Ilse Koch: The Witch Of Buchenwald

uniform that got very worn out quickly, and was not very suitable for the harsh conditions they had to endure. Their uniforms were only exchanged once every six months. Just surviving one day at Buchenwald could be considered a amazing feat.
One of the most feared people at Buchenwald was named Ilse Koch also known as “Witch of Buchenwald.” She was the wife of Karl-Otto Koch,the commandant of Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald. She was known as the Witch of Buchenwald because her sadistic and extremely cruel abuse of prisoners. One of things Ilse Koch took pleasure in doing was watching prisoners as they came, and looking to see if the had any interesting tattoos that she had liked. If they did she would have the immediately executed and

skinned, then the skin would be later used for lamp shades or book covers. She also ordered people to be executed because she liked shrinking their heads and putting them stands like they were her medals, trophies and souvenirs. Ilse Koch and her husband, Otto were later tried for the murders of many but only her husband was convicted and sentenced to death.
Jobs forced upon prisoners at Buchenwald were always known for being very harsh and brutal.

The unfortunate first group of prisoners at Buchenwald even had to construct their own death camp. Buchenwald was a huge city that consisted of brick buildings and wood barracks, so prisoners would have to lift heavy bricks and giant rocks back and forth from the main camp to the quarry. Buchenwald also had more than 100 subcamps, the largest and most important being Dora-Mittelbau (Buchenwald). Dora-Mittelbau had huge tunnels built into the surrounding mountains that were also dug by prisoners. Even after Buchenwald was finished being built they still made prisons carry heavy rocks back and forth. If the rocks they were carrying were not big enough according to the guards watching at the time, they would be automatically shot and killed. Another thing they made the prisoners do as forced labor was haul all the dead bodies to the crematories and then burn them. As a result of such hard labor many of the prisoners died from being

overworked.
Disease and illness spread like the Black Plague in Buchenwald. Almost all prisoners could say that they had gotten sick at least one time while at Buchenwald. Chances of surviving sickness were very small to none, and this is what killed majority of the prisoners. When getting sick the last thing people wanted was for guards to know that they were sick. If guards found out, prisoners would be taken immediately to hospitals and left for dead. Guards did not even attempt to save the sick, so sick prisoners just lied in beds for days doing nothing until they recovered or died. Most of the diseases contracted by prisoners were from experimental injections to test how effective vaccines were (Downing). The disease injected into prisoners were Yellow Fever, smallpox, paratyphoid A and B, typhus, and cholera. Survival rate from disease and illness was very rare.
The methods used to kill prisoners at Buchenwald were all inhumane and barbaric.

The Nazi's ultimate goal was to completely and totally eradicate the whole Jewish population, along with blacks, gays, Romani gypsies, and more. In doing this their beliefs were by eliminating all the “undesirables”, it could allow a pure Aryan bloodline to spread creating a perfect nation; So Nazis tried finding the fastest and most effective ways to get rid of them. Buchenwald used methods like gas chambers, public hanging, shootings, and injection. The hanging of prisoners was unique to Buchenwald because none of the other concentration camps used this to kill. The area that the hanging occurred was called the execution room or strangling chamber, walls in the chambers stood about 6 1/2 feet above the floor and each wall had multiple hooks nailed into it. When the prisoners were chosen and then hung, if they showed any signs of struggling they were hit with wooden mallets until they finally stopped moving. Avoiding death in Buchenwald was was almost inevitable, there was no way to hide from it so most prisoners just tried to accept

it.
Many of the experiments conducted on prisoners at Buchenwald were so horrible and unthinkable that many of them resulted into death. One of the horrible experiments was to test the effects of chemical poisons on humans, poison was administered to subjects in their food. This resulted in many victims dying quickly, or if they did survive they were killed and their organs were later examined. Another way they tested effects of poison was by shooting subjects with poison-laced bullets, most subjects shot died as a because of the poison or from the wounds shots caused. Other experiments tested were high and low altitudes and air pressures. So scientists carried out freezing experiments using prisoners and putting them into extremely cold ice baths and to try find an effective treatments for hypothermia (Legend vs. Reality). Many of these experiments resulted into death as well.
After Germany's 12 long years of battling with Poland the war was finally ended in 1945, and the Holocaust was officially over. Adolf Hitler knew Germany would be defeated right after allied forces invaded, so he cowardly committed suicide in fear of punishment. When Adolf Hitler died along with him went Buchenwald. After Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945, the prisoners of the former camp decided to set up a tour of horrors the were forced to endure.Then on April 15, 1945, the German civilians from the nearby town of Weimar were brought in to see the evidence of Nazi atrocities. The German civilians had to march five miles up a steep hill, escorted by armed American soldiers. It took two days for the Weimar residents to file through the whole camp and no precautions were taken to protect them from the typhus epidemic in the camp. Many of the gruesome and horrifying sights brought tears to the eyes of everyone and many people fainted including german nurses and docters. In Later years majority of Buchenwald ended up being burned down or blown up by the soviet union.
While Buchenwald was one of the many death concentration camps in the Holocaust, it was by far one of the worst and most cruel concentration camp of them all; a place where the desperation of survival began upon arrival.
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