The Most Evil Women in History is a full-length documentary that takes you on an in-depth journey through the bowels of hell, revealing the truth - plain and painful as it ever was about our past, looking at the most horrific evils ever committed by some of the most infamous historical figures for various reasons, including despotism, cannibalism, genocide, and too many atrocities to imagine. They are considered some of history's most vile and appalling figures.
From the 1st century AD to the present day, evil is a fact of life. We can see it not only in the reigns of Bloody Mary and Elizabeth Báthory but also in everyday crimes like murder and assault, quite apart from the millions of lives brutalized by political or religious oppression, poverty, disease, and starvation.
One factor unites all these infamous figures and the evil acts they committed: they all had unlimited power over the people whose lives they controlled. Their reigns of terror cover a time span of nearly 2,000 years. Motivated by power, religion, political belief, or by sadism and lust - sometimes by insanity - they have become bywords for terror.
The most evil women featured in this film:
Bloody Mary: A Catholic queen in a Protestant country
Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
Countess Dracula: Elizabeth Báthory
From the 1st century AD to the present day, evil is a fact of life. We can see it not only in the reigns of Bloody Mary and Elizabeth Báthory but also in everyday crimes like murder and assault, quite apart from the millions of lives brutalized by political or religious oppression, poverty, disease, and starvation.
One factor unites all these infamous figures and the evil acts they committed: they all had unlimited power over the people whose lives they controlled. Their reigns of terror cover a time span of nearly 2,000 years. Motivated by power, religion, political belief, or by sadism and lust - sometimes by insanity - they have become bywords for terror.
The most evil women featured in this film:
Bloody Mary: A Catholic queen in a Protestant country
Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald
Countess Dracula: Elizabeth Báthory
Category
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TVTranscript
00:00:00.
00:00:21Mary Tudor was the most hated queen in British history.
00:00:26During her five-year reign, she threw all England into chaos.
00:00:32Mary beheaded traitors, murdered heretics,
00:00:35and had pregnant women burnt to death
00:00:38in the name of her religious fanaticism.
00:00:41The entire nation lived in fear.
00:00:45Make no mistake about it,
00:00:47the burning of somebody at the stake is a very nasty business.
00:00:50It takes a long time to die.
00:00:52The smell of human burning fat would have been overpowered.
00:00:58There were nearly 300 burnt
00:01:00in about three and a half years in Mary's reign,
00:01:03which was actually more than the Spanish Inquisition
00:01:06and the French Chambre Ardent put together in the same period.
00:01:10Thousands fled into hiding,
00:01:12and the streets of English cities were polluted
00:01:15with the putrid smell of burning flesh.
00:01:20She created such terror that she's known as Bloody Mary.
00:01:31Mary Tudor was born at Greenwich in 1516.
00:01:36She was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII
00:01:40and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.
00:01:44The reaction to Mary's birth is one of happiness,
00:01:47but very muted happiness, really.
00:01:49People were not cheered up by the fact
00:01:52that the child that was born and lived was a daughter.
00:01:55Henry wanted a son to succeed him,
00:01:58and Mary's arrival was seen as a second-rate birth.
00:02:04After several miscarriages and five dead children,
00:02:07Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon,
00:02:10went through the menopause.
00:02:13Henry knew that she could never provide him
00:02:15with the male heir he so desperately wanted.
00:02:17Henry realised that there would be no son,
00:02:22and began asking, well, why?
00:02:25And his answer was, well, God doesn't want me to have a son,
00:02:29because my marriage is wrong.
00:02:32My marriage doesn't exist.
00:02:34England was a Catholic country,
00:02:37but the Pope would not allow Henry to annul his marriage.
00:02:41Henry broke from Rome
00:02:43and declared himself the supreme head
00:02:45of the new Church of England.
00:02:48In January 1533,
00:02:50after learning that one of his courtiers, Anne Boleyn,
00:02:53was pregnant,
00:02:54Henry secretly married her
00:02:56to avoid the risk of having a bastard son.
00:03:00But Anne gave birth to a girl,
00:03:03Mary's stepsister, Elizabeth.
00:03:08Four months later,
00:03:09his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer,
00:03:12declared Henry's marriage to Catherine
00:03:14null and absolutely void,
00:03:17and pronounced his marriage to Anne good and lawful.
00:03:22Mary was 17 years old.
00:03:25Therefore, Mary was illegitimate.
00:03:28Suddenly, this child,
00:03:29who's been treated like the most special girl around,
00:03:32is told that she has to say from now on she is a bastard.
00:03:37Like her mother,
00:03:39Mary refused to accept this decree.
00:03:42The bond between mother and daughter became stronger.
00:03:47They were totally dedicated to the traditional form of Catholicism
00:03:51that Henry had abolished.
00:03:53Right at the centre of Mary's life was a drama.
00:03:56It's called the mass.
00:03:57It's a drama of light and colour and Latin and music.
00:04:02And at the heart of it, you make God on a table out of bread and wine.
00:04:06And for Mary, that was absolutely central.
00:04:11When Catherine's health began to deteriorate,
00:04:14Mary was banished from her room.
00:04:17Catherine died in 1536 without ever seeing her daughter again.
00:04:22Mary finally signed her father's act of succession in the same year.
