Irma Grese - War Crimes

War Crimes

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, including setting dogs on inmates, 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 used both physical and emotional 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.

In "Nazi She-Devils", the Mirror reports: "She had a reputation as a nymphomaniac who sexually abused male and female prisoners", and "The skins of three inmates that she had made into a lampshade were found in her hut."

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, Irma disclosed that she planned a career in the movies after the war. Olga felt that Irma’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.