Ilse Koch
Koch married Ilse Köhler with whom he had a son and two daughters. Köhler later became known as “The *** of Buchenwald. She was accused of taking souvenirs from the skin of murdered inmates with distinctive tattoos. She built an indoor sports arena, which cost over 250,000 marks, most of which were taken from the inmates arrested by the Gestapo for embezzlement of SS funds and the murder of certain inmates in an attempt to cover up these crimes.
She was tried for war crimes by an American military tribunal in 1947. Prosecuting her was future United States Court of Claims Judge Robert L. Kunzig. She was charged with ”participating in a criminal plan for aiding, abetting and participating in the murders at Buchenwald.” The tribunal found Koch guilty and sentenced her to life imprisonment.
After she had served two years, General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, pardoned her. Owing to international condemnation, however, Koch was re-arrested in 1949 and tried before a West German court for instigation to murder in 135 cases. She was sentenced to life imprisonment on January 15, 1951. She committed suicide by hanging herself at Aichach women’s prison on September 1, 1967
The Koch connections:
Fred C. Koch married Mary Robinson in Kansas City, Missouri in 1932. They had four sons, Frederick (b. 1933), Charles (b. 1935), David (b. 1940) and William (b. 1940). His sons are Charles de Ganahl Koch and David H. Koch.
The New York Times on Charles and David:
“Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well. The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us”. That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.
Last week the Kochs were shoved unwillingly into the spotlight by the most comprehensive journalistic portrait of them yet, written by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Her article caused a stir among those in Manhattan’s liberal elite who didn’t know that David Koch, widely celebrated for his cultural philanthropy, is not merely another rich conservative Republican but the founder of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which, as Mayer writes with some understatement, “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception”. To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet, it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”
What I found here is breathtaking. When I joined this website I was as green as green can get when it comes to politics. I once felt that politics did not and could not reach me. Yet, each day I find the unexpected, dirty, and criminal actions practiced by politicans that affect not only me, but my family and those who struggle with their own lives.
I can only hope that you take the time -- and if you do have not that now, hey come back later and read the whole story as dicpted by an annonomus writer which I suspect out of fear of repraisal from the right. But I might be wrong though like in many other things politcal.
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