A former Nazi S.S. official said in court today that Ilse Koch’s reputation for “incredible cruelties” earned the hatred of most people in and around the Buchenwald concentration camp. Konrad Morgen–a tall, baspectacled writer–was giving evidence at the fourth day of the German retrial of the Koch woman.
Morgen was commissioned by police headquarters in Berlin to investigate reports of corruption in the Buchenwald camp in 1944. He told the court he had established that Karl Koch, Ilse’s husband, had sold articles produced by the prisoners to the value of “several million marks.”
The Koch woman, he said, had sent gold to be worked into jewelry at a nearby store. The gold was of such a high carat value that it could not have been commercial gold as Koch has asserted, he added. He said it came from gold fillings in the teeth of living and dead Jews in the camp.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
