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- [00:00]
Podcast Sponsor
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Katy Charlwood
In joshua mortuary and joshua memorial park.
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Maria Garcia
Why do some women yearn for Shakira's black hair to make a comeback? And whatever happened to the power couple of my dreams? Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel? I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast Anything for selena or my TiVo. And now I'm back to unpack more stories from the present and the past. Listen to Muy Excited with Maria Garcia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:00]
Bluff
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Katy Charlwood
Hello delicious friends and welcome to who did what now the history podcast. That is not your history class. With me your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. Now I just want to say right off the bat, if I sound different today, if I sound a bit weird to normal, it's because I had minor dental surgery and I'm recovering from that. So if I sound a wee bit weird or like I've got something in my mouth, it's Just because my jaw is swollen. So, like, half of my face is very tender and very soft and very swollen to touch and to move. And there's a consistent taste of metal in my mouth, which is good because it means that I'm definitely getting enough iron, so that's something, right? So I've been. I've been struggling with this for literal weeks, and we finally got sorted, but now I'm in the recovery period, and I kind of look like I've got a gobstopper stuck on my cheek. But it's fine. It's. It's fine. I think it adds to my charm, frankly. But there. There's. There's a lot going on. That being said, I was. I was at the dentist, and they were like. So they put the numbing agent in, yada, yada, yada, and they're like, hey, so this is going to last, like, two hours before it starts wearing off. So, like, it might be three, because some people have that. It's supposed to last two hours. Pray, do tell why, when I was walking home, because of course I was, and they warned me, they were like, you're gonna be full of adrenaline, by the way. You're gonna be full of adrenaline. I'm like, it's fine. I'm walking home. Don't worry about it. Well, I was actually more like, yeah, so. And a lot of thumbs up. I was like, yeah. Oh, the maton. I know from watching Mr. Tumble's finally coming in to use. So I was like, walking home. So within 20 minutes of me leaving, I was like, oh, it's starting to wear off. Like, I can move my mouth. It's uncomfortable, and I'm in pain, but I can do it. And I was like, oh. Oh, why? Why is this happening? Because, like, last time I went to the dentist, like, for any kind of extraction of any kind, they actually had to put so much numbing agent in that I couldn't blink. Like, there was just so much in me, because the only way I could not feel it, like, I could. I, Like, I could wink at people, which was fun, because after I left the appointment, like, many, many years ago, people thought I was just, like, winking at them when all I was trying to do was blink. So that was fun for everybody involved. But, yeah. Housekeeping. Housekeeping. Lots of information coming. Let me just get this out at the beginning of this episode, because I wasn't here last week. So Day and Nightshade, the true crime slash poison podcast that I co host with my dear friend J, is returning for season two in September. And season two is subtitled Is It Something I Ate? So I think you're really going to enjoy this season. I think it's. It's still a bit more traditional in the sort of the poisoning sense. And I think. I think you're going to enjoy it if you like poisons. So the Oops, I'm in tour, which is the podcast tour, starts in November. It is ambitious. Why do I do this to myself? So there are several countries, there are three continents involved, and then there's the book, which my dear God, my editor and publisher have been ridiculously patient with. So stuff is happening with that. And I am excited to share this with you once I have the information and I am legally allowed to do so. But I know what you are thinking. You're thinking, katie, please quit your jibber jabber. In fact me. In fact you. I will. But first we've got to get our source on. Our sources are Ilse Cook on Trial Making the Betch of Buchenwald by Thomas Yardim. War Crimes and A historical encyclopedia from 1850 to the present by Livy Massimiliano the Buchenwald Report by David A. Hackett Women as Wartime Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping by Laura Elizabeth Soyberg Before Auschwitz, the Formation of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nicholas Vaxman and Christian Gosko the Religion and the Politics of Collective Memory by Ronald J. Berger the Witch of the Fall of Ilse Cook by Arthur Lee Smith. We also have articles from the Chicago Daily Tribune, the New York Times, the Guardian, and of course we have our old favourites, biography.com and history.com. now, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. Today's episode is about a woman who was highly requested during my series on the Nazi concentration camp system from August 2025. So it has been a wee while since I've been able to get around to it. The notorious Ilse Koch, the Bech of Buchenwald. Now you may be thinking, my, what an interesting use of English alliteration from a country whose first language is German. But we'll get to that. Ilse Koch was born Margaret ilse Kohler on 22 September 1906 in Dresden, Germany. She was born to May Kohler, a labourer, and Anna Kubisch, a housewife. She was one of three children and the only girl to the couple. It was a typical lower middle class Protestant household. Now, I did try and look up what flavor of Protestant it was, because, you know, there's a few, but it's not actually written down anywhere now? Yep. The historical record just happens to be sparse on this subject, however, since