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Friday, December 13, 2013

THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST: IRMA GRESE (OCTOBER 7, 1923 TO DECEMBER 13, 1945)



            On this date, December 13, 1945, 11 Nazi War Criminals were all hanged by Albert Pierrepoint in Hamelin Prison, Germany. I will post the information about Irma Grese, the Beautiful Beast from Wikipedia and other links.


Mugshot of Grese in August 1945, while she was awaiting trial
Nickname
The Beautiful Beast
Die Hyäne von Auschwitz
("The Hyena of Auschwitz")
Born
7 October 1923
Wrechen, Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany
Died
13 December 1945 (aged 22)
Hamelin, Germany
Allegiance
Nazi Germany
Service/branch
Schutzstaffel
Years of service
1942–1945
Rank
SS-Helferin
Unit
Irma Ida Ilse Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was employed at the Nazi concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, and was a warden of the women's section of Bergen-Belsen.
Grese was convicted for crimes against humanity at the Belsen Trial and sentenced to death. Executed at 22 years, 67 days of age, Grese was the youngest woman to die judicially under English law in the 20th century. She was nicknamed "the Beast of Belsen", "The Beautiful Beast", "The Blonde Angel of Auschwitz" and "Die Hyäne von Auschwitz" ("The Hyena of Auschwitz").


Pierrepoint never forgot Irma. As he slipped the noose around her neck and pulled the hood down over her face she gave him an "enigmatic smile" which haunted him for the rest of his life.
Two of the most devoted executioners had met!
Background

Irma Grese was born to Alfred Grese, a dairy worker and a member of the Nazi Party from 1937, and Berta Grese. Irma Grese had four siblings. In 1936, her mother committed suicide.

Grese left school in 1938 at the age of fourteen, owing to a combination of a poor scholastic aptitude, bullying by classmates, and a fanatical preoccupation with the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), a Nazi female youth organization, of which her father disapproved. Among other casual jobs, she worked as an assistant nurse in the sanatorium of the SS for two years and unsuccessfully tried to find an apprenticeship as a nurse, after which she worked as a dairy helper.

Quoted below is Irma Grese's testimony, under direct examination, about her background:


I was born on 7 October 1923. In 1938 I left the elementary school and worked for six months on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which I worked in a shop in Lychen for six months. When I was 15 I went to a hospital in Hohenlychen, where I stayed for two years. I tried to become a nurse but the Labour Exchange would not allow that and sent me to work in a dairy in Fürstenberg. In July, 1942, I tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent me to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, although I protested against it. I stayed there until March, 1943, when I went to Birkenau Camp in Auschwitz. I remained in Auschwitz until January, 1945.


Having completed her training in March 1943, Grese was transferred as a female guard to Auschwitz, and by the end of that year was Senior Supervisor, the second highest ranking woman at the camp, in charge of around 30,000 Jewish female prisoners.

In January 1945, Grese briefly returned to Ravensbrück before ending her wartime career at Bergen-Belsen as a Work Service Manager from March to April. She was captured by the British on 17 April 1945, together with other SS personnel who did not flee.

Irma Grese (PHOTO SOURCE: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/judicial-inc/dvdsv.jpg)

Irma Grese (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sodahead.com/living/name-an-evil-woman-from-history/question-3632535/?page=2)

War crime trial

Grese was among the 45 people accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial. She was tried over the first period of the trials (September 17 to 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 those imprisoned at the camps. These included: setting guard dogs on inmates to savage them, arbitrary shootings and sadistic beatings with a whip. Survivors provided detailed testimony of murders, tortures, and other cruelties, especially towards women, in which Grese engaged during her years at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. They testified to acts of sadism, beatings and arbitrary shootings of prisoners, savaging of prisoners by her trained and allegedly half-starved dogs, and to her selecting prisoners for the gas chambers. Grese was reported to have habitually worn heavy boots and carried a whip and a pistol. Witnesses testified that she took pleasure in using both physical and psychological methods to torture the camp's inmates and enjoyed shooting prisoners in cold blood. They also claimed that she beat some women to death and whipped others using a plaited whip.

