Ilse Koch was a German world war 2 criminal who committed atrocities while her husband Karl-Otto Koch was commandant at Buchenwald concentration camp. She was a member of Hitler's Nazi Party.
On May 29, 1937, she married Karl Otto Koch, a colonel in the SS who was commander of the Sachsenhausen camp. In the summer of 1937 he was transferred to Buchenwald, then a new concentration camp near Weimar.
After World War II, Koch and her children went to live in Ludwigsburg, a suburb of Stuttgart, but the Allies arrested and jailed her to await trial. In 1947 a sensational Allied military tribunal held at the former Dachau concentration camp tried her and 30 others connected with Buchenwald. She was charged with several crimes, including abusing prisoners and ordering those with “interesting” tattoos to be killed and their skin turned into artifacts such as lampshades, book covers, gloves, and so on. Despite the testimony of former prisoners who were forced to make such grisly objects, prosecutors could not conclusively prove her involvement in committing such crimes.However, she was convicted of being a part of the “common design” to abuse prisoners and was sentenced to life in prison.
Koch’s sentence was reduced by U.S. military authorities to time already served, because of Cold War politics and the growing discontent among some West Germans over ongoing harsh sentences handed out to Nazi war criminals, and she was released from prison on October 17, 1949, despite a storm of controversy in the United States. The West German government arrested her the same day and charged her with having abused German citizens during her time at Buchenwald. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In 1967 she hanged herself with bedsheets in her cell at the women’s prison in Aichach, Germany.

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