Talk:Ilse Koch

message: http://www.fatherryan.org/holocaust/buchen/Ilsekoch.htm
http://www.justiceatdachau.com/bio.htm
--Homer slips. 02:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Proof.

message: The memoria´s museum had one on display in 1980. It was not made of patches of skin, as one might expect, but it was woven of narrow stripes of what looked like white, untattooed skin. If this was a fake, it was a good one.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.50.119.52 (talk) 10:17:12, August 19, 2007 (UTC) 
I beg to differ.  In the early 1970's I worked declassifying  WWII in the national records center of the National Archives in the US.  There we came up the Koch file which included lampshades and other items that appeared to be made of human body parts.  I am not a forensic specialist, but I saw what I saw and touched what I touched.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric111 (talk • contribs) 06:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's pretty clear that the human-skin lamp shades are a propaganda lie. Otherwise they'd still be presented for verification. They were an invention by the American psychological warwafare department. --41.17.144.179 (talk) 10:54, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Somewhat hysterical that some of you are attempting to state that this was an urban legend or unsubstantiated here-say by submitting your own here-say/original research/opinion as proof to the contrary. She was brought to trial TWICE in which both times dozens of witnesses made the same claims. Although she was not convicted of this in either court, this does not mean that she didn't do it - it just means the charge was dropped due to lack of evidence which by 1950-51 you would not expect any of the grisley items to still be around (whether they existed or not). Whether it was fabricated lies or not, she was still tried for these crimes and thus it's important factual history. I think the article is pretty evenhanded about the claims and her ultimate acquital of those crimes. Ckruschke (talk) 18:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Manskin lampshades probably did exist at one time, it seems. There might not have been very many, but it's probably safe to say at least one or two manskin lampshades were made. Who the unlucky person(s) was (were) that provided the skin, we'll probably never know. —  Rickyrab. Yada yada yada 22:45, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, those lampshades could just as easily have been goat skin.  —  Rickyrab. Yada yada yada 22:49, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human-skin lampshade 

message: The German version of this article on de.wikipedia claims her only son, Artwin, committed suicide at a very young age. So how did she write a letter to him before she took her own life in 1967? --67.149.150.252 (talk) 05:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Because Artwin was her legitimate son. The son she wrote to in 1967 was fathered by an unknown while she was in custody. Valetude (talk) 22:03, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  letter to her son? 

message: Although this woman was clearly horrible, Wikipedia has to remain impartial! The very first sentence in this article surely can't contain bias.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.172.176 (talk) 21:47, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Horrible Woman?" 

message: After the trial was remitted under worldwide media attention, survivor accounts of her resulted in other authors describing her abuse of prisoners as "sadistic"; a shadow image as "concentration camp murderess" transfixed itself to post-war German society.
My biggest problem with wiki articles is that they almost always completely fail to "invite" the reader to continue reading.  The above is the worst example I've found yet.  I read these discussion pages and people besiege the most inane minutae, but completely ignore the most basic fundamentals of lexigraphical adeptitude.
Jonny Quick (talk) 05:16, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ugh !  The first paragraph is worser than Ilse ever was conceptually apprehended ! 

message: 'She was one of the first prominent Nazis to be tried by the US military.'
I think you mean trialed but I am not sure.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by AntonHogervorst (talk • contribs) 09:44, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course "tried" is correct. "Trial" is a noun. Someone is tried at his trial. Varlaam (talk) 03:14, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tried? 

message: It is amateurisch, there's plenty of books on Buchenwald and the Kochs --Alexandre Rongellion (talk) 23:32, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You are free to add to it - remember, this is a volunteer project. Thanks for the recommendation! :> Doc talk 23:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bibliography 

message: Better English language speculations than authoritative source?Xx236 (talk) 07:26, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:VerifiabilityCitations to non-English sources are allowed. Xx236 (talk) 11:49, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  revert - inappropriate for english-language page 