most of the population were Lutheran under the State Church of Saxony. I'm going to go with that. So primary elementary school was compulsory in Germany from ages 6 to 14. So Ilse attended the Volkschule and a lower secondary school. So she learned the basics, reading, writing, arithmetic and of course, the patriotic history of the German Empire. Normal stuff. She later went on to a trade school to become a secretary. So that's her early life. And that is as much as we have. The thing about women from the past is we tend to have very little information about them, even when they become notorious afterwards, because usually when someone becomes infamous, people go digging into the past. But it just shows you how little information there was about her. Like that. This is the best we've got. So she's working as a secretary during a time where you really want to have a job. See, it's interwar Germany. I mean, they don't know it's inter war. They know one war's ended, the Great War, which would then become World War I. Now you might think that World War I was named World War I because of World War II and it's not. It's because they wanted to show just how grand and, and all encompassing and massive it was because it was called the Great War. But it wasn't the only war that was called the Great War because. Because the Boer War was also called the Great War and that was still in living memory for quite a lot of people. And so they needed to rename it to just show just, just how huge it was. Because in the First World War you had this combination of older military techniques combining with newer technology. So you have all of this happening and so you have just death on a huge scale. The amount of people who died in the First World War was larger than all of the wars previous. Like, that's just how big it was. But yeah, enter war Germany and the people are struggling from the ramifications of the defeat of the First World War and of course the Depression triggered by the American banks collapsing effectively. It was a turbulent time, both economically and politically. I guess we should sort of slip into some context. The thing that you need to remember is that the Second World War was inevitable. Like it was always going to happen. There was because of the Treaty of Versailles, it was going to happen. That is not to say that buckets and buckets of war crimes would have happened or that Germany would have industrialized murder necessarily. But thanks to the Treaty Signed in the hall of Mirrors. War was absolutely going to happen. Germany was the instigator. Their ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm ii, ran off, just bucked off, became a gardener. Right. He renounced, he legged it. So the nation had lost its territories, including the Rhineland and like Alsace Lorraine, places like that. Yes, where the quiche is from. And the Alsatian dog, which became a German shepherd and now it's back to be an Alsatian. It doesn't matter. They're the same dog. So sidebar. So you have these territories that are gone, including all of the territories that were once part of the German Empire, and they get divvied amongst all the other European empires, like Belgium, France, ba ba ba ba ba England. They all just gonna go, who can we take? And so they get it. So the military was stripped down to ensure they couldn't fight again. And there was a massive fuck off bill. The reparations were a major condition of Germany's surrender. So effectively, the treat of Versailles says to Germany, you started the war, you're to blame. Everything's your fault. You gotta pay to rebuild our country and you gotta pay all this bill. And you're not allowed to have a military. You're not allowed to be in these particular zones, these demilitarized zones, and you lose all of this money that you were getting from your empire. Sucks to be you, buddy. Because they just wanted to, like, really hammer home, you know, this. Making an example of Germany to be like, no, none of the other guys start this shit, right? So after the First World War, because of everything, Germany was reliant on American banks to boost the economy. So when the crash happened, there was a knock on effect to Germany and it suffered. The mark had fallen so low, like to give you an example, that people were bringing wheelbarrows full of money in, like down the street in order to buy a loaf of bread. On top of this, there was this massive shame on the country because many people believed that Germany could have and would have won the war if they had not surrendered when they did, because they were only 43 miles from Paris when they surrendered. So you've got this massive shame. People feel that they are footing the bill for other countries, which, I mean, they were, but that's what the reparations of 132 billion gold marks were for. Also the issue with these reparations is that they were so huge that Germany would not have paid the debt until 2010. Now there is the possibility they would have paid it back a little bit sooner, a little bit sooner if they hadn't instigated the Second World War. But it still would have taken them like 60, 70 years to pay off instead of 92 because it wasn't paid off until 2010. So people were struggling and poor people were desperate for change. They wanted respect, they wanted somebody to blame. And they saw the Nazi party as a viable option. Now, see the ndasp, you might hear people say, like, oh, it's the National Socialist Workers Party. Like that's the name of it. It was obviously socialist. Yeah, I hate to break it to you, except. No, I don't. I love to break it to you because I like being correct, is that the evil fascist group lied to the population by pretending to support workers rights and push socialist ideals, when in fact it was an evil fascist group who would take power, remove rights, and lest we forget, industrialize. Modta. The Nazi party told the population that true Germans were perfection.
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Podcast Sponsor
Perfection.
