Because people were so upset about her lighter sentence, Koch was re-arrested in 1949 and tried before a West German court. The trial started on 27 November 1950 and lasted seven weeks. During this time, 250 witnesses testified, including 50 who defended Koch. Koch collapsed and had to be carried from the court in late December 1950, and again on 11 January 1951. At least four separate witnesses for the prosecution testified either that they had seen Koch choose tattooed prisoners, who were then killed; or that they had seen or helped make human-skin lampshades from tattooed skin. However, prosecutors dropped this charge when they could not prove lampshades or any other items were actually made from human skin.
On 15 January 1951, the Court gave its verdict in a 111 page-long decision. Koch was not in court for the verdict. The Court decided that it could still try Koch, even though she had already been tried in 1944 and 1947, because it was charging her with different crimes than the other trials did. Because of this, trying Koch again would not be double jeopardy. Koch was convicted of charges of incitement (encouraging others) to murder, attempt to murder, and hurt other people badly. On 15 January 1951 , Koch was sentenced to life in prison, and her civil rights were taken away forever.
Koch appealed the Court's decision, but the appeal was denied on 22 April 1952 by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany. Koch later tried several times to get a pardon. However, the Bavarian Ministry of Justice refused all of her requests. Koch also protested her life sentence to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but got no help from them.
Karl and Ilse Koch had a son named Artwin and two daughters named Gisele and Gudrun (Gudrun died as a baby). Their son killed himself after the war. Ilse Koch had another son, Uwe, conceived in her prison cell at Dachau by an unknown father. Uwe was born in the Aichach women's prison near Dachau where Koch was sent to serve her life sentence. Right away, he was taken away from her. At the age of 19, Uwe Köhler learned that Koch was his mother and began visiting her regularly at Aichach.
Koch killed herself at Aichach prison on 1 September 1967, at age 60, by hanging herself with her bedsheets.
Per mille
A per mille is a sign which means parts per thousand. Per mil should not be confused with parts per million (ppm).
It is written ‰, which looks like a percent sign (%) with an extra zero in the divisor.
Benadryl
Benadryl is a brand name for a number of different medications to relieve allergies and coughs. It usually contains antihistamine diphenhydramine. In the United Kingdom, it contains either the antihistamine acrivastine or the long-acting antihistamine cetirizine. Benadryl products are sold in Australia and New Zealand as a cough medicine and do not contain any antihistamine.
Robert M. Carter
Robert Merlin "Bob" Carter (9 March 1942 – 19 January 2016) was a British-born Australian palaeontologist and stratigrapher. He was best known for his strong doubt about the state of climate change in Australia. He was professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University from 1981 to 1998.
Carter was born in England on 9 March 1942. He moved to New Zealand in 1956. He graduated at the University of Otago in 1963 and the University of Cambridge in 1968. He was married to Anne Carter.
Carter died from problems caused by a heart attack on 19 January 2016 in Townsville, Queensland. He was 73.
Gunshot
A gunshot is the discharge of a firearm. It produces a mechanical sound effect and a chemical gunshot residue. The term can also refer to a gunshot wound caused by the bullet. Multiple discharges of a firearm or firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can mean either the sound of a gun firing, the projectiles that were fired, or both. For example, the statement "gunfire came from the next street" could either mean the sound of discharge, or it could mean the bullets themselves. It is better to be more specific while writing however. "The sound of gunfire" or "we came under gunfire" would be more descriptive and prevent confusion.
There are three things that characterize gunfire and allow a person to detect and locate gunfire and similar weapon discharges:
Gunfire can be confused with other sounds that can sound similar. These include firework explosions and cars backfiring. The sounds may be heard at greater distances in the direction of bullet travel than behind or to either side of the firearm.
Urban areas have noise patterns where background noise is higher during the daytime and lower at night. Firearm muzzle blast may be masked by background noise during daytime. But it may be detected at greater distances during the quieter hours of darkness. A popular urban gunfire locator system typically uses six to ten audio sensors per square mile for trilateration. (two or three per square kilometer)
A suppressor, sometimes called a "silencer", can be attached to the muzzle of a firearm to reduce the sound of firing the weapon. Suppressors attached to the muzzle will not reduce the sound of high velocity gas released from other locations like the gap between the cylinder and barrel of a revolver. A muzzle silencer is also ineffective in reducing the snap of a supersonic bullet, or the noise produced by the mechanical action of a self-loading firearm. Use of silencers is rare in United States crimes. A 2007 study estimated unlawful silencers were involved in only 0.05 percent (1 in 2,000) federal criminal prosecutions. Also, these include cases where the silencer was not used, but simply in the possession of the defendant for 92% of prosecutions involving a silencer.
Hartheim Euthanasia Centre
The Hartheim Euthanasia Centre () was a killing centre that Nazi Germany used to kill people with disabilities during World War II. The Nazis' ideas about eugenics said that people with disabilities were "life unworthy of life. Hartheim was one of six "euthanasia centres" the Nazis set up for their T4 Euthanasia Programme. Their goal was to get rid of all of Germany's people with disabilities. The killing centre was housed in Hartheim Castle in Alkoven, near Linz, Austria.
In June 1945, after the United States took over Austria, an American soldier found the "Hartheim statistics" in the Castle. This was a 39-page report written about the T-4 Euthanasia Programme ("Aktion T4"). It was meant to be seen by other Nazis in the program only. In the report were monthly counts of how many people with mental and physical disabilities were "disinfected" (gassed to death) in the Nazis' six euthanasia centres. In 1968 and 1970, an ex-employee said that he had to put together the material at the end of 1942. The Hartheim statistics included a page that said that "disinfecting [killing] 70,273 people with a life expectation of 10 years" had saved food in the value of 141,775,573.80 Reichsmarks.
According to the Hartheim statistics, between May 1940 and 1 September, 1941, a total of 18,269 people were killed in the gas chamber at Hartheim:
These statistics only cover the first extermination phase of the Nazi's euthanasia programme, "Action T4". Hitler officially ended that program because of protests, but secretly he kept killing people with disabilities. He also kept killing people he did not like right up to the end of the war.
In all it is estimated that a total of 30,000 people were executed at Hartheim. Among those killed were sick prisoners, prisoners with disabilities, and prisoners from concentration camps. The killings were carried out by carbon monoxide poisoning.