Irma Grese in August 1945, while awaiting trial (Image - Wikipedia)
At the Belson trial, Irma Grese was asked by her defending officer, Major Cranfield, how the prisoners in her charge at Auschwitz behaved.
This was her reply:
In the beginning, when there were smaller numbers of them and they had sufficient to eat, they were quite all right. Later on, when I had twenty to thirty thousand, they behaved like animals when food was a bit more scarce. Then at food distribution, when people carried the food from the kitchen to the blocks, at nearly every corner there were 20 or 30 people who waited to pounce upon them and take the food away. With regard to sanitary conditions, in the beginning it was quite all right, but later on when the camp was overcrowded, wherever you went it was just as if the prisoners thought that any place was good enough for a latrine, and the proper latrines were ruined by throwing all sorts of stuff into them, and then they simply ceased to function.Irma Grese was accused of beating prisoners with a stick, being in charge of a huge guard dog, sending prisoners to the gas chambers and shooting prisoners with a silver plated pistol. No documentary evidence was produced for any of the charges. It was all survivor testimony, some in the form of affidavits.
It was often difficult to distinguish one wardress from another, especially from a distance. They all wore the same uniforms and their names were not known to the prisoners. Identities could easily be mistaken.
Some of Irma Grese's Accusers
1. Ada Bimko
Ada Bimko, a 32 year old Jewish woman of Polish nationality. Also known as Hadassah Rosensaft, she was a prisoner at both Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. At the Belson trial, Bimko identified Fräulein Grese as one of her tormentors.
Major Cranfield, Irma's defending officer, argued that when Bimko was asked a "perfectly simple question" during cross-examination, she "had prevaricated and refused to answer in case she should say a word which might be thought to be in favour of any of the accused." [1]
In one of Bimko's depositions submitted at the Belsen trial she said:
I have examined the records of the numbers cremated and I say that the records show that about 4 million persons were cremated at the camp. I say that from my own observation and I have no doubt that at least this number were exterminated. [2]The official figure determined by Franciszek Piper, director of the Auschwitz State Museum, puts the number of Auschwitz victims at 1.1 million.
Bimko also claimed to have been given a guided tour of a gas chamber by an SS Unterscharführer (name not provided) and a member of a Sonderkommando. She has been completely discredited in an article by Carlo Mattogno called Two False Testimonies from Auschwitz.
2. Ilona Stein
Ilona Stein, a 21 year old Jewish woman of Hungarian nationality. She was a prisoner at both Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps.
She accused Irma Grese of ordering an SS guard to shoot a Hungarian woman at a selection parade. She claimed she saw Irma speak to the guard but did not hear what she said. Soon afterwards, the SS guard shot the woman.
It was against regulations for female SS to issue orders to male SS. [3] The guard would have been aware of this, Irma Grese certainly was. She was asked at her trial if she had any authority to issue orders to an SS guard and she replied, "No." With this in mind, Ilona Stein's story stretches credibility to the limit and should be regarded as a complete fabrication. [4]
3. Hanka Rozenwayg
Hanka Rozenwayg, a 24 year old Jewish woman of Polish nationality. She was a prisoner at Majdanek, Auschwitz and Belsen.
She accused a Kapo named Ilse Lothe of asking Irma Grese to set her dog on her. This was in July 1943 when Rozenwayg laid down her shovel to take a rest while on a kommando digging ditches outside the camp.
There were claims from other survivor-witnesses that Irma Grese had a guard dog which she set upon women who were too weak to keep up with the main column on the sixteen kilometre trek to work.
When questioned in court about the alleged incident, Ilse Lothe replied:
Completely untrue. First she gave the date as July, 1943, before I had ever thought of becoming a Kapo at all. Secondly, I have never worked with Grese in the same Kommando; and thirdly, if Rozenwayg had ever worked in my Kommando I would certainly have recognised her.Irma Grese claimed she never had a dog in Auschwitz. This claim was supported by the Commandant Joseph Kramer who, when questioned in court, said he never saw her with a dog, either on or off duty.
Oberaufseherin (senior overseer) Elizabeth Volkenrath who served with Grese at Auschwitz and Belsen also said in court that she had never seen Grese with a dog.
4. Gisella Perl
We have been led to believe that Miss Grese would think nothing of beating somebody to death or casually shoot people down without cause, yet when we find somebody who she might have had good reason to kill, an incriminating witness, we are told she allowed her to continue living.
What is much more likely is that Gisella Perl read about Irma Grese during her trial and decided to invent the abortion story and include it in her book. Smut sells!
Notes:
1. Trial of Josef Kramer and Forty-Four Others, Raymond Phillips, William Hodge and Company, 1949
2. Trial of Josef Kramer and Forty-Four Others, Raymond Phillips, William Hodge and Company, 1949 (page 740).
3. Lasik, "Organisational Structure of Auschwitz Concentration Camp"
4. It's known that Camp Commandant, Rudolph Hoess, didn't approve of female staff in Auschwitz. He expressed his displeasure with the wry remark, "Which of my officers would be willing to take orders from a woman?" He even went so far as to try and get the female head of staff, Johanna Langefeld, removed. Himmler denied his request.
Autobiography of Rudolph Hoess, Constantine Fitzgibbon, Auschwitz State Museum, 1978