00:04:29But she didn't hide her hatred of Anne Boleyn.
00:04:33I think Mary is pushed aside by Anne Boleyn.
00:04:36There's no doubt about that.
00:04:37She would have regarded, as her mother regarded Anne Boleyn,
00:04:40as what the Spanish ambassador always calls Anne Boleyn,
00:04:43which is the whore.
00:04:46She is a very obstinate, very difficult.
00:04:49I mean, that comes out very clearly in her conflict
00:04:51with her father and in her relations with Anne Boleyn.
00:04:54What you see is what you get.
00:04:56And pretty rough it is, too, when she's in that mood.
00:05:00Now in her early twenties,
00:05:02the constant psychological strain
00:05:04began to take its toll on Mary's health.
00:05:09It's a period of enormous stress for her.
00:05:12I mean, she has menstrual problems anyway,
00:05:16almost from the word go,
00:05:18and they get very much worse.
00:05:20Her disfavour with her father led Mary to live in fear of her life.
00:05:27There are rumours in 1534 and 1535 of Mary's execution.
00:05:33The rumours are circulating amongst the ambassadors
00:05:36and amongst Mary's support network at court.
00:05:39Certainly, Mary has a profound fear of being poisoned,
00:05:42and this fear never really leaves her.
00:05:45Mary's fragile physical and mental state took a further blow
00:05:49when Henry finally had a child with his fourth wife, Jane Seymour, in 1537.
00:05:55Henry VIII, at last, has his long-looked-for male heir.
00:06:02And there is tremendous rejoicing at court.
00:06:04And there's tremendous rejoicing all over England as well.
00:06:08Hogsheads of wine are broken open at market crosses and in parish churches.
00:06:12People celebrate.
00:06:13People set off fireworks and bonfires.
00:06:16With his male heir in place,
00:06:19Henry VIII decided to rewrite the succession.
00:06:23Obviously, the person who would succeed would be his son,
00:06:26but what would happen after that?
00:06:27Well, he did have these two bastard daughters, Mary and Elizabeth,
00:06:31and so Henry decided he'd get the succession tidied up in the order,
00:06:35Edward first, then Mary, then Elizabeth.
00:06:39Henry VIII died in 1547, when Mary was 34.
00:06:46Her brother Edward became king at the age of nine
00:06:50under the protection of Protestant advisers.
00:06:54He's a young, healthy, vigorous prince,
00:06:57but he's also a convinced Protestant.
00:06:59He's a serious evangelical.
00:07:01He is far, far more Protestant than Henry VIII has ever been.
00:07:05I think Mary is drastically shocked by the direction
00:07:08that Edwardian religious policy takes.
00:07:11Churches are being whitewashed,
00:07:13statues and stained glass windows are being taken out,
00:07:16Protestant doctrines being officially preached in the church,
00:07:19and the mass is replaced with a service in English,
00:07:23and it's that that sparks Mary's really conspicuous disobedience
00:07:27to the government of her young brother.
00:07:30During Edward's reign, I think she must have felt that this was it.
00:07:34There was no future, and there would be no chance
00:07:37that her beloved world, her religion, anything,
00:07:40would survive the entire Protestant revolution
00:07:44which Edward was carrying out.
00:07:46The years of stress and illness had turned Mary
00:07:50into a pale, bitter woman.
00:07:52Her faith became her obsession.
00:07:56On several occasions, Edward sent deputations to persuade Mary
00:08:03to accept his new religion.
00:08:05Sticking to her religious principles,
00:08:10she refused to bow to her younger brother's demands.
00:08:13The mass sacrament of the altar is central to her personal faith,
00:08:19and it's Edward's council, it's the heretics who try to get rid of that.
00:08:23That is why she hates heretics.
00:08:26Her stand was supported by the Spanish monarchy,
00:08:29who were burning Protestants at the stake for rejecting Catholicism.
00:08:34But in England, these heretics were in power.
00:08:38There seemed no chance of returning to the Catholic faith
00:08:41while her brother was on the throne.
00:08:44Edward suddenly became ill in 1553,
00:08:48and the royal succession was again thrown into chaos.
00:08:51As Edward VI is lying, dying,
00:08:54he is fully aware that he is facing a crisis.
00:08:58It looks strongly as if the only option for the succession
00:09:02is for Mary to come to the throne.
00:09:05Mary, as we know, has battled against Edward
00:09:08to retain the mass in her own household.
00:09:11So this pious little Protestant evangelical king
00:09:15is faced with all his work being undone,
00:09:18the temple being rent asunder,
00:09:20Catholicism returning to England.
00:09:22And so he inaugurates a plot.
00:09:27Edward's advisers proposed Mary's Protestant cousin,
00:09:30Lady Jane Grey, as heir to the throne.
00:09:33Supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer,
00:09:38Lady Jane ruled for only nine days before Mary,
00:09:43who had won the support of London, took the throne.
00:09:48She was not going to let her one and only chance to rule pass her by.
00:09:53So what made people want Mary and not Queen Jane?
00:09:57Well, it was actually blood.
00:10:00They wanted Henry VIII's blood, and that was Mary's slogan.
00:10:04I am Henry VIII's daughter. Jane isn't.
00:10:08The interesting thing is that Mary did not mention religion.
