prisoners. Part of her initiation was to join in a group beating of an arbitrary inmate, usually resulting in the unfortunate victim's death, and she excelled at it. Graduating at age 19 and with her SS member number, she took leave to go home before she was to report to her new posting, Auschwitz-Birkenau. When she arrived in her SS uniform, her father disowned her and told her to leave and never return. In March 1943, Irma Grese was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau and rapidly ascended to the at the camp, and she oversaw 18,000 female prisoners at one point. Many died, but that was not important as the dead were always replaced with new arrivals. Irma was reassigned to the women's camp in the Birkenau complex that operated separately from Auschwitz main camp. Auschwitz used slave laborers for various German businesses and construction details. Those unable to work went to Birkenau, which was where the mass gassings took place, where tens of thousands were killed. Most were the old, infirm women and children. She was also in charge of collecting any valuables such as gold, silver, gems, all jewelry, even eyeglasses, shoes, and clothing. She cataloged all the items, boxed them up, and sent the report to the commandant, Obersturmbannfuhrer Rudolf Hoess. She also commanded the Sonderkommando, who were groups of prisoners who pulled the debt from the gas chambers and placed their bodies in the crematoria. She was also responsible for rotating the Sonderkommando every three months. Those on the detail were killed, then replaced. In the memoir Five Chimneys, Auschwitz survivor Olga Lingel writes that Grisa had many affairs with other Nazis, including Josef Mengele. When it came time to select women for the gas chamber, Lingel noted that Grisa would purposely pick out the beautiful prisoners out of jealousy and spite. According to Professor Wendy A. Sarti's research, Grisa had a disturbing fondness for striking imprisoned women on their breasts and for forcing young Jewish girls to be her lookout as she sexually assaulted other inmates. Sarti also reported that Grisa would sick her doggone prisoners, whip them constantly, and kick them with her jackboots until there was blood. In May 1944, Hoess promoted her to commanding officer of the female camp where 30,000 female prisoners resided in Birkenau's B-22 C camp. This was where she became infamous as a brutal murderess. She would wear heavy boots and always carried a whip and pistol. She and her subordinates hunted for prisoners daily who could be singled off for punishment, another method of instilling fear. Irma would meet the new arrivals sent from the train station where she would determine which women would be put to work right away and which would be gassed. Many times she would single someone out and start beating them with her whip and, when they were on the ground, kicked and stomped on them with her heavily hobnailed boots. She also had a flair for the dramatic, telling a prisoner that if they could run fast when she pulled her pistol and they survived, they would go free. None did and few tried. Irma was also presented to high-ranking dignitaries who arrived at the camp for inspections, including Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler and many other high-ranking Nazis involved in the Holocaust. One man who met her was Obergruppenfuhrer Karl Wolff when he joined Himmler on a tour of various camps. Wolff had this to say, Graece was highly regarded by hers and she apparently kept her house in proper order. I did not really know her but Berger said, meaning Gottlob Berger, commandant of camps, said that she was the best female guard in the SS. Another person Irma had contact with on a regular basis was the aforementioned Dr. Josef Mengele and see our video on him. Mengele would be at the train station to greet new arrivals. He would select those he thought would assist in his medical experiments, twins, dwarves, hunchbacks, anyone with a unique physical characteristic. Occasionally he would visit the Birkenau complex to see if there were any human subjects he may have missed and Irma was told to look for anyone who had these characteristics. When she did find people who fit those descriptions she would have them moved over to Mengele's research lab. In December 1944 as the Red Army closed in on Auschwitz-Birkenau the camp was ordered evacuated. The able-bodied prisoners were to be taken by the guards to Bergen-Belsen while other staff were sent to various other camps. Mengele for example was sent to Gross-Rosen. Irma and her trainload of prisoners arrived at Belsen the first week of January 1945. Once all the guards were reunited they began their work. Her brutality continued and how many people she personally killed is unknown but between both camps it is said to have been in the hundreds not including those gassed. The British conducted forward reconnaissance including special air service patrols and groups from the 20th armored brigade and they had verified the camp's presence. The British offered a truce to the camp officials which was accepted and on April 12th a 48 square kilometer exclusion zone was placed around the camp and the area declared neutral. No shots would be fired in the vicinity and the British 11th armored division and 63rd anti-tank regiment royal artillery under the command lieutenant colonel Richard Taylor liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15th 