Irma Grese: The “Hyena of Auschwitz” Explained

On a cold morning in December 1945, a 22‑year‑old woman walked calmly to the gallows in a British prison. She was blond, small, and by several accounts almost cheerful. Her name was Irma Grese. To the survivors who had faced her at Auschwitz and Bergen‑Belsen, she was something else entirely: the “Hyena of Auschwitz” and the “Witch of Belsen,” a symbol of sadism in a system already built on cruelty.

Irma Grese was one of the youngest women executed for war crimes after World War II. She became infamous for beating, torturing, and terrorizing prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. At the Belsen Trial in 1945, survivors described her as a guard who seemed to enjoy inflicting pain. By the end of this story, we can trace how an uneducated farmer’s daughter became a concentration camp overseer, how much of her reputation is documented fact versus myth, and why her case keeps coming up whenever people ask how “ordinary” people commit extraordinary evil.

Who was Irma Grese before Auschwitz?

Irma Ida Ilse Grese was born on October 7, 1923, in Wrechen, a small village in Mecklenburg in northern Germany. Her family was poor and rural. Her father was a dairy worker and a supporter of the Nazi Party. Her mother died by suicide when Irma was a child, after discovering her husband’s affair. That early trauma is often mentioned in biographies, but there is no solid evidence that it “explains” what she later became. It is one piece of a grim puzzle, not the whole picture.

Grese left school around the age of 14 or 15 with little formal education. She tried a series of low‑status jobs: farm work, a shop assistant, hospital work. She reportedly wanted to become a nurse, but the story that she was “rejected” from nursing for being too fanatical or too unqualified is not perfectly documented. What is clear is that she drifted on the edges of Nazi institutions and propaganda. She joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), the female wing of the Hitler Youth. There, she absorbed the mix of nationalism, racism, and obedience that defined Nazi youth culture.

In 1942, at about 18 or 19, she volunteered to become a concentration camp guard. That part matters. She was not drafted or forced into the SS women’s auxiliary. She applied. Women could not be full SS members, but they could serve as Aufseherinnen, female guards, in the growing network of camps that needed staff to manage and control prisoners.

Her early life shows a pattern: limited options, strong exposure to Nazi ideology, and a decision to seek power in one of the regime’s most violent institutions. So what? Because it reminds us that the machinery of genocide did not run only on fanatical leaders. It also relied on young, often poorly educated volunteers who saw in the system a chance for status and authority.

How did Irma Grese become a notorious camp guard?

Grese’s first known posting was Ravensbrück, the main women’s concentration camp, in 1942. Ravensbrück was a training ground for female guards. There, new Aufseherinnen learned how to enforce rules with whips, dogs, and beatings. Records from this period are thinner, but survivors later recalled a pattern of brutality that Grese carried with her to later camps.

In March 1943 she was transferred to Auschwitz‑Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center. At Auschwitz, she rose quickly. By late 1943 or early 1944 she was a Rapportführerin, a senior overseer in the women’s camp at Birkenau. That meant she supervised blocks of prisoners, ran roll calls, and helped enforce work details and punishments.

Survivor testimony from Auschwitz is where her reputation as the “Hyena of Auschwitz” takes shape. Multiple witnesses at the Belsen Trial and in later memoirs described her as sadistic. They said she carried a whip, used a pistol, and set dogs on prisoners. Some said she beat women to death or selected them for the gas chambers. One of the most cited witnesses was the doctor and survivor Gisella Perl, who described Grese’s beatings and sexual sadism. Another was the Polish doctor Ada Bimko (later Hadassah Rosensaft), who testified about Grese’s violence at Bergen‑Belsen but also spoke about her time at Auschwitz.

Not every detail can be verified with the same confidence. For example, stories about Grese making lampshades out of human skin are almost certainly myth. That rumor attached itself to several Nazi figures and has little documentary support in her case. What is well supported is that she beat prisoners with a braided whip, that she used her authority to terrorize women, and that she was present during selections for the gas chambers. Survivor accounts are consistent on those points, even if they differ on specifics.

Irma Grese became notorious because she embodied a type: a young woman who embraced the camp system not with reluctance but with enthusiasm. So what? Because her rise at Auschwitz shows how the regime rewarded cruelty and how quickly someone with no special skills could become a feared authority figure inside a death factory.

What did Irma Grese do at Bergen‑Belsen?

As the Red Army advanced in 1944, the SS evacuated parts of Auschwitz. In late 1944, Grese was transferred to Bergen‑Belsen in northern Germany. Belsen had started as a camp for exchange prisoners but by 1945 it had become a dumping ground for evacuees from other camps. Overcrowding, starvation, and disease turned it into a horror scene even by concentration camp standards.

At Bergen‑Belsen, Grese was again a senior female guard. Survivors described her walking through the camp with a whip and a pistol, beating prisoners for minor “offenses,” and participating in roll calls that could last for hours. Several testified that she kicked or beat women who collapsed from exhaustion or hunger. One witness at the Belsen Trial, the survivor Ilona Stein, described Grese as one of the most feared guards in the women’s camp.

By early 1945, Bergen‑Belsen was collapsing. The SS had little food, almost no medical supplies, and thousands of new arrivals from evacuated camps. Typhus raged. When British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, they found tens of thousands of emaciated prisoners and thousands of unburied corpses. Grese was still there. She did not flee. British soldiers arrested her along with other SS staff.

Some defenders later tried to argue that conditions at Belsen were beyond any guard’s control, that everyone was overwhelmed. That is partly true about the chaos and disease. It is not a defense against the beatings, cruelty, and deliberate abuse that witnesses described. The camp was collapsing, but Grese still used her power to hurt people.

