Irma Grese

 Excerpts from the Belsen Trial and Biography

Irma Grese was born on the 7 October 1923 and in 1938 she left elementary school and worked for six months on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which she worked in a shop in Lychen for six months.

When she was fifteen she went to a hospital in Hohenlychen where she stayed for two years, she tried to become a nurse but the Labour Exchange would not allow that and sent her to work in a dairy in Furstenburg.

In July 1942 she tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent her to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, although she protested against it, she stayed there until March 1943, when she was transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

She remained in Auschwitz until January 1945.

After Auschwitz Irma Grese was sent to the Bergen – Belsen Concentration Camp where she was captured by the British Army when they liberated the camp on 15 April 945.  She became known as the “Bitch of Belsen” as the details of her crime became known.

Helene Grese testified:

“I am the sister of Irma Grese, 20 years old and live at Wrecken in Wreckensburg. My father was an agricultural worker, and I have two sisters and two brothers, my mother died in 1936. When she was 14 years old, my sister Irma worked on a farm of a peasant in a village near where we lived.

From the time she entered the Concentration Camp Service I saw her twice. In 1943 she came home on leave, and the only thing she told us about her work was that her duties consisted of supervising prisoners so that they would not escape.

Read the full story of Irma Grese here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/grese.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org