00:10:11She didn't say a thing about religion.
00:10:13And that was quite deliberate and quite clever,
00:10:16because she was being supported now by Protestants as well as Catholics.
00:10:21Both sides rallied to that sort of Stalin-like memory of Henry,
00:10:25the power of the old king,
00:10:27and that's what got her to London under a fortnight.
00:10:32In July 1553, Mary Tudor was 37 years old
00:10:38when she was crowned Queen of All England at Westminster Abbey.
00:10:43She was determined to restore the Catholic allegiance
00:10:48and to punish those who'd made her last 25 years a misery.
00:10:55The same year, she cemented her ties to Catholic Europe
00:10:58in a marriage of alliance with King Philip II of Spain.
00:11:03Philip must have been a little crestfallen, shall we say,
00:11:08at the thought of marrying Mary.
00:11:09She was older. She was notoriously not much fun.
00:11:13She marries at the age of 37.
00:11:16She's an old maid by that time.
00:11:18And I think that screwed her up quite considerably as well.
00:11:23For the Protestant nobility,
00:11:25it was hard to accept a female Catholic queen,
00:11:29but impossible to accept a foreign Catholic king.
00:11:34Within months of taking the throne,
00:11:37a large-scale Protestant rebellion was crushed by Mary.
00:11:41She decided to show her enemies how swift her Catholic justice would be.
00:11:50So there are hangings.
00:11:51A number of the rebel leaders are dispatched.
00:11:53The Duke of Suffolk is executed.
00:11:56Poor little Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, is now executed as well.
00:12:00There is a fear at one stage
00:12:02that Princess Elizabeth herself may be facing execution.
00:12:06Certainly this is a rumour being reported by the ambassadors at the time.
00:12:10And a number of the rebels from Kent are sent back to their shires
00:12:16and hanged in their own home parishes
00:12:19in order to discourage future rebellion.
00:12:22Now she was queen,
00:12:24Mary would return her country to the Catholic fold
00:12:27by all means necessary.
00:12:29Protestant England was about to experience the revenge of Mary Tudor.
00:12:35After years of confusion, paranoia and turmoil,
00:12:50the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor, was in a position to avenge her Protestant tormentors.
00:12:56In her eyes, the crimes against her had been committed in the name of the Church of England.
00:13:05She would purge the nation of its satanic presence.
00:13:11The first thing that Mary has to do in association with her Privy Council and her principal advisers
00:13:18is to recreate the medieval laws that mean that you can be burned at the stake for heresy.
00:13:24Mary would have defined heresy as the Church would have defined it.
00:13:29And that doesn't just mean being wrong, it means persisting in being wrong.
00:13:34And if they go on saying what they'd said before,
00:13:37that the mass is a blasphemy, that the Pope is Antichrist,
00:13:41then you have to burn them.
00:13:43The horrific ritual of burning at the stake proved a useful tool for Mary and her government.
00:13:54They want other people to watch and think heresy is an illness within the body politic
00:13:59and it needs to be purged, it needs to be burnt out and destroyed.
00:14:04Mary was determined that the burnings were carried out to produce maximum effect.
00:14:09Touching punishment of heretics, me think of it ought to be done without rashness,
00:14:15that it may be evident to all this realm how I minister true justice.
00:14:21Mary's plan to cleanse England of the Protestant curse turned into a frenzy of killing.
00:14:28Hundreds were burnt to death.
00:14:30First the bishops, then Protestant preachers, and even their families.
00:14:36The burnings took place in town squares all over the country.
00:14:41Those classed as heretics were killed without mercy.
00:14:45Horrible case in the Channel Islands where a pregnant woman was put on the fire
00:14:50and her baby was born in the fire and it was thrown back.
00:14:55I think many ordinary Catholics in the reign of Mary view the burnings of Protestants with horror.
00:15:01Although Catholic families may not like the prayer book in English,
00:15:05they may not like the fact that during the reign of Edward VI their churches have been cleansed
00:15:10of all the Catholic liturgical kits that they were so attached to.
00:15:14This does not mean the Catholic families want to see their neighbours burned at the stake.
00:15:18And make no mistake about it, the burning of somebody at the stake is a very nasty business.
00:15:24It takes a long time to die.
00:15:26Where you have mass burnings, where you have a number of Protestants being burned at the same time,
00:15:31the smell of human burning fat would have been overpowering.
00:15:35The persecution is a duty, a religious duty, because in order to save the souls of her subjects,
00:15:42she has got to eradicate the virus of heresy.
00:15:46She is a fanatic.
00:15:49While Mary's religious persecutions proved unpopular with her subjects,
00:15:53her marriage with Philip was a sham.
00:15:56That he ever loved her in the conventional romantic sense, I think is very doubtful.
00:16:03But he did always regard her as his aunt with Tiamada.
00:16:09Mary was 11 years older than her husband.
00:16:16She failed to bear him a child, something she refused to accept.
00:16:22We know that she has two phantom pregnancies.
00:16:26Exactly what causes them, we don't know.
00:16:28And one assumes there must be some balance between something physical,
00:16:32maybe some kind of tumour, who knows,
00:16:34and something psychological in that plainly she is desperate to have a child.
00:16:38And to continue the Tudor line and to continue her Catholic religious settlement
00:16:43by having children of her own rather than things passing on to Elizabeth.
