On December 13, 1945, Irma Ida Ilse Grese, age 22, was executed in accordance with her sentence of death for the crime of committing War Crimes (Crimes Against Humanity) for her service as a concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz Nazi death camps during World War II.
Digging Deeper
The apparently attractive young lady thus became the youngest female executed by British authorities during the 20th Century.
Irma was born in 1923 to a dairy working family in Germany, but her mother committed suicide by drinking acid in 1936, after finding out her husband was having an affair. Irma's father remarried and probably joined the Nazi Party. A somewhat troubled girl, Irma quit school at age 14 and was deeply involved (obsessed) with a Nazi program for girls called the League of German Girls. She attempted to become an apprentice nurse, but could only find work at an SS sanatorium. Irma also found work as a dairy helper, but took the opportunity of getting a job as a concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck in 1942. Apparently enthusiastic about her job, she quickly rose to the second highest rank a female guard could hold and transferred to Auschwitz in 1943 where she was involved in selecting which inmates would go to the gas chambers.
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