Grese inspired virulent hatred in prisoner Olga Lengyel, who in her memoir, Five Chimneys, wrote that selections in the women’s camp were made by SS Aufseherin Elisabeth Hasse and Irma Grese. The latter was visibly pleased by the terror her presence inspired in the women at roll call. She had a penchant for selecting not only the sick and the weak but any woman who had retained vestiges of her former beauty. Moreover, Lengyel observes, Grese had several lovers among the SS in the camp, including Josef Mengele. After Grese strong-armed the inmate surgeon at the infirmary into performing her illegal abortion, she disclosed that she planned a career in the movies after the war. Lengyel felt that Grese’s meticulous grooming, custom fitted clothes, and overuse of perfume were part of a deliberate act of sadism among the ragged women prisoners.

After a fifty-three day trial, Grese was sentenced to hang.


Irma Grese and SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.militaryimages.net/forums/showthread.php/9362-Third-Reich-Figures-In-Color-Images/page40)
 

Irma Grese in the middle (number 9) during the Belsen Trial



Execution

Grese and ten others (eight men and two other women; Juana Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath) were convicted for crimes against humanity in both Auschwitz and Belsen and then sentenced to death. As the verdicts were read, Grese was the only prisoner to remain defiant; her subsequent appeal was rejected.

The Daily Mirror reported: Despite being dressed in drab prison garb, the vain Grese - dubbed "the Beautiful Beast" by inmates - used rags to put ringlets in her hair. And, "The night before her execution Grese laughed and sang Nazi songs with fellow SS torturer Elizabeth Volkenrath."

On Thursday, 13 December 1945, in Hamelin Jail, Grese was led to the gallows. The women were hanged singly first and then the men in pairs. Regimental Sergeant-Major O'Neil assisted the noted British executioner, Albert Pierrepoint:


... we climbed the stairs to the cells where the condemned were waiting. A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung open the door and we filed past the row of faces and into the execution chamber. The officers stood at attention. Brigadier Paton-Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave me the signal, and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber, I walked into the corridor. 'Irma Grese', I called.

The German guards quickly closed all grilles on twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion her in the corridor. 'Follow me,' I said in English, and O'Neil repeated the order in German. At 9.34 a.m. she walked into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it, then walked on to the centre of the trap, where I had made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark very firmly, and as I placed the white cap over her head she said in her languid voice, 'Schnell'. [English translation: 'Quickly.'] The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.


Dramatizations

Angel: A Nightmare in Two Acts is a drama by playwright Jo Davidsmeyer based on the life and execution of Irma Grese and holocaust survivor Olga Lengyel. First staged in 1987, it has been produced at many regional colleges; in September 2006 it had its professional debut at the New City Stage Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The play was published in 1995 by Wildside Press in the anthology Reader's Theatre: What it is and how to stage it, edited by Marvin Kaye.

Irma Grese has been portrayed as a minor character in Out of the Ashes as well as Pierrepoint, which details her execution following the Belsen war crimes trial. Both films feature additional female guards in much smaller roles. Grese is also briefly portrayed in a non-speaking re-enactment in Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'.

She was also one of the inspirations for the Nazi exploitation film, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.



Letter to Irma Grese, originally published in 1945

By SCHUTZHAEFTLING NO. 45554
04/18/2012 18:16

Reprint of open letter penned by surviving victim addressed to Nazi official, originally published in 'Palestine Post.'


Hall of Names, Yad Vashem Memorial Museum Photo: REUTERS (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Letter-to-Irma-Grese-originally-published-in-1945)
Frau Aufseherin Grese,

You are on trial and a Major Winwood is your defence counsel. I am one of your victims, by some stroke of luck, one of the few to survive, and I cannot understand why you, the “terror of Oswiecim,” should have been granted the protection of the law to that extent. You were responsible for the destruction of so many lives, that it is hardly possible that there can be any justification for your deeds, which brought sorrow and torture to so many thousands.

You will no doubt plead that you were under orders, bound to obey the SS formation of which you were a member. But there can be no excuse for the new tortures and forms of persecution which you evolved, no justification for the way in which you gave rein to your beastly sadism.

Justice Must Be Done

We still await the verdict. You may have to face a firing squad or you may be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Even so, your victims will not consider that justice has been done. Only if you are made to suffer as you made others suffer can it be said that justice will have been done.

We, your victims, do not want you to die. We would much rather that you live, as we had to, with billows of filthy black smoke from the chimneys of the crematoria.

