October 7, 1923 - Irma Grese
Her career as a concentration camp guard spanned Ravensbrück, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen, where she was implicated in the systematic torture and murder of Jewish prisoners. What distinguished her case historically was not only the nature of the crimes but the trajectory: she rose through the SS guard system while still a teenager and was tried, convicted, and executed before she turned 23. The Belsen trial placed her conduct on formal legal record, and her sentence — carried out in December 1945 — made her the youngest woman executed under British law in the twentieth century.
From Wikipedia
Irma Ilse Ida Grese (7 October 1923 – 13 December 1945) was a Nazi concentration camp guard at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen. She has been widely known as the "Hyena of Auschwitz" and the "Beast of Belsen" for the atrocities she committed during her service.
Following the Allied occupation of Nazi Germany in April 1945, Grese was found guilty of war crimes involving the torture and murder of Jewish prisoners at the Belsen trial and sentenced to death by hanging. She was hanged at the age of 22, making her the youngest woman to be judicially executed under British law in the twentieth century.
Further reading
- The Beautiful Beast
A detailed biography tracing how the blonde, blue-eyed Irma Grese rose from a small German farming village to become one of the most feared figures of the Nazi concentration camp system.
View on Amazon → - Irma Grese
A factual short account of the life of Irma Grese, the notorious female SS guard who became one of the most ferocious figures of the Holocaust at Auschwitz.
View on Amazon → - Irma Grese and the Holocaust
Explores how Irma Grese became one of the rare women whose name stands alongside the most infamous male perpetrators of Nazi cruelty and depravity.
View on Amazon →
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