On
this date, December 13, 1945, 11 Nazi War Criminals were all hanged by Albert Pierrepoint in Hamelin Prison, Germany. I will post the information about Irma
Grese, the Beautiful Beast from Wikipedia and other links.
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Mugshot of Grese in
August 1945, while she was awaiting trial
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Nickname
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The Beautiful Beast
Die Hyäne von Auschwitz ("The Hyena of Auschwitz") |
Born
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7 October 1923
Wrechen, Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany |
Died
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13 December 1945 (aged 22)
Hamelin, Germany |
Allegiance
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Nazi Germany
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Service/branch
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Schutzstaffel
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Years of service
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1942–1945
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Rank
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SS-Helferin
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Unit
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Irma Ida Ilse Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945)
was employed at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and
was a warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen.
Grese
was convicted for crimes against humanity at the Belsen Trial and sentenced to
death. Executed at 22 years, 67 days of age, Grese was the youngest
woman to die judicially under English law in the 20th century. She was
nicknamed "the Beast of Belsen", "The Beautiful Beast",
"The Blonde Angel of Auschwitz" and "Die Hyäne von
Auschwitz" ("The Hyena of Auschwitz").
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(PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.rowdiva.com/irma.html)
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Background
Irma
Grese was born to Alfred Grese, a dairy worker and a member of the Nazi Party
from 1937, and Berta Grese. Irma Grese had four siblings. In 1936, her mother
committed suicide.
Grese
left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen, owing to a combination of a poor
scholastic aptitude, bullying by classmates, and a fanatical preoccupation with
the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher
Mädel), a Nazi female youth organization, of which her father disapproved.
Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in the sanatorium of
the SS for two years and unsuccessfully tried to find an apprenticeship as a
nurse, after which she worked as a dairy helper.
Quoted
below is Irma Grese's testimony, under direct examination, about her
background:
I was born on 7 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 Lychen for six months. When I was 15 I went to a hospital in Hohenlychen, 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 Fürstenberg. 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. I stayed there until March, 1943, when I went to Birkenau Camp in Auschwitz. I remained in Auschwitz until January, 1945.
Having
completed her training in March 1943, Grese was transferred as a female guard
to Auschwitz, and by the end of that year was Senior Supervisor, the
second highest ranking woman at the camp, in charge of around 30,000 Jewish
female prisoners.
In
January 1945, Grese briefly returned to Ravensbrück before ending her wartime
career at Bergen-Belsen as a Work Service Manager from March to April.
She was captured by the British on 17 April 1945, together with other SS
personnel who did not flee.
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| Irma Grese (PHOTO SOURCE: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/judicial-inc/dvdsv.jpg) |
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| Irma Grese (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sodahead.com/living/name-an-evil-woman-from-history/question-3632535/?page=2) |
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War
crime trial
Grese
was among the 45 people accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial. She was tried over the first
period of the trials (September 17 to 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 those imprisoned at the camps. These included: setting guard dogs on inmates
to savage them, arbitrary shootings and sadistic beatings with a whip.
Survivors provided detailed testimony of murders, tortures, and other
cruelties, especially towards women, in which Grese engaged during her years at
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. They testified to acts of sadism, beatings and
arbitrary shootings of prisoners, savaging of prisoners by her trained and
allegedly half-starved dogs, and to her selecting prisoners for the gas
chambers. Grese was reported to have habitually worn heavy boots and carried a
whip and a pistol. Witnesses testified that she took pleasure in using both
physical and psychological methods to torture the camp's inmates and enjoyed
shooting prisoners in cold blood. They also claimed that she beat some women to
death and whipped others using a plaited whip.
Grese
inspired virulent hatred in prisoner Olga Lengyel, who in her memoir, Five Chimneys, wrote that selections in
the women’s camp were made by SS Aufseherin Elisabeth Hasse and Irma
Grese. The latter was visibly pleased by the terror her presence inspired in
the women at roll call. She had a penchant for selecting not only the sick and
the weak but any woman who had retained vestiges of her former beauty.