00:16:47It's obvious to everybody except Mary herself that she's never going to have a child.
00:16:52But a barren wife is no use to him at all.
00:16:55In the end, Philip went back to Spain.
00:16:57He'd got a lot else to do than being England.
00:16:59So he left the Queen nursing her delusions of pregnancy.
00:17:03And in the last year, her health was going.
00:17:07It became clear she was dying.
00:17:09With her health failing, Mary was determined to exact merciless revenge on those who'd wronged her in the past.
00:17:16It's clear that the breakup of her parents' marriage was enormously important to her.
00:17:25And the key to that is seeing how relentlessly she pursued the man whom she blamed for that breakup,
00:17:32Thomas Cranmer, who became Archbishop of Canterbury,
00:17:35precisely in order to break up her parents' marriage.
00:17:38Cranmer was a criminal in Mary's eyes.
00:17:41He'd committed a series of crimes.
00:17:44The first was to end her mother's marriage.
00:17:47The second was to be part of the break with Rome.
00:17:50The third was then to change the church to Protestantism.
00:17:54And the fourth was to support Lady Jane Grey.
00:17:58And she pursued him literally to death, not even to the grave,
00:18:03because there was nothing left of him once he'd burnt at the stake in Oxford.
00:18:06That which is the faithful congregation...
00:18:09After his arrest, Cranmer was imprisoned in the Tower
00:18:13before being subjected to a series of show trials.
00:18:16In the 14th of St John...
00:18:18The trials lasted for more than two years.
00:18:21Mary was publicly humiliating the figurehead of the Protestant heretic faith.
00:18:27He recanted his religion six times.
00:18:31Cranmer, I think, recanted because he was in a state of terrible mental confusion.
00:18:35He really thought he was a traitor.
00:18:37He really thought that by supporting Jane, he had betrayed God's anointed Mary.
00:18:43And with that in mind, I think you have to realise that here's a man who's in prison,
00:18:47who's lost his friends, who is surrounded by very sophisticated Catholics,
00:18:52telling him that he's a heretic.
00:18:54He's full of guilt and loneliness.
00:18:57And in all that, it overwhelmed him.
00:19:00Despite his recantations, he was still sentenced to death.
00:19:05He was 67 years old.
00:19:12Before he died, he was publicly shamed as a Protestant heretic.
00:19:16He denied the authority of the one true Catholic Church and the Pope.
00:19:31Let him burn for all eternity in the flames of hell.
00:19:36He was burned at the stake in Oxford in May 1556.
00:19:53Mary would simply not let him off the hook.
00:19:57He had done everything that the Church demanded.
00:20:00He had said that he was a heretic.
00:20:02He had said that he was sorry for being a heretic.
00:20:04And he still died.
00:20:06Even at the time, people thought this was bad form.
00:20:09Catholics were embarrassed about it.
00:20:11And the government's explanations, which they put out as propaganda,
00:20:14were not very convincing.
00:20:16There were nearly 300 burnt in about three and a half years in Mary's reign,
00:20:21which was actually more than the Spanish Inquisition
00:20:24and the French Chambre Ardent put together in the same period.
00:20:29Mary's policy had a catastrophic effect.
00:20:32The nation united against her.
00:20:36Now, this is a very unequal policy, I think,
00:20:38because it falls particularly on those who can't get away into exile.
00:20:43So, we find that the poor are suffering.
00:20:47Popular preachers, even the blind women, pregnant women,
00:20:52are all burned at the stake.
00:20:54Protestantism suddenly becomes a credible religious movement.
00:20:58And the rank-and-file Protestants,
00:21:00who've been looking at what was going to happen,
00:21:02they say, this is real conviction.
00:21:05You don't die unless you are really convinced.
00:21:07You certainly don't die in that kind of way.
00:21:09Horrible death.
00:21:10And therefore, you begin to get other people prepared to go down the same road.
00:21:14And as soon as that begins to happen, the government is trapped.
00:21:17After five years of tyranny,
00:21:20Bloody Mary had become a hated monarch.
00:21:25Mary is unpopular because of her marriage,
00:21:29because of the religious persecution.
00:21:32Most important of all, her regime loses its credibility when she fails to have a child.
00:21:38It is clearly going to come to an end when she dies.
00:21:41The ill health that had troubled her from childhood finally caught up with Mary.
00:21:47As she lay dying, her country was falling apart.
00:21:51A flu epidemic swept through the cities,
00:21:54and England's last foothold in Europe, the Fort of Calais, was lost to the French.
00:22:00Now, those events are read in a providential way by Protestant critics,
00:22:06that these disasters show that God is condemning Mary for her policies.
00:22:12And Mary herself, although she didn't accept that, of course,
00:22:16was worried that she must have done something to upset God.
00:22:20I think she felt she'd been a failure.
00:22:23Mary Tudor, Queen Mary I, died in 1558 at the age of 43.
00:22:31She would have died a bitterly disappointed woman.
00:22:35No heir.
00:22:36Her husband had gone.
00:22:39The Catholic faith was at an end.
00:22:42Protestantism would come back now.
00:22:45Within months of Mary's death,
00:22:47her sister, Queen Elizabeth I,
00:22:50had united the nation under a Protestant regime.
