Irma Greese | World War 2

Grese worked at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen as a Nazi concentration camp Helferin. She was called the "Hyena of Auschwitz" and "Beast of Belsen" for her Birkenau crimes.

After the Allied conquest of Nazi Germany in April 1945, Grese was found guilty of war crimes including the torture and murder of Jewish captives at the Belsen trial and hanged. At 22, she was the youngest woman hanged in Britain in the 20th century.

Grese was first rejected by Ravensbrück's training program. Gebhardt's coworker told her to return when she was eighteen, six months away. However, she was recruited to work at another dairy farm from March 1941 until June 1942, delaying her homecoming.

She began training at Ravensbrück in July 1942.She became Aufseherin after three weeks of program completion. She was said to have outperformed her supervisors throughout her seven-month camp job, earning fifty-four Reichsmarks a month.

In 1943, Grese visited her father Alfred, who had remarried in 1939 to a widow with four children while wearing her SS uniform. Alfred first liked Grese, who hadn't informed him about her camp brutality. After his stepdaughter cried because Grese had pulled the head and limbs off her doll and his small son jokingly shot Grese's gun at him, Alfred changed his mind. Alfred took his son's handgun and hit Grese. At the Belsen trial, Grese's sister Helene said she had heard their father quarrel because Grese was in the Schutzstaffel, but she had not seen him physically assault her.

Grese returned to Ravensbrück soon after the event, her last home, and oversaw labor tasks in the concentration camp until March 1943, when she was sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Grese worked as a telephone operator in a Blockführer's office at "Camp B" at Birkenau after arriving in March 1943. She was sent to supervise a Strafkommando after allegedly violating this task. Kapo Helena Kopper said that Grese controlled this sector for seven months and killed at least thirty detainees every day.

Grese had many camp assignments during the following four months. She supervised a gardening crew in fall before replacing Aufseherin Elisabeth Volkenrath as mail censor in December. Grese, 21, was promoted to Oberaufseherin after doing well.

Grese was assigned charge of "Camp C" in May 1944, which housed 30,000 Polish and Hungarian Jewish women in 31 huts. However, survivor Helen Spitzer Tichauer testified in 1945 that Grese was unqualified to lead this Birkenau sector alone. She worked with Aufseherin Luise Danz, a fresh transfer from Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp.

Grese used a rubber truncheon, handgun, and whip to perform most of her violent deeds at "Camp C". Survivor Abraham Glinowieski testified that Grese selected ill and healthy Hungarian Jews for the gas chambers.Survivor Edith Trieger said Grese assaulted and kicked captives fleeing selection parades.Grese often ordered convicts to "make sport" with harsh punishments.

Survivor Olga Lengyel said Grese had sexual intercourse with SS soldiers and male and female Jewish captives at Birkenau. Grese had relationships with married doctors Josef Mengele and Lagerführer Josef Kramer, but Mengele halted their relationship after discovering her infidelity.

A prisoner who was Grese's maid said she had numerous cruel sexual encounters with Jewish prisoners. Survivor Lengyel said in her book that Grese treated her "favorite" inmates as slaves until she got tired and sent them to the death chambers. According to Birkenau doctor Gisella Perl's account, Grese had orgasmic pleasure when operating on young women's breasts that had been split open by her whip and infested with lice or filth with a knife and no anesthetic. Perl said Grese would kick the young lady being operated on if her screaming interfered with her desire.

Grese stayed in Birkenau's "Camp C" until 18 January 1945, when all troops were moved westward due to Soviet advances.

Grese's last duty was Bergen-Belsen in early March 1945. She was Arbeitsdienstführerin and Rapportführerin for three and a half weeks.

She wasn't meant to go to Bergen-Belsen because Lagerführer Kramer intended to move her.She strongly resisted the move because she wanted to remain with her new boyfriend Oberscharführer Franz Wolfgang Hatzinger, whom Grese fondly called "Hatchi", a married man fourteen years older.Aufseherin Johanna Bormann said Grese and Hatzinger "were very close and regularly sneaked off secretly to have sex" during the Belsen trial.

Grese recreated Birkenau's cruelties in Bergen-Belsen. She defended forcing convicts to "make sport" during her trial because she felt they were "capable of such physical torment".

British soldiers seized Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. While Lagerführer Kramer called for surrender, Grese and other high-ranking SS commanders stayed in the camp. Grese was alleged to have seemed haughty when the British arrived at the camp and got angry when she tried to strike a British officer who entered one of the huts, being restrained.Grese was detained and questioned for two days at the Wehrmacht Tank Training School three kilometers from the camp.

On September 17, 1945, Grese's Lüneburg trial started with forty-four other defendants, known as the Belsen trials, despite Birkenau being the site of most murders. Grese faced two war crimes accusations for Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau between 1 October 1942 and 30 April 1945. Grese said, "Himmler is responsible for everything, but I suppose I am as much to blame as the others above me."

Grese's cold, arrogant, and unremorseful demeanor persisted throughout the trial, with terse answers to questions like "I should know better than you whether or not I had a dog, don't you think?" and "I wish you would stop repeating the word'regularly" in reference to her repeated attacks on prisoners. Grese's sole weakness was when her sister Helene testified about Irma and their father's heated 1943 conversation, causing her to cry. Helene testified that she did not think Grese could have attacked any inmates, saying "When females fought in school, my sister never had the bravery to fight, rather she fled away.

On day 54 of the Belsen trial, Grese was convicted of both war crimes. As she was sentenced to death, she "showed total indifference". All expected pleas from the accused were rejected, thus her clemency application was dismissed.

Grese was moved to Hamelin Prison on December 8 with the other 10 death-sentenced guards from Lüneburg.

Grese and two other SS women, Elizabeth Volkenrath and Julia Bormann, laughed and sang Nazi songs the night before their execution. Two women were executed by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint on December 13, 1945. She ended with "Schnell" ("Quick") and had no remorse. Since she was the youngest prisoner to be executed at twenty-two, Pierrepoint sought to "[spare] her any kind of trauma" by hanging her first.

No, according to the original, dated, and timed witnesses declarations of the returned death warrants, Grese was executed second at 10:03, followed by Volkenrath at 09:34 and Julian Bormann at 10:38.

The President of the Court ordered Grese and the other executed that day to be buried in the Hamelin Prison courtyard rather than the cemetery to avert martyrdom. After the British left in 1954, all the bodies were reburied in Friedhof Am Wehl cemetary.