We want to see you dragging heavy stones, barefoot and in rags. We want to see you beaten, cruelly and mercilessly, as you, cruel and without mercy, beat us. We want to watch you being jeered at, as you jeered and mocked us in our despair. We want you to go so hungry that you cannot sleep at night, as we could not. We want to see your blonde hair shaved off, as you made us shave our heads.

You, too, must be forced to look on while those who are dear to you are burned to death.

We want to see you, the “handsome girl,” degenerate into a “muselweib”, a bag of skin and bones, through hunger and exhaustion, like those of us who were jeered at and called by this name. You too should be turned over to the “Himmelskommando” who will show you, as they showed us, the “road to heaven” through the gas chambers. Let them push you alive into the furnace of the crematorium, as they did with so many of us.

All these things have been done to countless thousands of us, your victims. Only if they are done to you in your turn will justice have been done. You made us suffer the torments of hell. Now it is our turn to hate you and to cry out for revenge.

“Achtung, Frau Aufseher Grese kommt!” (Attenshun! Warder Grese’s coming). I shall never forget the terror that this command struck in our hearts. I shall remember you as you strutted through the camp in your SS uniform, that enormous dog by your side which you used to love to set on us “just for fun.” I shall always remember your gleaming and elegant jackboots, and the way you kicked us with them.

I was one of thousands. The number they gave me, No. 45554, is tattooed on my arm and will go with me to my grave. There I was, a dirty grey rag tied round my shaved head, wearing the trousers of a Red Army soldier who had been tortured to death, and a ragged shirt, bearing on it my number and a Shield of David.

As you came along, I stood stiffly to attention, though my feet could scarcely bear the weight of my body, emaciated though it was I wore wooden clogs, both for the left foot and far too big. I had to wind rags around my feet – and the rags were torn “tallesim,” the prayer shawls of my religion. The clogs tore at my feet, but the ragged “tallesim” tore at my heart. What did you care about all this? You walked through our lines like a tyrant, your hands gloved so as not to come into contact with us even when you whipped us. Did you never feel the burning hate that smouldered in the thousands of eyes fixed upon you?

By some good fortune I escaped the gas chambers and the “Himmelskommando.” I am alive and free. I look like an ordinary human being again. Even my hair has grown. I wear shoes that fit, socks of the same colour, clean linen and an ordinary frock, without stripes, without a number and without the Shield of David. But on my arm I still carry my prison number – 45554 – for no one and nothing can erase that. I am not ordered to go at the double. I am not guarded by a sentry. I am free to come and go as I will.

Sometimes I wake while it is still dark, thinking for a few brief seconds that I have to be on parade at 6 a.m. But, thanks be to God, those days have gone. I can speak to a man without being whipped to within an inch of my life. And... I again have a name, a first name and a surname. Once more I am “Isabella,” or “Miss Rubinstein.” Only the blue mark on my arm reminds me that I was once No. 45554.

One Example

You are in the dock, Warder Grese, and evidence is being given for and against you. I could fill a book with the list of your crimes. Let me remind you of only one of them, not the worst of them, but typical. Do you remember a day in June 1943? It was at Camp Birkmann, Block 14. On one side of the square the Aryan women were lined up, and on the other, the Jewesses.

Behind us there was a bench where a few women were sitting, so broken in body and spirit that they could not stand on parade. As you passed, one of the poor wretched creatures made an involuntary gesture of fear.

You, Irma Grese, made out that she tried to kick you.

That she, poor victim of the Nazi terror, should have tried to kick you, the mistress of life and death for her, – what a cruel joke! Do you remember what you did to her? You pushed her into the middle of the square, though she could scarcely walk. You made her kneel on the flagstones, made her hold two heavy pieces of rock above her head, made her repeat incessantly “I kicked the Warder! I kicked the Warder!” I was so frightened that I couldn’t count how many strokes of your whip you gave her. Perhaps you remember.

Then your friend Ritter of the SS came along. He began to kick her in the face with his spurred jackboots, until the blood ran. Then you shouted, “Get up, you...” and let the woman go back to her cell.

Two weeks later she was dead.

Our Verdict

You have forgotten all these things. You plead mitigating circumstances as you stand on trial. The eyes of the world are fixed on Lueneburg, awaiting the verdict.

But your victims have already passed judgment on you.

We sentence you to live and suffer as we did, and never again to see the light of freedom.

Schutzhaeftling No. 45554 – (Now again called; Isabella Rubinstein)

View the original article published a1945 edition of The Palestine Post here.

OTHER LINKS:

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