message: the article states "...Through some friends in the SA and SS, she met Karl Otto Koch in 1934, marrying him two years later..." 
i went on page with information about Karl Otto Koch and found great differences in dates and where both were - it seems to me that Ilse and Otto Karl were separated, when Karl Otto Koch was transferred from Buchenwald:
"...On August 1, 1937, he was given command of the new concentration camp at Buchenwald. He remained at Buchenwald until September 1941, when he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp for POWs. That was largely due to an investigation based on allegations of his improper conduct at Buchenwald, which included corruption, fraud, embezzlement, drunkenness, sexual offences and a murder. Koch commanded the Majdanek camp for only one year; he was relieved from his duties after 86 Soviet POWs escaped from the camp in August 1942. Koch was charged with criminal negligence and transferred to Berlin, where he worked at the SS Personalhauptamt and as a liaison between the SS and the German Post-Office..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Otto_Koch
"...In 1936 she began working as a guard and secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, which her fiancé commanded, and was married the same year. In 1937 she came to Buchenwald when her husband was made Commandant.[9]
In 1940, she built an indoor sports arena, which cost over 250,000 reichsmarks (approximately $62,500), most of which had been seized from the inmates. In 1941 Karl Otto Koch was transferred to Lublin, where he helped establish the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Ilse Koch remained at Buchenwald until 24 August 1943, when she and her husband were arrested on the orders of Josias von Waldeck-Pyrmont, SS and Police Leader for Weimar, who had supervisory authority over Buchenwald. The charges against the Kochs comprised private enrichment, embezzlement, and the murder of prisoners to prevent them giving testimony.[10]
Ilse Koch was imprisoned until 1944 when she was acquitted for lack of evidence, but her husband was found guilty and sentenced to death by an SS court in Munich, and was executed by shooting in Buchenwald in April 1945. She went to live with her surviving family in the town of Ludwigsburg, where she was arrested by U.S. authorities on 30 June 1945..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch
this discrepancy tells me that either husband and wife divorced OR that another man who came instead of Karl Otto Koch was left in history under the name of original husband, which is a fraud that needs to be corrected on Wikipedia and other archives.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.242.161.27 (talk) 23:24, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ilse Koch as wife of Karl Otto Koch 

message: the article states "...Through some friends in the SA and SS, she met Karl Otto Koch in 1934, marrying him two years later..." 
i went on page with information about Karl Otto Koch and found great differences in dates and where both were - it seems to me that Ilse and Otto Karl were separated, when Karl Otto Koch was transferred from Buchenwald:
"...On August 1, 1937, he was given command of the new concentration camp at Buchenwald. He remained at Buchenwald until September 1941, when he was transferred to the Majdanek concentration camp for POWs. That was largely due to an investigation based on allegations of his improper conduct at Buchenwald, which included corruption, fraud, embezzlement, drunkenness, sexual offences and a murder. Koch commanded the Majdanek camp for only one year; he was relieved from his duties after 86 Soviet POWs escaped from the camp in August 1942. Koch was charged with criminal negligence and transferred to Berlin, where he worked at the SS Personalhauptamt and as a liaison between the SS and the German Post-Office..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Otto_Koch
"...In 1936 she began working as a guard and secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, which her fiancé commanded, and was married the same year. In 1937 she came to Buchenwald when her husband was made Commandant.[9]
In 1940, she built an indoor sports arena, which cost over 250,000 reichsmarks (approximately $62,500), most of which had been seized from the inmates. In 1941 Karl Otto Koch was transferred to Lublin, where he helped establish the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. Ilse Koch remained at Buchenwald until 24 August 1943, when she and her husband were arrested on the orders of Josias von Waldeck-Pyrmont, SS and Police Leader for Weimar, who had supervisory authority over Buchenwald. The charges against the Kochs comprised private enrichment, embezzlement, and the murder of prisoners to prevent them giving testimony.[10]
Ilse Koch was imprisoned until 1944 when she was acquitted for lack of evidence, but her husband was found guilty and sentenced to death by an SS court in Munich, and was executed by shooting in Buchenwald in April 1945. She went to live with her surviving family in the town of Ludwigsburg, where she was arrested by U.S. authorities on 30 June 1945..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilse_Koch
this discrepancy tells me that either husband and wife divorced OR that another man who came instead of Karl Otto Koch was left in history under the name of original husband, which is a fraud that needs to be corrected on Wikipedia and other archives.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inna Maria Swann (talk • contribs) 23:37, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like conflicting information and I'm not sure which is right since the info on both pages are referenced. Your statement to the definitive that one set of information is true over the other seems to be only your WP:OR/WP:POV. Not sure what to do... If you can prove one source/page is correct while another is not, please provide that info. Ckruschke (talk) 15:37, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  doubt about Ilse Koch remaining wife of Karl Otto Koch after 1941  

