The Bitch Again

Some Germans were bitterly cynical, some U.S. citizens furiously angry, and Communist propagandists were delighted last week. The reason: a U.S. Army board of review in Germany had reduced the life sentence of Use Koch to four years. Said one German: "Perhaps she'll go to the States as a G.I. bride."

Use Koch was the redhaired, sexually psychopathic "Bitch of Buchenwald," the Nazi concentration camp where more than 50,000 died. Inmates said that Use had men flogged for the pleasure it gave her, and collected human skin, preferably tattooed, for lampshades and bookbindings. Thirty other Germans had been convicted, with her, for Buchenwald's operation. In a routine review of sentences, twelve of her co-defendants had also received sentence reductions. But Use had been the most vivid of the defendants, and she had received the review board's biggest reprieve; Use became the focus of protest. From all sides the U.S. Army was boiled in angry oil.

Loudest denunciation came from a Washington lawyer, William Dowdell Denson. He had prosecuted Use and the others. Said he: "A miscarriage of justice . . . [She was] one of the most sadistic in the whole group. There is no way to compute the number who wanted to testify against her because: i) she was a woman; 2) she was the commandant's wife; 3) she was just so goddamn mean."

The review board may have found some compelling reason for reducing Use's sentence, but if it had, Army Secretary Kenneth C. Royall did not reveal it. Instead, he agreed that the evidence had proved that Use "encouraged, aided and participated" in Buchenwald's operation, but lamely justified the sentence reduction with: "There was no convincing evidence that she had selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin."

Secretary Royall was emphatic on one point: the Army's action was final. In one more year Use would be free. The Bavarian Ministry of Justice, however, announced that on her release she would be brought into a German court, "if those actions can be proved which have not been dealt with by the U.S. court." Those who still wanted to testify against Use might yet have their chance.

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