Irma Grese: the history of the warder

Irma Greze is known throughout the world for her terrible actions while working as a warden in the German death camps. For her character, she received the nickname of the Blonde Devil. Who was this young woman and how did she become the Angel of Death?

A family

In the light Irma Grese appeared on October 7, 1923 near Pazevalka (North-East part of Germany) in a peasant family. Bertha and Alfred had five children. In 1936, all of them were left without a mother who committed suicide. Father since 1937 was recorded in the NSDAP and was engaged in raising children independently.

The beginning of the way

Family tragedy did not allow the girl to get proper education, and at 15 years of Irma Grese, whose photo survived to this day, was forced to leave school. At the same time, she began to actively demonstrate her qualities in the Union of German Girls.

In the next three years, Irma Greze, whose history amazes with its terrible and cruel pages, has tried herself in different specializations. For a time, she was an assistant nurse in one of the sanatoriums of the SS. She did not become a medical worker. At the age of 19, despite her father's dissatisfaction, she became part of the SS auxiliary units.

Activities in the concentration camp

Her work in the auxiliary troops Irma Greze began with the camp Ravensbruck. A year later she was appointed to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Less than six months, as she received the post of senior guard. This made her the second person among the camp staff. More importantly, it was only the commandant.

An interesting fact is the information that the 20-year-old girl was not going to be a warden all her life. She had a dream - to become an actress after the war.

In the spring of 1945, a young woman was redirected to Bergen-Belsen camp at her own request, where she was transferred to commandant Joseph Kramer. A month later she was captured by the British.

Cruelty of a young warden

During the investigation of the case of the Beautiful Monster, as it was sometimes called, many surviving prisoners confirmed with their testimony the particular cruelty with which she worked in the camps of Irma Grese.

During the torture, she used emotional and physical methods of humiliation. She personally killed the imprisoned women, killed people for killing them in the gas chambers, enjoyed shooting the prisoners, which was conducted in random order.

Among her favorite activities was inciting her dogs to prisoners. Own pets, she at the same time especially starved for greater aggressiveness.

She remembered many prisoners as a blonde in heavy boots with a pistol and a woven whip in her hands.

In addition, the Western press wrote a lot about all sorts of sexual interests of the guard. She was credited with contacting Josef Kramer, Josef Mengele, as well as sexual pleasures with SS security guards. There is no confirmation of this.

Belsen process

Irma Greze, whose torture was particularly cruel, was taken to trial after being taken prisoner. The process of crimes committed by the workers of the camp was called Belzensky. He was initiated by the British military tribunal, which dismantled the cases of 45 people who worked in the protection of the liberated English camp. Half of them were women. The court worked from September to November 1945 in the city of Lüneburg.

Initially, the defendants should have been more, but not all lived to see the court:

• Seventeen people died of typhus, who contracted in Bergen-Belsen;
• Three were shot while trying to escape;
• One person personally brought scores to life.

Interest in this court was incredible. This was due to the fact that most prisoners worked earlier in Auschwitz. At the trial, the world first learned about such crimes before humanity, as selection, crematoria, gas chambers. Although there were no gas chambers in the camp itself, about 50 thousand people died in it.

Depending on the severity of the crimes, the verdicts of the judges were different. Thus, 11 people were sentenced to death by hanging, 20 received ten to fifteen years of imprisonment, the remaining ones acquitted. Among those released during the trial were small camp staff: an electrician, cooks, storekeeper and other representatives of the state.

The most notorious cases of the Belsen process:

• Josef Kramer, the commandant of the Bergen-Belsen camp, whom the prisoners called the Beast. During his eleven-year career, he worked in many concentration camps, including in Auschwitz. The court accused him of killing 80 prisoners whose bodies were later used by Dr. August Hirz for their research.
• Fritz Klein, a camp doctor who joined the SS from the Romanian army and conducted experiments on camp prisoners. Also in his duties in the camp was to select Jews and Gypsies for gas chambers.
• Elizabeth Volkenrath is the nurse and assistant to Dr. Klein.

Execution

The warder Irma Greze was sentenced to death by hanging, as her guilt was proven. The verdict was put into effect on 13.12.1945 in the prison of Hameln. According to eyewitnesses, the night before the hanging she and her colleague in the camp, Elizabeth Volkrenrat, sang songs and laughed.

The procedure was performed by the English executioner Albert Purplet. When he threw a loop around the neck of the accused woman, she with a calm face told him: "Faster." At the time of her death, she was 22 years old. Thus ended the life of a beautiful and cruel overseer, who, despite her young age, destroyed thousands of lives.