00:22:54The Church of England remains dominant to this day.
00:23:20In 1611, in an isolated castle,
00:23:27high up in the mountains of what is now modern Slovakia,
00:23:30a woman was about to begin a death sentence,
00:23:33condemned to spend the rest of her life walled up in a single room.
00:23:39At her trial, Countess Elizabeth Bathory,
00:23:42one of the most powerful aristocrats of her day,
00:23:45was accused and convicted of murdering over 600 young girls.
00:23:52Far more frightening in a way than a male doing that sort of thing,
00:23:57is a woman who tortures and kills young girls.
00:24:02What appalled many was not just the number of deaths,
00:24:07but the ways in which these girls died.
00:24:10It was said that they were sadistically tortured for weeks on end,
00:24:14sometimes forced to eat their own flesh,
00:24:17and their corpses left to rot in her castles.
00:24:20These things tend to escalate, and there was no check on her.
00:24:26Power tends to corrupt,
00:24:29and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
00:24:35She had absolute power.
00:24:39According to the evidence given at her trial,
00:24:41a picture emerged of a woman who not only had a need to inflict pain,
00:24:46and commit murder,
00:24:48but apparently developed an obsession with her victim's blood.
00:24:53Elizabeth Bathory's taste for this blood
00:24:55would eventually give her the title by which she's still known today.
00:24:59Countess Dracula.
00:25:01Countess Dracula.
00:25:27Born in 1560,
00:25:28Elizabeth Bathory was one of four children,
00:25:31and a member of one of the most powerful families
00:25:34in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary.
00:25:38The Bathory family were not only a line of heroes,
00:25:41a dynasty of heroes,
00:25:42but they had enormous power in Central and Eastern Europe.
00:25:47Elizabeth Bathory's uncle had been King of Poland.
00:25:50Her nephew was the Prince of Transylvania,
00:25:53the most glamorous Renaissance Prince.
00:25:56They were richer than the King of Hungary himself.
00:26:01They owned more property,
00:26:03had much vaster wealth than he had.
00:26:06Elizabeth's led a charmed life in many ways
00:26:09because she was a very powerful,
00:26:12if not the most powerful aristocratic woman in the country.
00:26:16At the time of Elizabeth's birth,
00:26:18Hungary was ruled by Austria to its west,
00:26:21and as a Christian country,
00:26:23it was involved in an ongoing war against the Turkish Muslims to the south.
00:26:29The country was almost permanently at war during Elizabeth's lifetime.
00:26:33Hungary was politically a very important place in those times
00:26:38because it was the bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turkish invasion,
00:26:43which really threatened to overwhelm the whole of Christian Europe.
00:26:47One can imagine societies in which there were mutilated soldiers,
00:26:53beggars who'd come back from the wars with nothing,
00:26:56bereaved women because their families were being killed at the front.
00:27:02It was a very traumatized society.
00:27:04There was also a very, very savage battle going on,
00:27:09slightly under the surface in Hungarian society,
00:27:12between the Hungarians and the Austrians,
00:27:14who were always vying for power and territory in the empire,
00:27:17and also between the great Hungarian families themselves.
00:27:22Even each village was divided,
00:27:24in some cases between Hungarians and Croatians and Slovaks,
00:27:29who despised each other.
00:27:31The greatest cruelties in 16th century Hungary, however,
00:27:36were those inflicted on the peasants
00:27:38by the aristocrats and nobles who ruled them.
00:27:42The social hierarchy was absolutely fixed and immovable,
00:27:46and someone like Elizabeth Bathory had enormous power,
00:27:49power literally of life and death over the commoners.
00:27:53Peasants could be tortured, could be tormented,
00:27:55even in certain cases killed with impunity by those above them.
00:28:00So you grow up in an atmosphere where torture and cruelty
00:28:04are part of everyday experience.
00:28:07It's no wonder that she thought of that as normal.
00:28:15At the age of 15, Elizabeth was married to Francis Nadasdi,
00:28:19an equally powerful aristocrat who, during the war against the Turks,
00:28:23had earned a reputation as a savage and uncompromising warrior.
00:28:28Elizabeth was actually very happy in her marriage
00:28:31and adored her husband, who was a powerful mover in that society.
00:28:37She would bathe in his reflected prestige,
00:28:41and she could then operate in a duo with him.
00:28:48Theirs was one of the most powerful unions in the land,
00:28:51comprising huge estates throughout Hungary.
00:28:54With these estates came control of the surrounding villages.
00:28:59And from these, Elizabeth and Francis selected peasants
00:29:03to work as servants in their manor houses and their castles.
00:29:09At her trial almost 40 years later,
00:29:11Elizabeth would be accused of treating these peasants
00:29:14with extraordinary and excessive cruelty.
00:29:17In Hungary, there was a cult of savagery and aristocratic bravura.
00:29:28There was even a very strange quality,
00:29:31which was called carorum in Hungarian.
00:29:34A kind of inventive use of cruelty,
00:29:37which one was supposed to display to one's enemies,
00:29:40but also to those beneath one.
00:29:42So it's quite likely that Elizabeth and her husband
00:29:45were very strict disciplinarians, to put it mildly.
00:29:49He also taught her a little trick,
00:29:53which is called star-kicking.