message: I started looking at this:  
"Another son, conceived in her prison cell at Dachau by an unknown father, was born in the Aichach prison near Dachau, where she was sent to serve her life sentence, and was immediately taken from her. At the age of 19, he learned that Koch was his mother and began visiting her regularly at Aichach. They had a good relationship and Koch wrote poetry for him.
Which doesn't really make sense -- she committed suicide about (the dates in the article aren't precise) 20 years after the son would have been born.  
Then I noticed that this talk page discusses some earlier weird references to the son.
Googling around a bit (how I got interested in this person to begin with), she's apparently an utterly fascinating character.  A mystery wrapped in an enigma, and all that.  Apparently multiple affairs, the husband may have been gay, the father of at least one son seems to have been Jewish...  
All I'm saying is, this seems to be a very notable person, and there seems to be a lot of fascinating material that could be added here.  I'm not going to attempt it because I don't have the expertise in the subject matter.  But it would be great if we could find someone who did.
Djcheburashka (talk) 14:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The "Family" section says Karl and Ilse Koch had two sons, one of whom was born after the war.  Wartime footage of her living in luxury outside the camp shows her with two children.  Were these both her children? Arrivisto (talk) 20:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The sons 

message: I removed the internal link, since it mistakenly lead to the EP "At War" by a Brazilian death metal band, not the page of the American band At War, which currently has no English wikipedia entry. 12:08, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  At War 

message: As of now, the section on "War crimes" does not display or touch any war crime at all. If anybody cares for this article, I really hope they can/will supply proper information and referrence on this particular subject. RhinoMind (talk) 01:24, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  War crimes? 

message: * Note 5's source is not available anymore.
* The chapter title War crimes should be replaced with an more appropriate one, e.g. Wife of a concentration camp commander or Crimes.
* Note 14's source is available only as an abstract. The whole article is accessible only by subscription.
* I was unable to find citations about Ilse Koch or her son Uwe in any of the 16 pages of trivia questions from Note 18's source.
* This is the correct link to the Note 19's source.
* From citation in Note 20 should be removed "page=3".
* Note 19's source may replace the citation needed tag at the end of Death chapter.
: Carlotm (talk) 01:45, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adjustments 

message: This article paints a completely different picture compared to Lampshades_made_from_human_skin#Nazi_era. Incidentally, that article seems to mysteriously have longer quotes and sources not found in this article. I can only assume that one of these two articles have been carefully crafted to present a certain agenda. A clever man might think that it's the one with removed sources and shortened quotes but I wouldn't dare to draw such conclusions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:2002:4E44:2B65:CA2:4306:433B:1353 (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Different truths in different articles 

message: The contributor who handled a purported human-skin-lampshade would have contaminated the evidence with his own DNA. Nonetheless it would certainly be presently possible to determine whether the object was human skin or most likely, ordinary animal skin parchment, used as writing material then recycled to provide a lampshade. It would be possible to determine the individual who originally owned the skin. About five years ago I searched the Internet and discovered that such animal-parchment-covered lampshades continue to be manufactured.
The 'human-skin-lampshade' would be primary evidence of murder and as such ought to be handed to police for modernforensic testing. If the lampshade (if it still exists!) is tested and found to be merely ordinary parchment (sheep/goatsetc.) then it would be evidence that, as usual, people have falsely smeared the Germans - falsely accusing someone of a crime, which is itself a crime. Has the evidence been destroyed? That would also be a criminal offense.
The most likely possibility is that the lampshades, like the 'shrunken heads' are as intentionally fraudulent as the numerous other props and fake photographs that smeared the Germans during and after WW2 and WW1. Recall that WW1 was restarted at the end of 1916 and early 1917 and soldiers were recruited to prevent the barbarous Germans from eating Belgian babies and raping nuns (WW1 was the 'war to prevent cannibalism'). Telling Lies about the Germans is a sport.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.144.96.231 (talk) 22:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legal implications 