Bergen‑Belsen is where the world first saw her face. British newsreels filmed the liberation, the mass graves, and the captured guards. Images of Grese, young and almost ordinary‑looking, circulated in newspapers. So what? Because Belsen turned her from a local terror into an international symbol of Nazi brutality, especially of female participation in it.

What happened at the Belsen Trial?

The British held the Belsen Trial in Lüneburg from September to November 1945. Officially it was the trial of “Josef Kramer and 44 others.” Kramer had been commandant of both Auschwitz‑Birkenau and Bergen‑Belsen. Among the 45 defendants were 16 women, including Irma Grese.

Grese was charged with war crimes for her actions at both Auschwitz and Belsen. The British used a legal concept called “common design.” The idea was that anyone who knowingly took part in running a concentration camp shared responsibility for the crimes committed there. The prosecution did not have to prove that Grese personally killed a specific prisoner. They had to show she participated in a system of murder and abuse.

Dozens of survivors testified. Some described Grese beating prisoners with a plaited whip, often on the breasts and face. Others said she set dogs on inmates. Several said she took part in selections for the gas chambers at Auschwitz, pointing out prisoners who were too weak to work. One witness claimed she shot a prisoner who tried to escape. The defense tried to poke holes in these accounts, pointing out inconsistencies and the trauma of the witnesses. Grese herself denied most of the allegations, admitted carrying a whip, but insisted she only followed orders and never killed anyone.

Her demeanor in court fascinated observers. She appeared calm, sometimes smiling. She did not express remorse. Some British reporters described her as vain or flirtatious. Whether that is fair or colored by gendered expectations is hard to untangle. Male defendants who showed no remorse were often described as “cold” or “fanatical.” A young woman who did the same became “the witch” or “the hyena.”

On November 17, 1945, the court found her guilty. She was sentenced to death by hanging, along with Kramer and several others. At 22, she was the youngest woman condemned in the British war crimes trials.

The Belsen Trial was one of the first public reckonings with the camps, and Grese was one of its most notorious figures. So what? Because her conviction helped establish that “just following orders” was not a shield for camp staff and that women could be held legally responsible for their role in mass murder.

Execution, mythmaking, and what we really know

Grese was executed on December 13, 1945, at Hamelin Prison by British hangman Albert Pierrepoint. He later wrote that she walked to the gallows without hesitation and said “Schnell” (“quickly”) as the hood was placed over her head. That quote is widely repeated, though like many execution‑room details, it relies on one man’s recollection.

After her death, stories about her multiplied. Some were based on trial testimony and survivor memoirs. Others were rumor or exaggeration. She became a stock figure in postwar culture: the sadistic Nazi woman. In pulp novels and exploitation films, characters loosely based on her were sexualized and sensationalized. The “Nazi dominatrix” stereotype owes a lot to the image of Irma Grese, even when the details have little to do with her actual life.

That mix of fact and fantasy creates confusion. Common misconceptions include:

• That she personally killed huge numbers of prisoners with her own hands. In reality, the evidence shows repeated beatings, terror, and participation in selections, but not mass shootings or individual murders on the scale of some male SS officers.

• That she made lampshades or other objects from human skin. There is no reliable evidence for this in her case.

• That she was uniquely evil among female guards. Survivors named other women, like Maria Mandel or Elisabeth Volkenrath, as equally or more feared. Grese became the most famous partly because of her age, looks, and the timing of her trial.

What we do know with reasonable confidence is that she chose to join the camp system, that she rose in rank, that multiple independent witnesses described her as violent and sadistic, and that a British military court found her guilty after hearing extensive testimony.

The myths matter because they can blur the reality. If we turn her into a cartoon monster, we risk missing the fact that she was an ordinary young woman who chose to use the power the regime gave her in brutal ways. So what? Because separating legend from record helps us see how real people, not mythical villains, staffed genocidal systems.

Why does Irma Grese’s story still matter?

Irma Grese is often brought up online with a mix of horror and curiosity. People ask: How could a 20‑something woman be so cruel? Was she brainwashed? Was she a sadist from the start? The honest answer is that we do not have a detailed psychological profile. She left no diaries or deep personal reflections. What we have are her actions, the system she worked in, and the words of those who survived her.

Her story matters for several reasons.

First, it breaks the comforting idea that mass violence is only carried out by older men in uniforms. Women played active roles in the Nazi camp system as guards, nurses, secretaries, and informers. Grese is one of the clearest examples. She reminds us that gender does not inoculate anyone against cruelty when a regime rewards it.

Second, her case shows how ideology and opportunity can combine. Grese grew up in a society that normalized antisemitism, dehumanized “enemies,” and glorified obedience. The camp system then handed her a whip, a gun, and authority over thousands of powerless people. She chose to use that authority violently. Many others in similar positions were also cruel, but not all to the same degree. That gap between what was allowed and what was chosen is where individual responsibility lives.

Third, the way we talk about her reveals our own anxieties. The obsession with her appearance, her age, and her gender sometimes distracts from the structural reality of the camps. She was not a lone monster. She was one cog in a vast machine of forced labor and mass murder. Focusing only on her risks turning systemic crime into a story about a few “bad apples.”

Finally, her trial helped set legal and moral precedents. The idea that camp staff shared responsibility for crimes committed in their institutions influenced later war crimes trials, from other Nazi cases to conflicts in the Balkans and Rwanda. The message was clear: if you help run a system of persecution and murder, you cannot hide behind your job title.

Irma Grese’s name survives because it sits at the intersection of horror, curiosity, and stereotype. She was not the worst criminal of the Third Reich, but she became one of its most infamous faces. So what? Because remembering who she really was, stripped of myth, forces us to confront how ordinary ambition and obedience can turn lethal when tied to a murderous regime.