Karl-Otto Koch - Marriage

Marriage

Koch first married in 1924 and had one son; however, his marriage ended in divorce 1931, due to his infidelity.

On May 25, 1936 Koch married Ilse Köhler with whom he had a son and two daughters. Köhler later became known as "The Witch of Buchenwald" (Die Hexe von Buchenwald), usually rendered more alliteratively in English as "The Bitch of Buchenwald." When Koch was transferred to Buchenwald, Ilse was appointed an Oberaufseherin (overseer) by the SS and thus had an active, official role in the atrocities committed there. There have been many unverified rumors about a lampshade made from human skin, which has become an often repeated legend since the war, but no one could testify that they had actually seen such a thing during Ilse's trial.

At the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, on December 13, 1945, the US prosecution introduced Exhibit #253, which consisted of three pieces of tanned human skin that had been removed from prisoners by doctors at Buchenwald. A forensic report confirmed that it was human skin. Although this skin had not been fashioned into a lampshade, US prosecutor Thomas Dodd claimed that Ilse Koch had ordered tattooed human skin to be made into lampshades for her home. Exhibit #254, also introduced by Dodd, was a shrunken head, allegedly used by Ilse Koch as a paperweight, which Dodd claimed was the head of a Polish prisoner at Buchenwald.

General Clay, the American military governor, felt, in 1948, that Ilse Koch had been unjustly sentenced to a life term in 1947 by the international American military court. On September 16, he commuted that sentence to four years' time. As he explained on September 23: "There was no convincing evidence that she selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skin or that she possessed any articles made of human skin." Eventually, she was tried by a German court on charges of her having abused and killed German inmates; her previous trial had included only inmates of other nationalities. In this second trial, she was convicted and sentenced to life.

She was sentenced to life for: "one count of incitement to murder, one of incitement to attempted murder, five of incitement to severe physical mistreatment of prisoners, and two of physical mistreatment."

"The court found no proof that anyone at Buchenwald had been murdered for his tattooed skin, but it expressed no doubt that skin lampshades had been made and that human heads had been shriveled and preserved at the camp." She spent the rest of her life in prison until she committed suicide in 1967.