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| Irma Grese |
“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet Irma Grese was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative pervert I ever came across.” This were the words of Dr. Gisella Perl, a female inmate doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in describing the beauty and how evil the famed Hyena of Auschwitz is.
Irma Grese was born on 7 October 1923, she was the third of five children to Berta Grese and Alfred Grese. As a child, her dream was to be a nurse. But faith or should we say the devil had other plans for her. Due to a combination of a poor scholastic aptitude, bullying by classmates and a fanatical preoccupation with the League of German Girls she left school in 1938 at age 15.
After dropping out of school Grese left home and worked as a farmhand for six months then worked as a retail sales clerk in a shop in Luchen before she once again pursued her dream to be a nurse. She worked as an assistant nurse at Hohenlychen, an SS convalescent hospital. Here she trained under Karl Gebhardt, the most famous orthopedic surgeon in Europe, whose specialty was to be devastating to victims during the holocaust. Unfortunately, Grese didn’t do well enough to become a full-fledged nurse.
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| Irma Grese at the Belsen trials |
After turning 18 years old Grese moved to the SS Female Helpers’ training base, which was located near Ravensbrück, the all-female concentration camp where she received her training, which stressed "the feminine ideal of nurturance”. She volunteered to work at Ravensbrück and was promoted to a guard position at Auschwitz-Birkenau. From mid-1942 she was an Aufseherin (guard) at Ravensbrück, and in March 1943 she transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the second half of 1944 she was promoted to Rapportführerin, the second-highest rank open to female KZ-wardens.
It was at this point she became known as a sadist, she slept with SS guards and inmates, beat prisoners until their faces were completely raw, kicked them with her hobnailed jackboots, used her half starved dogs on the prisoners, forced men and women to hold rocks above their heads and kneel for hours and had a whip which she used consistently whenever necessary. Grese also participated in prisoner selections for the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Grese was captured by the British Army on 17 April 1945. She was tried and sentenced to death by hanging at the Belsen Trial. On 13 December 1945 at 10:03 in the morning Irma Grese was executed. At only 22 years of age, she was the youngest Nazi war criminal hanged.
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It was at this point she became known as a sadist, she slept with SS guards and inmates, beat prisoners until their faces were completely raw, kicked them with her hobnailed jackboots, used her half starved dogs on the prisoners, forced men and women to hold rocks above their heads and kneel for hours and had a whip which she used consistently whenever necessary. Grese also participated in prisoner selections for the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
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| In jackboots and civilian clothes, Irma Grese (along with Bergen-Belsen commandant Josef Kramer, right) stands in the courtyard of the prison at Celle during their war-crimes trial, June 1945. |
Grese was captured by the British Army on 17 April 1945. She was tried and sentenced to death by hanging at the Belsen Trial. On 13 December 1945 at 10:03 in the morning Irma Grese was executed. At only 22 years of age, she was the youngest Nazi war criminal hanged.
Don't forget to like our Facebook page Bullets And Missiles
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