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Katy Charlwood
The Aryan race who were superior to all others. A people who have been embarrassed and stood on. And so the stuff the Nazis are spouting sounds pretty good to them. You deserve better. You deserve a better life. These are the people that are stopping you from having that better life. What, where have we heard that before? So the party is gaining popularity and ilse joins in 1932. Now, context, Hitler comes into power in January 33, and the first concentration camp is opened in March 1933. So Hitler is in power in January, first concentration camp is opened in March. Almost like this was already in. The plans didn't just come from nowhere. It's almost as if they'd been planning it like for a while. So the local SS detachment, that is the Schutzstaffel, they have social arrangements. So with the Nazi Party as well. Like, women make up seven and a half percent of it. And some really bought what they were selling. Now I'm convinced, however, that some, like, we're just looking for husbands. Because if you remember the social expectations of the time for women, it was to grow up, get married, have children, keep house. And so these social gatherings with the SS for a lot of women would have been a good way to meet a husband. And the way that the SS was portrayed as well is that you wear perfection, you're a perfect Aryan specimen. And to join the SS and to be involved in, in the camps and to be a guard or an officer, like you were getting, like promoted. It was a very prestigious job, it was very well respected and you had all these benefits and perks. And so that's kind of cushy when you're thinking people who have been struggling with poverty, you know, for half or most of their life, you know. So at one of these gatherings, Ilsa meets Carl Otto Koch. And that's in 1934. He is an up and coming SS officer who was nine years her senior and was a divorced criminal. Karl had fought in the First World War as part of the Imperial German army on the Western Front. But he was captured by the British in 1916 and held as a prisoner of war until 1919. So after the First World War, when he gets home, when, after he's released, he worked as an insurance agent, an authorized signatory and a thief. At one point he becomes a police informant, but it's kind of muggy as to when, but he's got a criminal past. But the Nazis, they're like, oh, you did something to the old empire, you're fine. They just kind of look over it or not look over it, like brush it under the rug. They're like, it's fine. So Carl had married Kate Mueller in 1924. So they had one son together, Manfred. Manfred had issues, so their marriage ended in 1931. Some say it's because of his infidelity, others say it's because he was arrested in 1930 and got served a year long sentence for embezzlement and forgery. Anywho, the same year he's divorced, Carl joins the Nazi party and, and the ss. Remember when I said he was up and coming? Well, he really was moving up the ranks. He had been in the Saxenberg concentration camp and then briefly in charge of like the Estelvegan concentration camp guard unit. He was in charge of the preventative custody camp in Lichtenberg. There was a system, a hole camp system and there was a preventative custody camp. He was an adjutant at Dachau. He was at Columbia House, not the one who did the CDs. So Columbia House is one of those camps that lasted for a short time. Like some of the camps were like military prisons that got converted. Like Sachsenhausen, as far as I remember, in 1937, created a punishment block because it never had a punishment block. And then it created a punishment block where like you would have like
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Maria Garcia
poles,
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Katy Charlwood
like wooden poles, where people were like tied to and whipped like before Sachsenhausen. Right before he even gets there. Carl Otto Koch is really showing just how sadistic he is. Like there was very much an othering of the prisoners anyway. But he really, really took it to new levels. Like he would get them to crawl into dog Cages and bark and eat out of bowls on the ground. And he would, you know, have hot tar poured onto the bodies of the insolent. Now, his cruelty was respected and revered and it really pushed him up those ranks. It was like, well, yeah, you're doing the thing you're supposed to do. But yeah, somewhere in between all of this, he meets Ilse. And the details of their courtship are muggy. But she's full on drinking the flavourade at this point and more. Timeline, context. The war starts in 1935 and she gets a job as a secretary in the Nazi party. In 1936, Karl Otto Koch was posted as the commandant at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which is near Berlin. In 36, see, the Nazi concentration camp system was run by the ss, or it was mainly run by the ss. There was a couple by the sa, but they got taken over in time. So Ilsa followed him there and they requested to marry from the SS Office of Racial and Settlement Affairs. Anyone who wanted to get married in the Third Reich had to put in a request and be investigated for fitness for marriage, which is bureaucratic eugenics, checking to make sure both parties had Aryan purity before they could wed. Now, I've. I actually. Sidebar. I actually saw one of these. A friend of mine whose grandparents are Polish had sent me, like, photos of, like, the, like the approval, like, I want to say it's kind of like a booklet and it has, you know, like your approval of being able to get married in it. And it was like, it's, it's, it's. I don't want to say it's elaborate, but it kind of is elaborate. And again, I don't speak. I don't actually speak German. So like, they were translating it for me because it was in, like, at least part of it was in German and they speak like eight languages. And so I was like, oh, wow, this is intense. But it was like they were telling me the story of, like, they walked into their childhood bedroom and it was just sitting there, but it's got like a massive swastika on the front. And so they were just like, mama, what is this? And then they ended up sending me a bunch of pictures and I was like, wow, that's a. That's something to have. So they married on the 25th of May, 1937 in a pagan SS ceremony. And in July, Karl was transferred to Buchenwald. He was made commandant of the newly opened camp, overseeing the whole internal structure, camp operations, prisoner labor systems, punishments, etc. Now, I know in previous episodes if you go back and you listen to the previous Nazi concentration camp system from August 2025, like I have discussed how it's a whole complex, like it's these complexes, it's not just like one like barrack or building with a fence around it, you know, or a wall. So the complex is in order to keep close to the action, the commandant's house and the house of the officers. If they were staying in the complex, they were in the grounds, they were inside the camp. So yes, Carl and Ilse Cook lived in a three story villa on the concentration camp grounds. By September, Ilse was pregnant. Their son Artwin was born in June the following year, followed by a daughter, Gisela in April the year after. And then in 1940, their daughter Gudlund is born. Now, what's weird about this is that with Gudrun, the timeline is spotty because it could be October or it could be December, but either way, Gudrun died in February, in 1941 from pneumonia. Como estado? In joshua mortuary and joshua memorial park.
- [26:16]
Good Moms Bad Choices Host
Well, it's that time again. Backpacks, first day of school outfits, and the low key anxiety of am I even doing this right? Good Mom's Bad Choices is diving into the back to school season the way only we know how. Unfiltered, funny, and full of the moments other shows won't touch. From surviving morning drop offs to the guilt of missing the first bake sale.
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Katy Charlwood
Iri told me that she next season she wants to join a club team that's by your house. So I was like, so you want me to pick you up from. I'll take her by my house, but then I have to take her there and then I have to drive back and then some days I'm here and I have to go pick you up at school and then bring you the.
- [26:54]
Good Moms Bad Choices Host
I was just like, hell no. This is a space where moms trade their highlight reel for the real real. Whether you're a new mom, a veteran mom, or just trying to make it to pick up on time, this season of Good Moms Bad Choices is for you. Listen to Good Moms Bad Choices from the Black Effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ben Nadifray
Thirty years ago, an island off Manhattan almost brought down New York City.