00:29:56Here's what you do.
00:30:00Take the servant girl,
00:30:02and you take little pieces of paper soaked in oil,
00:30:06and you put them between the toes of the girl.
00:30:10And then you set the little papers on fire,
00:30:13and she kicks,
00:30:15and she sees stars from the pain.
00:30:22And then she'll have been taught a lesson,
00:30:24and really be a very good servant after that.
00:30:32Given the constant threat of a Turkish invasion,
00:30:35it wasn't unusual for Elizabeth's husband
00:30:37to spend up to ten months in any one year away from her.
00:30:41During his absence,
00:30:43Elizabeth spent most of her time in their imposing
00:30:45and isolated castle at Cectice,
00:30:48on the mountainous borders of northern Hungary.
00:30:52It was here that the majority of her crimes were committed.
00:30:56Implicated in those crimes were the four senior servants
00:31:03who ran the household at Cectice.
00:31:06Three old women, called Elena Yeo,
00:31:09Kata, and Dorothea,
00:31:11and a young man called Fitzko.
00:31:13Fitzko is a very interesting character,
00:31:17and he seems to have been a kind of factotum,
00:31:20a kind of jack of all trades,
00:31:22who carried out perhaps all of Elizabeth's dirty work.
00:31:29Fitzko and the old ladies were not only responsible
00:31:32for the day-to-day running of the castle at Cectice,
00:31:35but also the recruitment of girls from the outlying villages
00:31:39to work as Elizabeth's servants.
00:31:42It's hard for us to imagine
00:31:43that anyone would willingly go and work in a household
00:31:46if there had been rumours of even one girl dying.
00:31:49But the situation for many people in Hungary at that time
00:31:52was so desperate.
00:31:54The only way to guarantee a living wage
00:31:57would be to virtually sell your children into servitude
00:32:02in the great house,
00:32:03and that's exactly what happened.
00:32:04At the tower, the girls were undressed and showered down,
00:32:13and then she would look at them,
00:32:15and she'd pick out the ones that she wanted to torture.
00:32:19If somebody was too skinny and too pale,
00:32:22she didn't like them at all
00:32:23because they didn't last very long under the torture.
00:32:27She liked the buxom ones, the big ones,
00:32:30because they lasted longer.
00:32:41Trivial offences were punished in the most extreme ways.
00:32:45One girl from the village beneath the castle
00:32:47was accused of stealing money from the household coffers.
00:32:51It was claimed at her trial
00:32:53that Elizabeth heated a coin over a candle until it was white-hot,
00:32:57then pressed it into the girl's hand.
00:33:07Elizabeth didn't confine her particular brand of domestic discipline to Hungary.
00:33:12On several occasions during her life,
00:33:14she was in Vienna to visit the court of the Austrian king Matthias.
00:33:20Despite protests,
00:33:21she tortured servant girls here at her house in Augustinastrasse.
00:33:29And we have the accounts of the monks from the Augustiner monastery across the street.
00:33:34They heard the noises of these girls.
00:33:37The torture sounds.
00:33:40So they threw their pots against the windows.
00:33:43But there was nothing they could do about it.
00:33:49Because she was a powerful woman.
00:33:56These scenarios were repeated at several of her castles,
00:34:00including this one at Lachenhaus on the Austrian border.
00:34:03A fortress belonging to her husband's family, the Nadasdes.
00:34:10I don't think that they would have seen a distinction
00:34:13right up to the point of near death
00:34:16between disciplining and acting sadistically.
00:34:19They didn't have those distinctions.
00:34:23Excessive cruelty on the part of Hungarians to their lessers,
00:34:27the Slovaks, was very common at the time.
00:34:31In this case, she carried it too far.
00:34:34I think she had a compulsion to torture
00:34:38and eventually to kill.
00:34:42There's been a need throughout our cultural history
00:34:45to have great mythical icons of female evil.
00:34:49Elizabeth Bathory, in due course,
00:34:52was taken up to represent this figure.
00:34:54The bloodiness of her myth
00:34:58and the bloodiness of the events ascribed to her
00:35:02are typical of medieval
00:35:05and post-medieval European imagination.
00:35:11Even the birth of her own children,
00:35:13the last of four appearing in 1598,
00:35:16seems to have done little to foster any sympathy
00:35:19for her servant girl.
00:35:21I think that's what makes her doubly shocking.
00:35:26She seems to have been a caring, loving mother type
00:35:31to her own children,
00:35:33who of course were Hungarians, obviously,
00:35:36and not Slovak.
00:35:38The traditional view of the woman is kind of violated
00:35:41when you have somebody especially
00:35:44who's torturing young girls.
00:35:46This abuse of her Slovak peasants would become markedly more extreme.
00:35:52The catalyst for this was the death of her husband in 1604.
00:35:58As soon as a woman was widowed,
00:36:02all her family and all her neighbours
00:36:05and all the other competing families
00:36:07would be after her to strip her of that wealth
00:36:10by legal means or by simply occupying her lands,
00:36:14defrauding her, accusing her perhaps of false crimes
00:36:18in order to take away her property.
00:36:19And there was no way that a woman could resist this,
00:36:23even a woman as powerful as Elizabeth.
00:36:26Suddenly, Elizabeth's vast estates were threatened.
