Nazi camp guard Irma Grese, who reveled in the torture and murder of internees, was, at 22, the youngest war criminal hanged. This article appears in: Winter 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. Gisella Perl. The blond, blue-eyed epitome of a Nazi Aryan poster child, Grese became the second-highest ranking SS Aufseherin SS Female Overseer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau murder camp in at age 20——and stirred panic and fear in every prisoner so unfortunate to have been deported there during the Holocaust. Her career of crime caught up with her at the end of the war, and she was arrested, tried, and executed by the British.
Long after her death the question remains: How could a woman achieve such a horrendous reputation and commit such heinous crimes? Wrechen is 50 miles north of Berlin and south of the Baltic Sea.
It borders the Holstein region to the west and Pomerania to the east. Her mother committed suicide in when Grese was nine years old, allegedly due to marital problems with her domineering husband. Irma was one of five children.
Helene was her youngest sister, but the birth order of the other three children is unknown and has been lost to history. Alfred Grese was described as a conservative farmer, a regular churchgoing Christian, and very stern and strict with his children; beatings were not uncommon.
