War Criminal/Sadist. Red-haired and freckled, Koch was the daughter of a factory foreman. She was known as a polite and happy child in her elementary school. At the age of 15 she entered an accountancy school and later had a job as a bookkeeper. In 1932 she became a member of the rising Nazi Party. In 1934 through some friends in the SA and SS, she met Karl Otto Koch, an SS man. The couple married two years later. While engaged to Karl Koch, she began working as a guard and secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, which her fiancé commanded. After they married she became the commandant's wife at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1937. Reportedly, under the influence of her husband, she began torturing the inmates of the camp. It was alleged that she would often force prisoners to rape one another in plain sight for her own amusement. In 1941 she became the chief overseer ("Oberaufseherin ") over the few female guards who served at the camp. That same year, Karl Koch was transferred to the concentration camp at Majdanek but Ilse remained at Buchenwald. Karl Koch was relieved from his duties as commandant after 86 Soviet POWs escaped from the camp in August 1942. In 1943, both Karl and Ilse were arrested by the Gestapo for embezzlement of SS funds at Buchenwald, and the murder of certain inmates in an attempt to cover up their crimes. In one case Ilse had used over 250,000DM to build a sports facility at Buchenwald, monies reported taken from the camps prisoners as they were processed into the camp. The SS investigated allegations made by Obergruppenführer Josias Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont who noted names on teh death rosters that should not have been there. Ilse was imprisoned by German authorities until late 1944 or early 1945 in Weimar. In early 1945, her husband was sentenced to death by an SS court in Munich and executed in April 1945 shortly before American forces captured the area. Ilse was acquitted by an SS court and went to live with her surviving family in the town of Ludwigsburg. She was arrested by U.S. authorities on June 30, 1945 and charged with "participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald". Ilse Koch and 30 other accused were arraigned before the American military court at Dachau in 1947. Prosecuting her was future United States Court of Claims Judge Robert L. Kunzig. On 12 August 1947 she was sentenced to life in prison for "violation of the laws and customs of war". That same year she gave birth to a child that had been conceived in prisonAfter she had served two years of her sentence, General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, reduced the judgment to four years' prison on 8 June 1948 on the grounds that it could not be convincingly shown that Koch had ordered selected camp inmates murdered for their tattooed skin, and that her possession of "objects made of human skin" (lampshades, dried/preserved pieces of skin with tattoos, etc)was similarly not proven. News of the reduced sentence did not become public until 16 September 1948. Under the pressure of public opinion Koch was re-arrested in 1949 and tried before a West German court. The hearing opened on 27 November 1950 before the Assize Court at Augsburg and lasted seven weeks, during which 250 witnesses were heard including 50 for the defense. She was convicted of charges of Incitement to Murder, Incitement to Attempted Murder and Incitement to the Crime of Committing Grievous Bodily Harm. On 15 January 1951 Koch sentenced to life imprisonment and permanent forfeiture of civil rights. She appealed to have the judgment overturned, but the appeal was dismissed on 22 April 1952 by the Federal Court of Justice. She later made several petitions for a pardon, all of which were rejected by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. On the night before her son came to visit her, she committed suicide by hanging herself at the Aichach women's prison on September 1, 1967. Koch was buried in an unmarked grave. (Bio by: Jay Lance)