Irma Grese
is also remembered for her physical beauty. Survivors dubbed her “the Beautiful Beast,” “the Blond Angel,” and “the Blond Angel of Hell.” She had natural blond hair, and blue eyes and wore expertly tailored uniforms. She was also fond of many rare and expensive perfumes, which she wore to torment the prisoners under her command who lived in filth and were in a state of physical and mental degradation; they dreamed of home, food, fine clothes, and luxuries like the perfumes Irma Grese wore.
Gisella Perl, an inmate physician and author of I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, wrote: “She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her face has an angelic clarity and her blue eyes were the liveliest and most innocent eyes imaginable.” Olga Lengyel, another inmate doctor and author of Five Chimneys, says of Irma, “It defied belief that such a pretty girl could be so cruel. When she walked through the camp with a whip in her hand, she was surrounded by a cloud of choice perfume.”
Thanks to the plunder from the murdered victims in Birkenau, Irma also had her choice of the finest clothing from all over Europe. Madame Grete, a dressmaker and former owner of a well-known clothing establishment in either Vienna or Budapest, also tailored dresses for Grese. She was particularly fond of a sky-blue jacket with a dark blue tie.
Irma spent many hours in front of her dressing mirror styling her hair. She imagined herself as a movie star and once declared, “After the war, I am going to be in films. You will see my name as a star on the screen. I know life and I have seen many things. I feel my experiences will be useful in my career as an artist.”
Grese the Sadist
Grese used her whip and pistol to punish inmates for the slightest infractions of camp rules and was fond of lashing well-endowed women across the breasts with her whip. Fania Fénelon, a member of Auschwitz’s women’s inmate orchestra and author of Playing for Time, wrote, “The women had learned to dread the penalty of her attentions, the least of which meant a whip lash on the nipple.”Gisella Perl also recalled Grese’s sadism and cruelty, relating that many of the women developed infections in their breasts from injuries caused by the braided wire end of her cellophane whip. Perl was called upon by Grese to operate on these women with an unsterilized knife, but she had no anesthesia available for these operations. The women screamed in agony.
Perl also recalled this about Grese’s odd behavior during these operations: “I happened to look up and encountered the most horrible sight I have ever seen, the memory of which will haunt me for the rest of my life. Irma Grese was enjoying the sight of this human suffering. Her tense body swung back and forth in a revealing, rhythmical motion. Her cheeks were flushed and her wide-open eyes had the rigid, staring look of complete sexual paroxysm.
“She did this on multiple occasions so she could relive this sadistic moment repeatedly. She always came to watch the operations of these women whose breasts had been slashed open and had become infected with the lice and dirt which pervaded the women’s camp.”
Perl also noted, “Irma Grese invariably arrived to watch the operation, kicking the victim if her screams interfered with her pleasure and giving herself completely to the orgasmic spasms which shook her entire body and made saliva run down from the corner of her mouth.”
Grese also employed one or two huge dogs as part of her brutal reign in the Birkenau women’s camp. Survivors recall her riding around camp on a bicycle with a dog at her side accompanying the female inmates on their 16-kilometer trek to work. If they couldn’t keep up with the column, she ordered her dog to attack them without mercy. Judith Strick-Dribben, a former inmate and author of A Girl Called Judith Strick, recalled an event regarding the Strafkommando (punishment detail): “We were loading the lories. Before noon we had an unexpected visitor: Aufseherin Irma with her two leashed dogs, Frau Aufseherin Irma, blonde, with an angel face and snake eyes, the camp’s chief torturer. We were very careful not to attract her attention. We pushed and pushed. It seemed to take an eternity to roll the car over the hill.
“The next team was unable to coordinate its efforts. They were completely unnerved by our visitor. They hesitated and lost control of their wagon. It swayed, bowled down the hill, and capsized, scattering stone over the whole area.
“The prisoners were completely broken, in spirit. Aufsherin Irma sicced the two police dogs on them. The girls tried to escape their fangs, but the trained killers easily overtook them. One grabbed a Polish woman who slipped on a rock. The other fell upon a Russian girl. At Irma’s orders, the Kapos’ underlings beat and kicked the girls still untouched by the dogs. The Kapo [an inmate overseer] wrote down the numbers of the delinquent team.
“The dogs were tearing at the girls’ bodies. Irma came closer to observe what they were doing. Her eyes were bloodshot. The sight of the blood seemed to intoxicate her. She panted. She was sexually excited—everybody could see that. We stood in a trance, as at a gladiatorial combat.”
Among Irma’s other notorious exploits at Auschwitz-Birkenau was tying the legs together of a woman about to give birth and watching her agony.
Grese’s Sexual Deviances
Grese was also reputed to be a sexual deviant, taking lovers from the male and female populace of Birkenau. She was also alleged to have had affairs with the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, as well as Josef Kramer, the commandant of Birkenau and later Bergen-Belsen. She is said to have stood with Mengele at selections and actively participated in deciding who lived or died.
On one occasion, during the course of a selection of Birkenau arrivals, some attempted to escape and were noticed by Grese. She beat the majority with her hands and kicked them with her boots. Per various recollections of survivors, she is said to have killed at least 30 people per day.
Grese had numerous affairs with female inmates, including a Blockova (female prisoner block leader) who was her favorite. Irma later grew bored with her and sent her to be killed. Mengele ended his relationship with her when he discovered that she was having affairs with women, breaking the provisions of the Race and Resettlement Law; homosexuality was strictly prohibited, as were affairs with Jewish inmates.
Iris Langer, a Jewish inmate of Birkenau, recalled that Grese made advances toward her. Langer pointed to the six-pointed star sewn onto her striped uniform to show Grese that relations between Jews and Germans were prohibited. Grese told her that she was a Jew different from other Jews. Presumably Grese left Langer unmolested and unharmed.
Author Olga Lengyel describes the sexual excesses probably the most thoroughly of any survivor. Lengyel recalls in great detail how Grese summoned her to her quarters and how she managed to bribe Madame Grete, Irma’s dressmaker, with margarine to keep from appearing before Grese. She was successful in this endeavor but still wanted to see for herself the acts Grese engaged in.
She noted that Grese beat her sexual subjects and was seen dragging a naked woman around by the hair and whipping her. A Georgian man appeared next, who was the lover of the tormented woman. The man had to watch this scene unfold because he had refused Grese’s advances toward him, so she tortured the woman he loved. Later, Lengyel discovered that Grese had the man shot and the woman sent to the camp brothel.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/irma-grese-the-blonde-beast-of-birkenau-and-belsen/
