Irma Grese

Born into a farming family, she left school in 1938 and after various casual jobs she was employed as a guard at Ravensbrück in 1942. 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.

She was among the 44 accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trials[?]. 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 link

• http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/belsen5.htm