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Katy Charlwood
Who will you trust? Your friends and neighbors? Who will you trust?
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Bluff
The people five miles overseas.
- [27:28]
Ben Nadifray
This is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough.
- [27:37]
Katy Charlwood
We reached for a feeling that exists in this city. But we're not stopping, are we?
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Ben Nadifray
I'm Ben Nadifray, and for my new series on Revisionist history, I took a deep dive into Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York city in the 1990s and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate America today. Listen to Revisionist the Staten island problem on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:16]
Bluff
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- [28:47]
Katy Charlwood
So Karl is the SS Stadenfreude at Buchenwald. He's moved up from being a non criminal to the head honcho at a concentration camp and wielding buckets and buckets of power. Buchenwald was a new camp, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps with over 50,000 known deaths. Now, the camp did not have gas chambers. It was not an extermination camp. It was a slave labor camp. And if you were healthy or skilled, Buchenwald might have been a safer option for you, because people like survival rates of Buchenwald. Like, for some it was years, whereas the life expectancy of places like Auschwitz was three to four months. But yes, Buchenwald was built, they had their villa. And on the front gate was a sign, a wrought iron slogan, Je deme da seine. Which translates to to each what is his or to each his own. Basically saying, you know, whatever you get, you know, it's for you. You receive the fate or the treatment that you deserve. And that was very much the thinking of Ilse and Carl. Buchenwald was mostly a slave labor camp, which was there to make things that the Third Reich really needed. Like a lot of businesses and a lot of companies would utilize the camps for slave labor. There were some that were making armaments, others were building things for Siemens or IBM, like it was happening. So it's not a life really that many would want to extend, I assume, but it was a likelihood of a. Of a higher chance of survival. And that's only if, you know, you didn't take anyone's fancy. So Ilsa, she's at the concentration Camp. And she is there, you know, she gets pregnant pretty sharpish, actually. And the whole point of being, you know, the perfect Haus Frau, the perfect German woman, is you're supposed to be like, super loyal to your husband, have your babies, do all your housework. Like you're running the household as the wife of an SS officer, but you weren't expected to do things like cooking or cleaning or the other stuff that the typical Frau would be doing. Like, the typical wife. And so she's just kind of like, I want to say bored, because she's got, like, servants and slaves doing all of this stuff for her. So she never did any of the housework and basically had all these people to take care of everything that she needed in the house. So they used to call her like Gina Dugen fraud, which like, like I say that they called her, she made them call her that to basically give her this title of nobility and authority. And so she's got the house, she has the people working in it. And so she's bored. And what she does with a bored person who has a lot of power, she gets people to do things for her. When one of them is build a massive fck off sports arena where she could practice horseback riding. Like, there's like a horse enclosure, like, behind the villa. And so she would, you know, write about it, but, like, people died building it and she's like, oh, well. So she would do that and then she would sort of ride her horse throughout the camp. Like, it cost over 200,000 Reichsmarks to build, which I think today is at least like over a million, to build this again, enclosure. And the thing is, she built this with money that was being, you know, sent for the camp. So this is. This is part of it, right? So when you become like a member of the ss, when they brought, you know, prisoners in and they took all their valuables and stuff, you got first dibs. There was like a certain amount of privilege of, oh, you can take this fur coat home to your wife, or you can take this, you know, these golden teeth will be melted down. And like, you had first steps on a lot of stuff. So there was like, like a, I don't want to say an unwritten rule, but there was like a little bit of, you can take a wee bit for you. Like, that is the perks of your job. Like, but you're supposed to take a minimal amount. Like, you're not supposed to take many, many things. And to steal from the Reich, because that's like a big no no, unfortunately. I say unfortunately, but that is what Ilse and Carl were doing. And we will come back to that. So she's got a horse riding enclosure and she's like, that's fine, but how much horse riding was she actually doing? I'm sorry, like, I'm gonna bring this up for a wee second because when we talk about Ilsa Koch, what I've noticed is people rarely like bring into consideration the fact that she's pregnant most of the time that she's at the camp. So pregnancy lasts typically closer to 10 months than it does to nine. So she has kids in like 38, 39 and 40. Like that means that for quite a lot of those years she was pregnant. Now I'm not excusing anything she did and I'm not trying to like justify it, but I'm just saying, like, she would have been limited in what she could do in those periods of time because she's not going to climb up on a horse when she's eight months pregnant. Like the belly would get in the way. You know what I mean? It's just something to consider. But when she was riding a horse, you know, trotting around, she was going around the camp, like she would like just trot, canter, whatever, not gallop. I feel like gallop is too heavy. You can't see people if you're galloping. And she would just like go around the camp. And there was like a rule that if you looked at the commandant's wife, you could get shot. Right? And so she decided to have some fun with this. And by fun I mean be an extremely cruel fucking bitch. Because she would dress provocatively, she would wear things that were low cut, she would show off her cleavage and wear tight clothes. Now I'm gonna assume that the tight clothes were specifically when she wasn't very pregnant. Now I'm assuming the cleavage could easily be shown at any point because pregnancy, the boobs, they just grow. So like, these are people, these are men. It's a lot of men in these