Irma Grese’s name is etched in infamy as one of the most sadistic female guards to serve in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Her crimes were so depraved, her cruelty so chilling, that even hardened soldiers and survivors struggled to comprehend how such evil could manifest in someone so young. She was just 22 years old when she was hanged by the British for her war crimes—but her legacy remains one of terror and disbelief.
Born on October 7, 1923, in the quiet village of Wrechen in the pastoral Mecklenburg region of northern Germany, Irma Ilse Ida Grese came from an unremarkable, rural background. Wrechen, nestled between the Holstein and Pomerania regions, was not far from the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück—a sinister foreshadowing of the path she would soon take.
Her childhood was marred by trauma and instability. When Irma was just nine, her mother Bertha committed suicide by drinking hydrochloric acid—allegedly due to domestic strife with Irma’s domineering father, Alfred. After this, Irma’s life became more unsettled. At 14, she dropped out of school and drifted through various jobs, including working at a dairy farm and as a nurse’s assistant. When she was just 17, she volunteered for the SS.
Irma joined the BDM (League of German Girls), the female wing of the Hitler Youth. It provided her with structure, belonging, and indoctrination. Against her father's wishes, she moved closer toward Nazi ideology. By 1942, she was sent to Ravensbrück as a guard-in-training, and shortly after that, she began her infamous tenure at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the death camp in occupied Poland.