The Widow & Her Friends

The dirty-legged slattern in the prisoner's box squinted nervously at the six U.S. officers on the Munich dais. In staccato tones, U.S. Brigadier General Emil Kiel read her sentence: "Use Koch--life imprisonment." Justice had caught up with the redheaded, 40-year-old Witch of Buchenwald, who had prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp flogged at her pleasure and who had made gloves and lamp shades from their skins after they died of torture.

Frau Koch's husband, the former commander of Buchenwald, was long since executed in one of his own butcher chambers for mishandling Nazi party funds. For the last two years his widow has been kept in closely guarded U.S. Army prisons. Despite this, she was eight months pregnant.

Along with Use Koch, 30 Munich co-defendants were sentenced for the murders of some of Buchenwald's 53,000 slain political prisoners. Twenty-two will hang; others got terms ranging from ten years to life.

Most of the Nazis heard their fates without show of emotion, clicked their heels and walked out of the courtroom. A repentant exception was Jewish Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, a naturalized U.S. citizen and a notorious Buchenwald "trusty." He pleaded: "You have placed the mark of Cain on my forehead. Any physician who committed the crimes I am charged with deserves to be killed--must be killed. Apply to me the highest therapy that is in your hands." The judges prescribed life imprisonment.

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