camps. And if they looked at her and they're looking at her, her body, she would just go off and get them shot. Now most of the wives of like officers and things like that, they weren't in the camps necessarily. They might live sort of outside the camp or they might live, you know, nearby. But they weren't involved in the day to day running and they weren't involved in things that were happening in the camps because they were home being, you know, wives and mothers and running households. But Ilsa loved being involved. Like she would, you know, be involved in inspections. Like there, there was a roll call. It was a thing they did to break prisoner morale. They did it in Ravensbruck, they did it in Buchenwald. They did it in like most camps. It was just part of what they did. And they would have roll calls that sometimes would last hours and if somebody collapsed, they would get shot, you know. And so she would be involved in the roll calls. And that's when a lot of times she would dress provocatively, especially, especially if there were younger men there. Cuz like you have this woman, she's like, I mean, I'm not going to be like, what was she wearing? But like she really thought she was hot stuff. Like she thought that she was, you know, perfection. Because like she's the Aryan perfection. That's what she's been told she is. And so she's out flaunting her your bets and getting people to ogle our goodies. And when they did, she'd have them shot. Like she actually found it very provocative. And I mean that in every sense of the word. So like, there are stories. There are stories and we don't have entire justification for this, but they have been reported enough that it's worth considering as something that may have happened. So there are stories that when her husband was away doing other things that she would have soldiers brought to her and have them like stand in a row, have, have them undress, and then she would inspect them, right. And she would just enjoy the view. And there's this other tale which I, I do think is bollocks. And I think it's sensationalist for, for the papers at the time. And it's that Ilsa, again, when her husband was away, would just like lay in her garden in lingerie and if the prisoners, you know, got excited, if a guy got an erection, effectively, she would have them beaten or shot, you know, and it's like really in public, we think she was doing this. Now I understand that there, like there was all these rumors of like Nazi orgies in the house and that they, Carl and her had an open marriage and all those kind of things. And it's like maybe, maybe. But also the, the laundry, like swatting around in laundry does feel a bit much, especially when you consider she was pregnant for quite a lot of this time. Like, I don't know, it feels like the kind of thing that if it did happen, it happened like briefly. It just feels weird in this context to me. What I do believe is, is that she demanded that teenage boys, that young boys were working in her household and they would bring her breakfast in bed and she would, like, be there in her negligee and her silky nightgown. Now that. That seems more realistic to me. And she would, like, threaten them that if they looked at her, if they got excited, that she would kill them. And I think it's that power play that she really, really enjoyed. And you've got these boys who have just gone through puberty who may never have, you know, seen a woman before properly. And she's just like, oh, don't mind me. I'm just lounging on my super soft bed and my silky night dress. And I think it's just this whole, like, power play for her. So, like, there are, like, reports of. Of these servants who were like 15, 16 at the time who were working for her. And they've, you know, they survived the camp and they. They have their tales about it, and that's where a lot of this information comes from. And sometimes, like, I mean, she's a sexual sadist, right? And sometimes she would, like, flip the switch and she would give these boys things like boiled potatoes to take with them back to their barracks. And, like, these people are severely underfed, which, like, she really, like, reveled in this. She loved having this power of watching these people wither and fcking die. Like, there's no. There's no discounting. Like, there's no. There's no coming back on the fact that she was a fcking monster. The question is, just how much of a monster was she? Right?
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Maria Garcia
So
- [41:45]
Katy Charlwood
Ilsa and Carl, again, big theories of open relationship, right? That they were both kind of stupping everybody they wanted. So there's. There's. Apparently she was having many, many affairs. One of the doctors at the camp, Dr. Valdemar. One of the deputy commandants, Herman Florsen. And she was also at Dr. Hoeven's home quite a lot. Now, Dr. Hoven, he was one of the dudes running the very terrible experiments. And, like, she would spend the night with these men when her husband wasn't home. Now, I don't. I don't know if this is like, her just out, you know, shagging whoever she wants to shag or whether it was more of, I'm gonna stay with, like, a man, because as a man I'm easier protected. Because if she's running around, like, the camp, there's always guards. Like, she's never really alone with prisoners, per se, apart from, like, the teenage boys in the bedroom. And there is Like a big like power discrepancy there, like there is a big difference in between those two. But yeah, possible orgies at the camp. Lots of, lots of shagging amongst like the SS and stuff like that, not with the prisoners because like again they were seen as other, they were seen as less than. So you wouldn't do that. She just liked having, she just liked toying with people and destroying them. And so back to Dr. Hovind for a second. So doctors at the camp were like, they were doing experiments there. They were poisoning people with different chemicals to see if they could like somehow create an antidote. But like yeah, that's not how that works. They injected like gay men with just a concoction of chemicals to tree if they could like cure them of being homosexuals. And effectively this didn't work. It just ended up killing them. But of course when you're doing these experiments on people, you are collecting things like organs and whatnot. And this will be a recurring theme, we'll come back to that. So Ilse, she's bored of, you know, tempting all the men and having them shot in the head. And so she decides that she wants to watch these experiments take place. And this is going to be her new hobby. So one day she's riding her horse through the camp, which is what she loved to do. And