Karl-Otto Koch
Karl-Otto Koch | |
---|---|
Born | Executed | 2 August 1897
Spouses | |
Children | 4 |
Conviction(s) | Murder (3 counts) Embezzlement |
Criminal penalty | Death |
Military career | |
Allegiance | Deutsches Heer
Schutzstaffel SS-Totenkopfverbände |
Years of service | 1916–1919 1931–1945 |
Rank | Einjährig-Freiwilliger Standartenführer |
Commands held | Esterwegen concentration camp Sachsenhausen concentration camp Buchenwald concentration camp Majdanek concentration camp |
Awards | 1914 Iron cross II class Hindenburg Cross Air Raid Medal Black wound badge German Sports Badge |
Karl-Otto Koch (German: , also participated with the crimes at Buchenwald.
Life
Koch was born in
In 1916, he volunteered to join the Imperial German Army and fought on the Western Front until he was later captured by the British. Koch spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war and returned to Germany in 1919. As a soldier, he behaved well and was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class, the Observer's Badge and the Wound Badge in Black. After World War I, Koch worked as a commercial manager, an authorized signatory and insurance agent and became unemployed in 1932 (he had served a prison sentence in 1930 for embezzlement and forgery). In 1931, Karl-Otto Koch joined the Nazi Party and the Schutzstaffel (SS).[2][3]
Service with the SS
Koch served with several SS-Standarten (Thirty-fifth SS Regiment Kassel, SS Special Detachment Saxony). In 1934, he took command of the Sachsenburg Concentration Camp. Briefly, he was the officer in charge of the Esterwegen Concentration Camp guard unit, officer in charge of the preventive custody camp in the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp, and the adjutant at Dachau Concentration Camp. On 13 June 1935, he became commander of the Columbia concentration camp in Berlin-Tempelhof and, in April 1936, he was assigned to the concentration camp at Esterwegen. Four months later, he was assigned to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Within a few years (September 1937) he advanced to SS-Standartenführer (colonel).[2]
On 1 August 1937, he was given command of the new
Prosecution and death
Koch's actions at Buchenwald first caught the attention of SS-Obergruppenführer Josias, Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, in 1941. While perusing the death list of Buchenwald, Hereditary Prince Josias had seen the name of Walter Krämer, a head hospital orderly at Buchenwald, which he recognized because Krämer had successfully treated him in the past. Hereditary Prince Josias investigated the case and found that Koch, as the Camp Commandant, had ordered Krämer and Karl Peix, a hospital attendant, killed as "political prisoners" because they had treated him for syphilis and he feared it might be discovered.[5] Josias also received reports that a certain prisoner had been shot while attempting to escape, and discovered that in fact, the prisoner had been told to get water from a well some distance from the camp, then was shot from behind; he had also helped treat Koch for syphilis.
By that time, Koch had been transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, but his wife, Ilse, was still living at the Commandant's house in Buchenwald. Waldeck ordered a full-scale investigation of the camp by Georg Konrad Morgen, an SS officer who was an SS-judge in the SS Court Main Office. As a result of the investigation, more of Koch's orders to kill prisoners at the camp were revealed, as well as embezzlement of property stolen from prisoners.[5] The Kochs had used the massive Nazi apparatus to gain an enormous amount of wealth.[5] The Kochs were both arrested in August 1943 to await trial by an SS court.
SS Judge
Family
Koch first married Käte Müller in 1924 and had one psychiatrically troubled son named Manfred; however, this marriage ended with divorce in 1931 due to his infidelity.[10] On 25 May 1937, Koch married Ilse Koch (née Margarete Ilse Köhler), with whom he had a son and two daughters. Ilse became known later as "The Witch of Buchenwald" (Die Hexe von Buchenwald), usually rendered in English as "The Bitch of Buchenwald."[11] Though Ilse Koch never had any official job at Buchenwald or at any other concentration camp, many inmates alleged that she used the tacit authority she had as the commandant's wife to abuse prisoners, or seek their punishment by the camp SS.[12]
See also
- Buchenwald Resistance
- Phil Lamason, Allied airman taken to Buchenwald
Notes and references
- ^ Chris Webb, Carmelo Lisciotto (2007). "Majdanek Concentration Camp (a.k.a. KL Lublin)". H.E.A.R.T, Holocaust Research Project.org. Retrieved 11 August 2013.
- ^ a b Gedenkstätte Buchenwald: Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945: A Guide to the Permanent Historical Exhibition, Wallstein Verlag, 2004 p. 41-43
- ^ a b Whitlock Flint: Buchenwaldské bestie: Karl a Ilse Kochovi a lampy se stínítkem z lidské kůže, Grada Publishing, a.s., 29 September 2015 p. 326-327
- ^ Rescue and Resistance: Portraits of the Holocaust, Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1 January 1999 p. 311.
- ^ a b c d Hackett, David A. (1995), The Buchenwald Report, Westview Press, p. 341
- ISBN 9780674249189.
- ^ "Schutzstaffel: The SS". Germania International. Retrieved 18 May 2009.
- ^ Mark Jacobson: The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans, Simon and Schuster, 14 September 2010 p. 15
- ISBN 9780674249189.
- ISBN 9780674249189.
- ^ William L. Shirer (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (3rd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 885.
- ISBN 9780674249189.
- Benoît Cazenave, L’exemplarité du commandant SS Karl Otto Koch, Revue de la Fondation Auschwitz, Bruxelles, 2005.