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By Cynthia Southern
“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. And yet Irma Grese was the most depraved, cruel, imaginative pervert I ever came across.”—Dr. Gisella Perl
That is how Gisella Perl, a female inmate doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau, remembered Irma Grese. The blond, blue-eyed epitome of a Nazi Aryan poster child, Grese became the s
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15 thoughts on “Why Was Irma Grese, the Beast of Belsen, so Hated?”
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15 thoughts on “Why Was Irma Grese, the Beast of Belsen, so Hated?”
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My Uncle, Charles Caputo, helped liberate one camp( he never told me which one) as a medic assigned to 3rd Army General Hospital. He told me well intentioned GIs began giving inmates candy bars, cans of beans and other rations. The prisoners could not tolerate this food and many died from the apparent shock to their bodies. This was halted when an Army medical officer drove up and ordered the soldiers to stop as the prisoners would need a special diet. He very seldom said much about his experiences, as his one brother was killed in January 1945 and another brother died 20 years later from renal failure from shrapnel that could not be removed I guess along with millions of others, they were part of the Greatest Generation.
My uncle went through a similar situation and liberated a camp in Southern Germany..He never talked about this or any of his WW2 experiences..No generation has ever given so much and none will ever again for sure..Truly they are the Greatest Generation..Let us never forget their sacrifice..
My Father was in #4 British Commando He was one of Irma Grese Guards at Bergen Belsen This experience changed his life and that of all my family May it never happen again! I miss him terribly now Truly the Greatest Generation The Best we had to give We owe them our Freedom
Interesting, Margaret! What did he say about Irma?
Civilization has Soviet Army and Russian people to thank for a world in which the Third Reich, Hitler, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Irma Grese no longer exist.
“Everyone who loves freedom owes such a debt to Red Army that it can never be repaid.“
Ernest Hemingway
What was done to these Black Nazies should also have done to the Red Nazies, i.e. to Soviet Stalinists. Nazies gassed people to death, NKVD/KGB freezed people to death. What was the difference?
”Kolyma is Auschwitz without the ovens.”
Varlam Shalamov
To say the world has anything to thank for the Soviets is nothing short of a deep and horrible insult to those 2 million people who died in the Russian Gulag system and those 18 million people who suffered atrociously as a result of their inprisonment in some of the worst conditions ever to have been noted by history.
No, the world most certainly has nothing to thank the Soviets for. In what concerns the killing of innocent people, the Germans, Russians and the Chinese share a very similar history and not one can claim any shred of moral high ground. They were nothing short of monsters and should forever be reminded of that even though it is of course not fair to blame the current populations of the crimes of their parents.
This discussion needs to come up again and again, to ensure we – the humanity – don’t slip back into that. And yet here we are again, the Chinese government is putting people into camps once more.
Nope! The Red Army collaborated with Nazi Germany on the invasion of Poland. Once Poland was secured, German forces chased the Red Army back into Russia, where the Russians sustained the largest body count of any Allied country in the war. The Russians, contrary to popular belief, were never the premiere military force in the world. In the Russo-Japanese War, Russian troops ran home bloodied and humiliated, even though Japan had more casualties. In WWI, Russia had to make an early exit because of trouble back home that required military reinforcements to counter the rising communist threat. And the most humiliating defeat of all? Afghanistan, Russia’s own Vietnam. Mass desertions, fragging of superior officers, fighting a war on unforgiving terrain against an enemy whose tactics they weren’t trained to handle all worked in concert to ensure Russia’s defeat.
Wouldn’t it be great if Siberia seceded?
Communists were as evil as fascists. Stalin and his communist criminals killed many millions of people in ex-USSR and in East Europe. They started long before World War 2 and continued after WW2. Fascists and communists had to be banished and punished altogether. In Gulag, Solovki and other communist concentration camps, there were communist guards like Irma Grese.
The kindest man I have ever known, William K. Williams, who was Ombudsman at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, was a liberator of concentration camps at the end of WWII. I asked him once why he did so much for so many people, since I knew he also worked in the civil rights movement when few white men did and helped numerous students with problems of every description. He told me the horrific things he saw at the end of the war in the camps inspired him to help his fellow human beings if he saw suffering of any kind. He was definitely one of the great ones of the “Greatest Generation.”
Those who were of the “Greatest Generation” paid a heavy price. No doubt many suffered from PTSD. My Dad was in the 102 infantry and he saw terrible things,including coming upon a barn where people had been locked inside and burned.You can see photos of it on the internet.He told me of the german he encountered and they stared at each other until my father shot.It was shoot or be shot but clearly it affected my Dad. He didn’t like to talk about the war.I cannot imagine what its like to be a soldier knowing that each new day could be your last. Maybe being a soldier in WW2 helped contribute to his hatred of humans and his drinking. I like a saying I once heard:”What if there was war and no one came?”
I confronted Irma Grese in Bergen-Belsen when I was five years old and she set her dog to play a game of ‘chicken’; with me.
I am still here.
Maurice I am realy amazed by your life story and your sclupture. God bless you…
My late husbands father was part of the group to liberate the Jews of Bergen Belsun and he was later involved in flying her to her trial. He said she was a truly unrepentant woman even though she was very beautiful. The surrounding villages were selling mattresses stuffed with Jewish hair which my husband found out later was one he had in his room for many years and they had tiles on the floor in one of their rooms that had swastikas on all of which had been sold in return for food. The surrounding villagers were pulled in to clean up the area burying the bodies aswell as the ex guards. The Russians and the British were so appalled by what they’d seen they wanted to pay the Germans a lesson. They could not possibly have lived so near and not known what was going on.
Many of us have had abusive childhoods, but I have no desire to hurt anyone emotionally, verbally, physically or sexually. The only person I hurt, is, myself.
Both Irma and Dorothea Binz were brutal, but also appear to have low IQ’s, and very little worldly experience. They were thugs. Interesting both women were described as beautiful. I don’t think they were. Possibly, to filthy, malnourished and horrendously abused prisoners, they were. Probably the same for the servicemen, again used to seeing wretched civilians and prisoners, in stark contrast to the immaculate and well presented Irma.
The most enlightening and extremely descriptive book I have read, regarding female guards is ‘If this is Woman’. Ive forgotten the author, but the subect is soley Ravensbruck. A tome of a book, well worth the read.