so cuz like she did, she loved to like ride through and beat people and whip them with her horsewhip and get other people to beat them and shoot them and all this kind of stuff. So she actually added razor blades to her whip. I don't know if you know this because she was like, haha, this will cause more pain. Because if you have a whip that has any kind of blade in it because of the force in which it cuts, it will dig into the skin and then tear skin from it. Like there were certain whips that existed like this. She just MacGyvered her own or got someone to MacGyver it for her. So she noticed as she was riding through the camps that prisoners had, you know, tattoos, birthmarks, all this kind of stuff. And so she goes to Dr. Erich Wagner because she thinks, what if these tattoos were related to criminal behavior? What if that's, what if that's a connection, we should experiment on these men. And he's like, yeah, absolutely. So he's like we. Which is wild because technically you're supposed to get like approval from the Nazi party before you do any kind of experiment. Which is, well, when you think about Mengele, because Dr. Joseph Mengele, like All of the other scientists thought he was a crackpot, but they approved his, like, shit to do just because they were like, yeah, let's see what happens. Just like, they did it for shits and giggles, I swear to fuck. Right? But they didn't get approval. Like, it was against protocol, and he did it anyway. So she would go through the crowd, she would stop men that she noticed had tattoos, force them to strip down, she'd examine their tattoos, and then she would have them killed so that she could allegedly keep the skin with the tattoo on it. Like, I know it's a little bit edgy, but. And this is where the story of the lampshade made out of human skin comes from. Now, they did find collections of, like, skin samples with tattoos on them. Surprisingly, not as many as one would expect, but it was like they were skinned. The skin was tanned into leather and then bound into, like, books and turned into lampshades. And apparently prisoners made them into things. Now, just how many people were tattooed is the first question. The second part of this is it wasn't just tattooed people. Now this is something I want to bring up because we. We hear about the lampshade story all the time now. We know that this kind of thing did happen. We know she was probably involved in some of it. But it was people with identifying marks on their body that were collected. So it wasn't just tattoos. It was people with birthmarks, scars, anything truly distinguishable. It's almost as if, like, they were being removed from the population so that things could be done to them and then they could be, like, gotten rid of. Now that's just my little tinfoil hat theory. But so here is something that comes up quite a lot, and I want to talk about how it's ridiculous a little bit, because it is rumoured that she used body parts around her home using thumbs as light switches, and she had a handbag that was made out of human skin and that she would show off to other SS officers and their wives, and that she had a bunch of Jewish prisoners turn these into gifts and give them to people. If so many were made, why didn't they survive? And also, nobody is using a thumb as a light switch. It's not going to survive. Like, that's. That's wild now, her being excited about experimentation, her having the power of selecting people for experiments. Abso fucking lutely. Like, she's definitely involved in that. But, like, she's. She's at it. Like she's here doing sht. But, like, if someone's already A monster. You don't really need to add to that. She's already doing many, many terrible things. So she would actually convince her husband to kill certain prisoners. Like she would be like, throw this man off of a wall and do this. And he would, because it's Carlotto Koch, of course he's gonna do some bad shit. So there's this muggy story of a group of prisoners and Ilse ordered some of them and some of the guards to go fetch water from a well that was nearby the camp. And then she claimed that they'd been trying to escape, had them shot. Now at some point doing this, right, Carl Otto Koch contracts syphilis. So he orders the execution of the orderly who gives him his diagnosis, as well as the other two men who would actually help treat him because he's trying to cover up the fact that he has syphilis, which means either he is cheating, his wife is cheating, or something in between, and that they're doing all this horrible stuff because it's super embarrassing and socially would have destroyed them, you know, because they're not being good, perfect Aryans, you know what I mean? Right. And so one of the SS guards that's part of this group which is helping these prisoners escape, which is go to the well for water, was one of the guys who treated like Carl for syphilis. And so they didn't want anyone else knowing this was happening. So basically they have these, they have these unaccounted deaths. Like these are weird things that happened. So in 1942, Ilse and Karl were taken to court for misappropriating the funds of Buchenwald camp, for their over the top methods of torturing, and also for the killing of the three prisoners that the Nazis said these were unauthorized killings, right? So for whatever reason, like these three prisoners, and because one of the guards involved, right, were involved in this, this syphilis situation, they were like, that's an unauthorized kill. You cannot be doing that. And so like these deaths triggered the investigation into what was happening at Buchenwald, right? So that's what's happening. So misappropriating funds, stealing from the SS was a huge deal. And it's interesting that it took the Nazis as long to figure it out. But like he gets charged with embezzlement because he kept far too many of the things. He pilfered too much from the prisoners. Like you're supposed, like you can collect like one or two things, like you get like a little bit, and then you send the rest off to the SS for them to do whatever they will with it. Now, I feel like when someone is a known thief and embezzler, putting him in a situation where he can steal and embezzle, probably not the smartest move, guys, but whatever. So then when they start investigating other things, like the experiments, they're like, these weren't approved, which is the issue, not the fact that they were doing really creepy, dodgy experiments on people. And so they have three charges against them. Disobeying orders by doing, like, random experiments, keeping things from the ss and for embezzling and misappropriating funds. And then the three murders. So the experiments