Moreover, Lengyel observes, Grese had several lovers among the SS in the camp,
including Josef Mengele. After Grese strong-armed the inmate surgeon at the
infirmary into performing her illegal abortion, she disclosed that she planned
a career in the movies after the war. Lengyel felt that Grese’s meticulous
grooming, custom fitted clothes, and overuse of perfume were part of a
deliberate act of sadism among the ragged women prisoners.
After
a fifty-three day trial, Grese was sentenced to hang.
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Irma
Grese and SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.militaryimages.net/forums/showthread.php/9362-Third-Reich-Figures-In-Color-Images/page40)
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Irma Grese in the
middle (number 9) during the Belsen Trial
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Execution
Grese
and ten others (eight men and two other women; Juana Bormann and Elisabeth
Volkenrath) were convicted for crimes against humanity in both Auschwitz and
Belsen and then sentenced to death. As the verdicts were read, Grese was the
only prisoner to remain defiant; her subsequent appeal was rejected.
The
Daily Mirror reported: Despite being dressed in drab prison garb, the
vain Grese - dubbed "the Beautiful Beast" by inmates - used rags to
put ringlets in her hair. And, "The night before her execution Grese
laughed and sang Nazi songs with fellow SS torturer Elizabeth Volkenrath."
On
Thursday, 13 December 1945, in Hamelin Jail, Grese was led to the gallows. The
women were hanged singly first and then the men in pairs. Regimental
Sergeant-Major O'Neil assisted the noted British executioner, Albert
Pierrepoint:
... 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 row of 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 of released breath was audible in the chamber, I walked into the corridor. 'Irma Grese', I called.The German guards quickly closed all grilles on twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese 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 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 head she said in her languid voice, 'Schnell'. [English translation: 'Quickly.'] 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.
Dramatizations
Angel: A Nightmare in Two Acts is a drama by playwright Jo
Davidsmeyer based on the life and execution of Irma Grese and holocaust
survivor Olga Lengyel.
First staged in 1987, it has been produced at many regional colleges; in
September 2006 it had its professional debut at the New City Stage Company in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The play was published in 1995 by Wildside Press in
the anthology Reader's Theatre: What it is and how to stage it, edited
by Marvin Kaye.
Irma
Grese has been portrayed as a minor character in Out of the Ashes as
well as Pierrepoint, which details her execution following the Belsen
war crimes trial. Both films feature additional female guards in much smaller
roles. Grese is also briefly portrayed in a non-speaking re-enactment in Auschwitz:
The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'.
She
was also one of the inspirations for the Nazi exploitation film, Ilsa, She Wolf
of the SS.
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(PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4931450)
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Letter-to-Irma-Grese-originally-published-in-1945
Letter to Irma Grese,
originally published in 1945
By
SCHUTZHAEFTLING NO. 45554
04/18/2012
18:16
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Hall of Names, Yad Vashem Memorial Museum Photo:
REUTERS (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Letter-to-Irma-Grese-originally-published-in-1945)
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Frau
Aufseherin Grese,
You are on trial and a Major Winwood is your defence counsel. I am one of your victims, by some stroke of luck, one of the few to survive, and I cannot understand why you, the “terror of Oswiecim,” should have been granted the protection of the law to that extent. You were responsible for the destruction of so many lives, that it is hardly possible that there can be any justification for your deeds, which brought sorrow and torture to so many thousands.
You will no doubt plead that you were under orders, bound to obey the SS formation of which you were a member. But there can be no excuse for the new tortures and forms of persecution which you evolved, no justification for the way in which you gave rein to your beastly sadism.
Justice Must Be Done
We still await the verdict. You may have to face a firing squad or you may be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Even so, your victims will not consider that justice has been done. Only if you are made to suffer as you made others suffer can it be said that justice will have been done.
We, your victims, do not want you to die. We would much rather that you live, as we had to, with billows of filthy black smoke from the chimneys of the crematoria.
We want to see you dragging heavy stones, barefoot and in rags. We want to see you beaten, cruelly and mercilessly, as you, cruel and without mercy, beat us. We want to watch you being jeered at, as you jeered and mocked us in our despair. We want you to go so hungry that you cannot sleep at night, as we could not. We want to see your blonde hair shaved off, as you made us shave our heads.
You, too, must be forced to look on while those who are dear to you are burned to death.