00:36:30Feeling vulnerable, she reacted as only she could.
00:36:34You discipline, you over-discipline.
00:36:37It's a very logical way to react
00:36:39if you feel that things are getting out of control.
00:36:43The disciplining becomes cruelty, becomes abuse.
00:36:46At Ceachtice, one of her few remaining castles,
00:36:55that abuse would escalate to the point
00:36:58where Elizabeth Bathory would become a mass murderer.
00:37:00By 1604, the now widowed Elizabeth Bathory,
00:37:13a powerful and wealthy Hungarian countess,
00:37:16had for years been cruelly torturing her female servants
00:37:20at her mountain top castle at Ceachtice,
00:37:23in what is now modern Slovakia.
00:37:25Her sadistic reputation was beginning to strike fear
00:37:31into the hearts of all who heard her name.
00:37:34You must imagine these people cowering outside the walls of her castle,
00:37:39never knowing what exactly is going on in there,
00:37:41but knowing at the same time that they are absolutely subject
00:37:44to this person's power, to this person's whims.
00:37:47Before her husband's death, Elizabeth had been abusing her servants
00:37:53in order to discipline them.
00:37:55This eventually escalated to murder.
00:37:58According to the documents from her trial in 1611,
00:38:01it was estimated that she killed almost 650 young girls.
00:38:06There are two reasons for what she did.
00:38:11One of them has to do with her own mindset.
00:38:19She thought she was just disciplining her servants.
00:38:24But the other has to do with just getting old
00:38:28and jealousy about the beauty of these girls.
00:38:31She's in her forties, and she was fading.
00:38:36Elizabeth Batre was very obsessed with her own looks.
00:38:43She used to have a mirror,
00:38:46and she would spend hours looking at herself in that mirror.
00:38:51She had that narcissistic fascination with herself and her fading beauty.
00:39:02Elizabeth's obsession with her fading youth manifested itself in bizarre ways.
00:39:09According to evidence given at her trial,
00:39:12witnesses claimed that Elizabeth cannibalized her servant girls.
00:39:16At one point, and we have the testimony of several witnesses.
00:39:20She got angry at one of her maids,
00:39:24and she rose up like a bulldog, it says in this document.
00:39:28And she tore the flesh from the shoulders of this girl,
00:39:32and bit her breasts.
00:39:36dress. She may have eaten young women's flesh in an attempt to incorporate their youth within
00:39:48her. Somehow in her mind, apparently, she thought if she ingested parts of these girls,
00:39:57maybe she could acquire some of their youthful beauty. So technically speaking, what we're
00:40:03dealing with here is you are what you eat. Cannibalized, sexually assaulted, tortured,
00:40:12and beaten to death, the bodies began to pile up at Cechtiche. And after a while, when they were
00:40:19running up into the hundreds, she was running out of space. She kept some of the bodies of these
00:40:26girls under her bed, and the place really started to stink.
00:40:33To cover up, Elizabeth and her four senior servants claimed that the girls' deaths were due to disease
00:40:40or accident. And to substantiate this, Elizabeth would bully the local clergy into giving the
00:40:47girls a standard Catholic burial.
00:40:51Some of them were just thrown in ditches, and eventually one of her cohorts got rid of the
00:40:58bodies. And they simply bury them further and further away.
00:41:03The testimonies given against Elizabeth Bathory make endless references to how the servant girls died.
00:41:10But one aspect of the evidence is dominant, her association with blood.
00:41:15Elizabeth had this fixation on blood because there are accounts that are verified in the court record of
00:41:23her having to change her blouse because it got so blood-soaked.
00:41:29In later sensationalized versions of her story, it was claimed that the blood countess actually bathed in
00:41:36and drank the blood of her victims. These legends, which place Elizabeth Bathory at the center of the
00:41:42vampire myths, are less shocking than what really occurred.
00:41:47What she would do is she'd have these girls up in cages, and then she had a long lance, and she would pierce them, and the blood would come down and flow on her.
00:41:58And then she would shout obscenities, apparently.
00:42:00Elizabeth Bathory might have gone on killing with impunity forever, but the year 1610 marked the beginning of her end.
00:42:12She made a big mistake.
00:42:17As long as she dealt with Slovak peasants, nobody cared. That's a fact.
00:42:24She could have gotten away with it.
00:42:26She went after the daughter of a local Protestant minister.
00:42:36Big mistake.
00:42:37Because this girl escaped and told the story about what was going on up there in the castle.
00:42:42When news came to the Hungarian nobles, well, they couldn't tolerate that.
00:42:48One of their own, you know?
00:42:50Uh-uh.
00:42:51That was her critical error.
00:42:54Ironically, Elizabeth's nemesis was a relative of hers, Count Georgi Thurzo, ruler of estates near the town of Bichka, to the northeast of Czachtice.
00:43:07What's clear is that Thurzo wasn't acting out of a sense of moral outrage.
00:43:12He wanted Elizabeth's lands.
00:43:15Elizabeth was the only one whose court in Czachtice was the rival to his court in Bichka.
00:43:21However much he had fellow feeling for her, as a fellow aristocrat, as a fellow Hungarian, he would see her as an obstacle to his ambition.
00:43:31But Thurzo had to act quickly.