of the Nazi Party wanted to be conducted were to help the Nazi Party in some way, like either proving that Aryan race was superior or to help them survive, like, certain things basically to link upgrade Aryans, really. So it's supposed to, like, help justify, like, the genocide that they're planning to do. But that's not what the experiments that were happening at the camp. So they go to court and they're trying to prove that Ilsa is behind the scenes, like, pulling all these strings, but they don't have any solid proof. So it basically means, like, like, sure, she's been outfieldive, sure she's doing these things, but we can't actually prove anything. And so they're like, well, and she's like, I was at home with the children. And they're like, okay, well, clearly he's responsible. And so they're removed from Buchenwald and replaced by German Prajsta. And so they're thrown in jail awaiting their trial, but they wouldn't actually go to trial until 1944. So they spend two years in jail because they get charged in 1942, but they didn't go to trial until 1944. And the judge decided that it doesn't matter, like, what Ilsa was doing. Carl was responsible because he was the commandant and decided how the funds were used and how the prisoners were killed. So, like, like in between this as well, like, they had left Buchenwald. Like, they had gone to Meisenek, right? They had gone there and he was there for a bit. And that was when, like, I think they'd moved them to sort of do the investigation. And, like, and then stuff was going missing at Majanek as well. And so that's how that happened. So, yeah, she gets set free and Carl Otto Koch was sentenced to death and was shot to death by a firing squad, a Nazi firing squad. And so she's like, oh, well, that's sad. And so she just gets on with her life. So she goes back to Germany with her three children. No, sorry, her two children. Because obviously Guggen's dead, so she's got two kids at this point, and they go back to Germany. Then in 1945, Germany was invaded by the US. So the concentration camps that were on sort of the French side, the German side, you had sort of, you know, the Brits and the Americans on that side. And then when you were on sort of the Eastern Front, that was the camps that were liberated by the ussr, the Soviets. So they're in Germany, they're liberating camps. And when they open Buchenwald, right, when they get to Buchenwald, like, people start talking and they start talking about the Ilva Hex of Buchenwald, right? The Witch of Buchenwald, the Red Witch. Like, she's called all these things. And on the 8th of April 1945, the Buchenwald camp sent out an SOS to the American military. So, like, it's liberatory. On the 11th of April 1945, like, the original plan was to blow it up with dynamite, kill everybody and cover up their tracks. Like that was like the Nazi plan. But when, like, the call went in, a prisoner answered the phone and was like, oh, we don't actually need any explosives. We've got enough here, thanks. And so, like, the other side was like, okay, cool, yeah, no worries. So it wasn't blown up,
- [57:17]
Ben Nadifray
so.
- [57:18]
Katy Charlwood
But it was opened up. So when it opened up, the Americans invited the people of Weimar, which is the city, which is around Buchenwald, to come to the camp and see what was going on in front of them, that they'd been supporting with the Nazi party. And they saw 80,000 people crammed into a space that was only meant for 8,000. They saw the corpses laying in front of the crematorium. Women would, like, pass out, like, they'd faint because of the sight of the bodies. And soldiers, like proper soldiers, like the American soldiers, they were freaking out when they discovered collections of human body parts, like internal organs and all this stuff in display cases, which, like, this is the least weird part for me. In a place that's doing experiments, I expect weird shit in jars, right? I just feel like that's the least weird part of this. And so they found a few things covered in human skin. And so as they go around, they're like, well, Ilse Coke is the one who picked out the prisoners with tattoos. And so her world comes crashing down pretty fucking sharpish when she was arrested for her crimes against humanity. So at her trial, she's like, those things, they're goat skin. But like, here's the thing. They're like, oh, she had all this stuff. And then it's like. But she's moved to two separate camps in the meantime. Like, she left in like, 41, right? Like, that's when she's gone. And this is now 45, so this is three years on. But you remember, she is of the belief that she is a perfect human. She is a specimen, she is the best person in the world, and she has done nothing wrong. And so, like, I love that, like, these things have tattoos. Did you tattoo the goats? But, like, her story isn't matching the stories of other people. Like, Jewish prisoners are testifying against her. Like, they're saying it was, you know, their job to, you know, remove bodies and, you know, cut the bodies up and do this kind of stuff. And there were like so many people testifying against her and that she had ordered many of these things to be
- [59:50]
Good Moms Bad Choices Host
made
- [59:52]
Katy Charlwood
from human skin. Well, there were orders to make things from human skin. Not one person could prove the order came from Ilsa specifically, which is like, things were continued to be made out of human skin after 1941. So I kind of feel like maybe, just maybe this one thing wasn't her. So because they only had testimony from witnesses, which is considered hearsay, they couldn't use that as proof to convict her. So, like, they can convict her for a bunch of stuff, but she goes. But not for the whole lampshade thing. So what happens is, under the Buchenwald trials is that the story comes out about, like, the lampshade skin and all this stuff, and it just goes nuclear. Like, it goes everywhere. Like, everyone is talking about it. It is a big fucking deal. It's everywhere, right? And so when this is happening, it's in all the newspapers, it's on the radio, everyone's talking about it. And so she is automatically associated with this. Now, again, she did some pretty horrible stuff, but there isn't an exact, like, link to her. Like, there's no, like, full on proof that it was her that did this. We don't have, like the thumb switches, we don't have the. The skin handbag. Like, the stuff that they said that she had. We don't have any of it. And if she was really proud to have it, it would have sort of transferred with her to places. You know, there would have been ways to move things for a rich as she was at that point, women. So she's in prison