We want to see you, the “handsome girl,” degenerate into a “muselweib”, a bag of skin and bones, through hunger and exhaustion, like those of us who were jeered at and called by this name. You too should be turned over to the “Himmelskommando” who will show you, as they showed us, the “road to heaven” through the gas chambers. Let them push you alive into the furnace of the crematorium, as they did with so many of us.
All these things have been done to countless thousands of us, your victims. Only if they are done to you in your turn will justice have been done. You made us suffer the torments of hell. Now it is our turn to hate you and to cry out for revenge.
“Achtung, Frau Aufseher Grese kommt!” (Attenshun! Warder Grese’s coming). I shall never forget the terror that this command struck in our hearts. I shall remember you as you strutted through the camp in your SS uniform, that enormous dog by your side which you used to love to set on us “just for fun.” I shall always remember your gleaming and elegant jackboots, and the way you kicked us with them.
I was one of thousands. The number they gave me, No. 45554, is tattooed on my arm and will go with me to my grave. There I was, a dirty grey rag tied round my shaved head, wearing the trousers of a Red Army soldier who had been tortured to death, and a ragged shirt, bearing on it my number and a Shield of David.
As you came along, I stood stiffly to attention, though my feet could scarcely bear the weight of my body, emaciated though it was I wore wooden clogs, both for the left foot and far too big. I had to wind rags around my feet – and the rags were torn “tallesim,” the prayer shawls of my religion. The clogs tore at my feet, but the ragged “tallesim” tore at my heart. What did you care about all this? You walked through our lines like a tyrant, your hands gloved so as not to come into contact with us even when you whipped us. Did you never feel the burning hate that smouldered in the thousands of eyes fixed upon you?
By some good fortune I escaped the gas chambers and the “Himmelskommando.” I am alive and free. I look like an ordinary human being again. Even my hair has grown. I wear shoes that fit, socks of the same colour, clean linen and an ordinary frock, without stripes, without a number and without the Shield of David. But on my arm I still carry my prison number – 45554 – for no one and nothing can erase that. I am not ordered to go at the double. I am not guarded by a sentry. I am free to come and go as I will.
Sometimes I wake while it is still dark, thinking for a few brief seconds that I have to be on parade at 6 a.m. But, thanks be to God, those days have gone. I can speak to a man without being whipped to within an inch of my life. And... I again have a name, a first name and a surname. Once more I am “Isabella,” or “Miss Rubinstein.” Only the blue mark on my arm reminds me that I was once No. 45554.
One Example
You are in the dock, Warder Grese, and evidence is being given for and against you. I could fill a book with the list of your crimes. Let me remind you of only one of them, not the worst of them, but typical. Do you remember a day in June 1943? It was at Camp Birkmann, Block 14. On one side of the square the Aryan women were lined up, and on the other, the Jewesses.
Behind us there was a bench where a few women were sitting, so broken in body and spirit that they could not stand on parade. As you passed, one of the poor wretched creatures made an involuntary gesture of fear.
You, Irma Grese, made out that she tried to kick you.
That she, poor victim of the Nazi terror, should have tried to kick you, the mistress of life and death for her, – what a cruel joke! Do you remember what you did to her? You pushed her into the middle of the square, though she could scarcely walk. You made her kneel on the flagstones, made her hold two heavy pieces of rock above her head, made her repeat incessantly “I kicked the Warder! I kicked the Warder!” I was so frightened that I couldn’t count how many strokes of your whip you gave her. Perhaps you remember.
Then your friend Ritter of the SS came along. He began to kick her in the face with his spurred jackboots, until the blood ran. Then you shouted, “Get up, you...” and let the woman go back to her cell.
Two weeks later she was dead.
Our Verdict
You have forgotten all these things. You plead mitigating circumstances as you stand on trial. The eyes of the world are fixed on Lueneburg, awaiting the verdict.
But your victims have already passed judgment on you.
We sentence you to live and suffer as we did, and never again to see the light of freedom.
Schutzhaeftling No. 45554 – (Now again called; Isabella Rubinstein)
View the original article published a1945 edition of The Palestine Post here.
OTHER LINKS:
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