1945. Major Dick Williams a staff captain in the supplies and transport branch of VIII Corps headquarters was one of the first British soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen to go forward to assess conditions in the camp. Thousands of bodies lay unburied around the camp and some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food water or basic sanitation. Many were suffering from typhus dysentery and of course starvation. Irma Grese remained at the camp when the British arrived and she told them that she was there to allegedly maintain law and order. Brigadier Glenn Hughes gave the order for the captured guards to clean up the camp. The Hungarians and German SS guards still on site along with other German prisoners of war were used as labor to bury the bodies. The British ordered a quarantine to prevent the further spread of disease among the weakened population. Civilians including the local council of the city of Selle were forced to visit the camp and see it for themselves. Given her youth and being a young woman the British soldiers believed her so she was not immediately arrested instead she was forced to work with other guards to bury almost 13 to 15,000 corpses that were lying around rotting. During this process she was identified by a survivor who reported her to the authorities and she was arrested on April 17, 1945. Almost 100 British medical students arrived at the camp in May 1945 to assist with the relief effort. They supervised the distribution of food and provided whatever medical care they could. They walked into a serious condition of starving prisoners and a typhus epidemic which they worked to contain. Despite these efforts a further 14,000 people died after the camp's liberation. The intelligence unit arrived and began taking survivors statements. Most of these would be used in the following war crimes trials as some inmates had been at other camps as well as Auschwitz. The British began investigating what had happened at Belsen immediately after the liberation of the camp. Later a special military tribunal was convened between September 14 and November 17, 1945 in Lüneburg. It tried 44 men and women who had worked at Bergen-Belsen. 11 of the defendants were sentenced to death including Commandant Josef Kramer, head female guard Elisabeth Falkenrath and camp doctor Fritz Klein. They were executed in Hamelin in December 1945 but Irma Grese stood out. Irma Grese's trial was closely watched and even her sister Helena Grese was brought in for testimony. As Helena put it during her sister's trial, Irma told us she was supervising the prisoners working inside the compound and she had to see that they were doing their work well and that they did not escape. We asked her what do the prisoners get for food and why have they been sent to a concentration camp. She answered that she was not allowed to talk to the prisoners and did not know what sort of food they got. During the trials many prisoners testified regarding Irma shooting prisoners and Polish camp survivor and trial witness Daniel Safran testified to the following, I have seen Grisa beat prisoners in Auschwitz and about a fortnight before the British troops liberated Belsen, I saw her beat a girl in the camp. She had a pistol but she was using a riding crop. The beatings were very severe. Safran also claimed to have seen Irma Grisa shoot two girls who attempted to run away during a selection for the gas chamber. Another survivor from Hungary Ilona Stein also testified as to Grisa's brutality beating a female prisoner to death. Grisa was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. During the pronouncement of her sentence she remained calm almost stoic. Despite her appeals Grisa's sentence was upheld. Grisa was heard singing Nazi party songs in her cell shortly before her execution on December 13, 1945. Albert Pierpoint the executioner described her hanging. I walked into the corridor. Irma Grisa I called. The German guards quickly closed all grills on 12 of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grisa stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside and I had to pinion her in the corridor. Follow me I said. At 9 34 a.m. Irma walked in. She gazed at the officials then walked to the center where I made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark very firmly and I placed a white cap over her. Everything was ready. The drop crashed down and doctors followed me to the pit and pronounced her dead. She was declared dead at 10 03 a.m. Irma Grisa's execution was documented and listed her as the second of three women to be executed. Grisa is buried in Zumfriedhof am Well in Hameln, Germany. At just 22 years old Irma Grisa became the youngest woman ever hanged under British law in the 20th century. Her brutality and dedication to killing earned her the nicknames the Hyena of Auschwitz and the Beast of Belsen. She was one of three female guards at Bergen-Belsen who would be executed today and she will forever be remembered as one of the most brutal guards in the history of the holocaust. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History. If you liked what you saw please click like, share, and subscribe and if you would like to assist with the ever-increasing cost of production please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon page. Please check out our merchandise store and thanks for watching.