anyway, right? She's in jail, and in 1947, when she's in jail, she's pregnant again. It's. It's wild. So 1947, she's in prison, and she's pregnant, and everyone's like, it was an affair with a German prisoner. It might have been. But also, she's pregnant in prison. Am I the only one who finds this really fucking weird? Like, people are like, oh, she had a kid in prison. And I'm like, how? I mean, I know how. I know how, but also, are we sure. Are we. Are we sure it was another inmate? I just feel like, you know, there's. So she gives birth in prison to you, and so she has to give him away, and so he gets adopted, and he only finds out that she's his mother, like, decades later. So she serves time in prison. She gives birth. Like, she is sentenced to four years hard labor because they cannot prove that she gave these orders, right? There's no. There's. They literally have no proof. Okay? So she goes to jail. She goes for four years hard labor. Then when she's released, she is immediately put on trial again for her crimes a third time. And this time, she's put on trial by West Germany. So you had, like, so. So far, she's been on trial by the Nazis, the. The American military, and also now West Germany, because obviously Germany is split east and west. And so West Jeremy is pushing for this, right? Because she's the bitch of Buchenwald, the beast of Buchenwald, the red witch. Dan Herx und Buchenwald, right? And it is the German people, and it's here where she gets a life sentence. And here there is one key witness, Dr. Morgan, and he testified in all of Ilsa's trials, and he said Ilsa was. Was a whore who rode horseback in sexy underwear in front of the prisoners and then noted them down for punishment. The numbers of those who had looked
- [64:08]
Maria Garcia
at her,
- [64:10]
Katy Charlwood
she laying around in her garden in front of prisoners, simply primitive. But he's also, like. She had nothing to do with the lampshades, by the way. Like, he's like, she was a whore, but she didn't have anything to do with the lampshades. He's like, that wasn't her, but she was a massive slut. Now, is it not uncomfortable to ride a horse in just underwear? I'm sorry. Look, I'm sorry. I. I was on a pony once, and it was the worst experience of my life. Um, so. But anyway, she gets convicted for life imprisonment. And so she's there and she has three children, two of which know of her existence and one of whom does not yet. So her oldest son, he sort of grows up and he's like realizing that the entire world hates his family and he doesn't know why. And he struggles with us growing up and ends up ending his own life. Their daughter, sorry, her daughter ends up growing up, getting married, changing her name, and just being like, bye, no thank you, and goes off and lives her life. The third son, ua. So he finds out who his mom is. He grows up and he's like, I. I need to hear this from the horse's mouth. So he goes and he starts visiting her, like in the 60s, like he's visiting her in prison. And she's trying to say, like, listen, I did some stuff, but I didn't make things happen. Like, she's, you know, denying, I mean, quite a lot of the stuff, actually. But he slowly starts to believe her because he's like, okay, some of this isn't adding up, and this stuff does make sense, and this stuff doesn't. And so she's like, you need to get me out of here. You need to get like a lawyer. We need to try and work this out. But then, like, it becomes apparent to her, like, she's not getting out of prison. Even if they could somehow, you know, do some legal wizardry and get her out, like, she'd be hunted. Like, there's nothing for her in the outside world be because she was involved in the murder of people. Like she was a fcking monster. Even if she wasn't, you know, selecting prisoners for their tattoos and turning them into fcking household appliances, right? That's got nothing to do with it. Because if she's doing any of this, she's still perpetrated and benefited from this fcking crime. And that's the thing that people seem to forget. If you are involved, if you are benefiting from it and you are doing fcking nothing about it, then you are are part of the problem. You are part of the system that is fucking everything up. So it gets to the point where she's just like, realizing that nothing can be done. Like, and this is the first prisoner she prisoner. This is the first, like, visitor she's had in years. Because who the fck wants to go see Ilsa cook, right? And it gets the point where she's like, fck this for game soldiers. I just can't do this anymore. She realizes there's nothing for her out there. She's not only not getting out, but she's having delusions. Like, her mind is starting to go. And, like, she's convinced that camp survivors are coming for her. Like, she's really getting paranoid. Things are. Are going to get worse for her, and they're going to get her. And, like, she's finally being haunted by the ghost of her past. And so she writes a note to her son, Yu, there is no other way. Death for me is a release. And so, on the 1st of September, 1967, at the Aisha Women's Prison, Ilse Koch hanged herself with a bedsheet at the age of 60. Over 280,000 people passed through the gates of Buchenwald, including political prisoners, prisoners of war, Freemasons, and deviants. Over 56,000 people died in this camp. And Ilse, she was involved in this because she got pleasure from watching these people die. Now, Ilse Koch may not have had lampshades made out of skin, but she was, by all accounts, a really fucking terrible, horrible person. She was a monster. And you don't need to add horrors to that to prove it. Oh, I never talked about the names, actually. So her name, it starts off as a hex of Buchenwald, like, the Witch of Buchenwald. And then this goes to, like, the papers, and they're just like, she's a witch, but then she's a beast. And then over time, it becomes the Bitch of Buchenwald, because. Alliteration. But, yeah, that is the story of the Bitch of Buchenwald. So I guess it is recommendation time. So for watching the new season of Ted Lasso, everyone deserves to have some optimism and whimsy in their life after this. For listening. You know what I've been listening to a lot recently is Newfound Glory's version of Accidentally in Love. I don't know. I. I think I like it better than the original. I don't know. Maybe I've got problems, I don't know. But I'm enjoying it. But for reading Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. Those are my recommendations for this week. And, yeah, more information coming soon. Love you all. And my goodness, my face hurts so much. And with that, I shall say goodbye. Adios. Au revoir. Au revoir, my friends. Bye bye.