Im Bann des Bösen. Ilse Koch – ein Kapitel deutscher Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1933 bis 1970

Book presentation and discussion with Prof. Dr. Alexandra Przyrembel, Hagen, and Dr. Stephan Malinowski, Düsseldorf/Edinburgh An event of the Topography of Terror Documentation Center, October 12, 2023 0:00 Welcome 2:06 Introduction 9:56 Book presentation with Alexandra Przyrembel 3:00 Discussion with Alexandra Przyrembel and Stephan Malinowski Ilse Koch (1906–1967) was the wife of the SS commandant of Buchenwald and one of the few women convicted of Nazi persecution. She joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1932 and married Karl Otto Koch, the future commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in 1936. In 1947, she stood trial in Germany before a US court, and in 1950/51 before a German court, which sentenced her to life imprisonment. The international press reported extensively on the "Witch of Buchenwald," who was considered particularly cruel. In her book "Under the Spell of Evil" (2023), Alexandra Przyrembel reconstructs the various narratives about Ilse Koch from the Nazi era through the postwar trials to her suicide in prison in 1967. She also explains the associated notions of violence, gender, and guilt and observes that, for postwar societies, the more cruelly Ilse Koch was portrayed, the more Germans were able to distance themselves from her and absolve themselves of guilt.