message: Josef Kirschbaum is known for his statement to his client named Einstein: "How can we bring this pig to the gallows for murdering your brother if you are so stupid as to bring your brother into this courtroom!" Moreover he aught to have been disbarred because of his scandalous relationship with the accused Ilse Koch. Can we imagine any other case where such conduct would be allowed today? Also, the 2,400 Jewish attendees at the Nuremberg trials should have refused to take part in the trials. Instead, they immorally acted as biased prosecutors in their own case.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.144.96.231 (talk) 22:49, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Josef Kirschbaum, father of Uwe Koch 

message: The American twelfth Army report, 'Buchenwald: A preliminary Report', established that most of the people who died under the Germans were killed by the communists within the camp - they decided who would receive food. Images of the inmates at the time of their liberation presented them as fit and healthy. As I understand it, when the liberated the camp, the Russians killed more Germans there than had died under the German rule. Note that the liberators found a thousand Hungarian Jewish children playing happily.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.144.96.231 (talk) 22:58, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Buchenwal deaths 

message: Was Ilse Koch a patient in the T4 program since she was psychotic?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.40.192.91 (talk) 03:30, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Part of the t4 program? 

message: OK to add this information?
* The Discovery Channel video One Of The Most Evil Women In History - Ilse Koch (23 minutes) portrays Ilse Koch's Nazi life of crime. Vwanweb (talk) 21:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular culture addition 

message: What is the relevance, here, of a photo depicting preserved human organs removed from prisoners during medical experiments conducted in Buchenwald concentration camp ? Ilse Koch is associated with the collecting of tattooed skins, not of internal organs or nazi human experimentation ? BeatrixBelibaste (talk) 17:04, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo of internal organs (?) 

message: Two sources of her sone Uwe are provided, but both are tagged as unrealiable (although one is more 'questionable' thatn unrealiable). Why keep the second of the two up (since April 2016)? Can a quicck Google search on her prison-conceived son yield reputable results? NotPeterParker (talk) 08:30, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  family sources need updating 

message: Hi All, 
I'm very frustrated by the wealth of disinformation that this entry contains - that she had a position as a guard at Sachsenhausen, that she followed Karl to Majdanek, that she had four children, that she herself was engaged in experiments, that she was prosecuted by Kunzig (who was actually assistant prosecutor) rather than William Denson, the list goes on and on. I wish I was more conversant with adding/editing content here. I've fixed the biggest howling errors quickly, but not sure they will stick. If anyone is interested, my new book on Ilse Koch will be published by Harvard Press this month. It is based on ten years of archival research and interviews with her daughter, etc. I hope it will help to set the record straight, because the information on this Wiki page is so horribly wrong (though in some cases understandably so, as it quotes sources that themselves are wrong). https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674249189 Tomazjardim (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, spent a day re-writing... Tomazjardim (talk) 18:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Veracity of this wiki entry on Ilse Koch 

message: Were they for real (proven as such) or were they false? It appears a lot of storytelling was in the accusations against here. Kind of a mass-hysteria in the later 1940s that made people believe the most absurd stories. But should that form our historiography. 105.0.7.63 (talk) 13:44, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The answer is complicated; it is beyond dispute that articles made of human skin were produced at buchenwald, as many were found in the pathology department upon liberation. So there's nothing particularly "absurd" about the allegations; the complicated part is whether or not Ilse Koch bore some responsibility for this. This is a much more complicated question, and the evidence seems to suggest that most allegations were apocryphal, and based on rumors, in the absence of clear indications of who indeed was responsible. Some prisoners concluded, for instance, that commandant Karl Koch must have been producing such articles for his wife… Moosejah (talk) 18:35, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accusations