Irma Grese
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Irma Grese (October 7, 1923 – December 13, 1945) was a supervisor at the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
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Born in Wrechen, southeastern Mecklenburg close to Pasewalk to Alfred Grese, a milker, member of the NSDAP since 1937, and Berta Grese. She had four siblings. 1936 her mother committed suicide, allegedly because of marital problems.
She left school in 1938 at the age of 14. Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in the SS sanatorium Hohenlychen for two years and later tried to find an apprenticeship place as a nurse but was not successful. She voluntarily signed up with the SS and was employed as a Aufseherin at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1942. Her father did not agree with her choice and ordered her to stay away from their house. She was transferred to Auschwitz in March 1943, and by the end of that year she was Oberaufseherin (Senior Supervisor), the second highest ranking woman at the camp, in charge of around 30,000 Jewish female prisoners. In January 1945 she briefly returned to Ravensbrück before ending her wartime career at Bergen-Belsen as an Arbeitsdienstführerin from March to April, being captured by the British April 17, 1945, together with other SS-personnel who did not flee.
She was among the 44 accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial. She was tried over the first period of the trials (September 17 - November 17, 1945) and was represented by Major L. Cranfield. The trials were conducted under British military law in Lüneburg, and the charges derived from the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding the treatment of prisoners. The accusations against her centred on her ill treatment and murder of Allied nationals imprisoned at the camps, including setting dogs on inmates, shootings and sadistic beatings with a whip.
She was convicted of crimes committed at both Auschwitz and Belsen and sentenced to death by hanging. Ten others were also sentenced to death including two other women, Juana Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath. Her appeal was rejected. Executed at Hameln jail by Albert Pierrepoint, she was the youngest woman to die judicially under English law in the 20th century.
External links
- The Belsen Trial (http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/belsen5.htm)
- Biography in German (http://www.bis.uni-oldenburg.de/bisverlag/taaang98/kap6.pdf) (pdf)
- SS - Frauen am Galgen (http://max.mmvi.de/ssfrauen/irmagrese.htm)de:Irma Grese