00:43:33He had to keep the Austrian emperor at a distance, because the Austrians wanted Elizabeth's lands and wealth as much as Thurzo himself.
00:43:41On the bitterly cold night of December 29th, 1610, Thurzo led a party of soldiers into Czachtice Castle.
00:43:52In a letter to his wife, he described what he found when he entered.
00:43:55We directly came then upon certain men and female servants in the manor house.
00:44:01We found a dead girl there.
00:44:03A second one was dead, too, from a number of wounds.
00:44:06I wait here until the accursed woman has been deposited in the fortress, and a suitable room found for her.
00:44:23Other accounts have it that Thurzo actually found Elizabeth in the process of beating a servant girl called Doritza to death.
00:44:30As punishment for stealing a pair.
00:44:36On January the 2nd, 1611, only four days after her arrest, Thurzo convened a court at Bichka.
00:44:44Thurzo was very clever. He didn't put her on trial. He put her servants on trial.
00:44:48In what we call the hors d'oeuvre strategy.
00:44:51You know, you throw them the little fish so they don't go for the big one.
00:44:56Elena Yeo and Dorothea were convicted.
00:45:00Their punishment for having used their hands to torture and murder was to have their fingers torn off with a pair of pincers.
00:45:08Still alive, they were then thrown onto a fire.
00:45:12Fizko was spared the pincers, but was decapitated instead.
00:45:17Only Carta escaped the death sentence.
00:45:19Her fate is unknown.
00:45:23By the order of Count Thurzo, Elizabeth Bartori was still under arrest at her castle at Cea Cici.
00:45:30Well, I think he was still deciding whether he could get away with trying her or not.
00:45:35And in the end, perhaps he decided it was better just to let her rot, which is what happened.
00:45:41Elizabeth's sentence was publicly announced by Thurzo.
00:45:45Lifelong imprisonment in one room at her castle in Cea Cici.
00:45:51Elizabeth Bartori's lands were confiscated and divided up among various Hungarian nobles.
00:45:56Thurzo had triumphed.
00:46:00Her imprisonment would last for three years.
00:46:03In late August 1614, the bloody Countess was found lying face down on the floor of this same row.
00:46:10Dead at 54.
00:46:11History Night concludes after the break on Discovery Channel when we're heading to the Lebanon
00:46:20to learn how an act of terrorism brought the world a new weapon.
00:46:23At the end of World War II, 1,200 citizens from the city of Weimar were rounded up
00:46:36and ordered into the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.
00:46:40The U.S. Army wanted them to witness a horrifying collection of artefacts
00:46:45found among thousands of dying prisoners.
00:46:51There are two heads which have been shrunk to one-fifth their normal size.
00:46:55These and other exhibits of Nazi origin are shown to the townspeople.
00:46:58On a table for all to gaze upon is a lampshade made of human skin
00:47:03made at the request of an SS officer's wife.
00:47:07That officer's wife was Ilse Koch.
00:47:10Her husband was the commander of Buchenwald.
00:47:14Together, they presided over the camp in which 100,000 people died.
00:47:18She would personally select prisoners, sentence them to death,
00:47:26and force fellow inmates to decorate their skins for her amusement.
00:47:30She was even worse than some of those first.
00:47:34She used to, uh, she was a scientist, used to enjoy it.
00:47:39She was known as the bitch of Buchenwald.
00:47:48Born in rural Saxony in 1906,
00:48:05Ilse Kohler was the daughter of a labourer.
00:48:08Little is known of her modest upbringing,
00:48:11but by the age of 15, she was working at a cigarette factory.
00:48:15She was not terribly well educated by the standards of the time.
00:48:18She was lucky to receive the job at the tobacco company as a clerk typist,
00:48:24and that's what she was doing in 1932,
00:48:27about the time that Hitler begins his rise to power.
00:48:31The young Ilse was instantly attracted to the hardline politics of the far right.
00:48:37She joined the party in April 1932,
00:48:41and that's a fairly early date.
00:48:42A lot of people joined the party in the late 30s.
00:48:46Ever ambitious.
00:48:47Ilse became a Nazi secretary.
00:48:51She was singled out by Himmler, head of the SS,
00:48:54for marriage to a friend of his, Karl Koch.
00:49:00Koch was widely known for his sadistic tendencies
00:49:02as commander of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
00:49:06Himmler liked Koch and viewed him as a protege,
00:49:19viewed him in many ways as a model concentration camp commander,
00:49:23often held him up to other commanders as the one to emulate.
00:49:27They were the perfect Nazi couple.
00:49:32One evening in 1936, the couple married in a grove of oak trees.
00:49:38Ilse was 30, Karl 10 years older.
00:49:41His new bride didn't mind Karl's reputation as a cruel disciplinarian.
00:49:47She believed in her husband
00:49:48and was proud to have risen from the working classes to the Nazi elite.
00:49:52In 1937, Karl was appointed commandant of a new concentration camp
00:50:02and SS training center at Buchenwald.
00:50:05She and her husband Karl Koch arrived when the camp opened in July 1937
00:50:11as the brand-new commander of a brand-new camp.
00:50:17Buchenwald was one of the first and largest incarceration facilities in Nazi Germany.
00:50:23It was a hostile, isolated place on the outskirts of Weimar.
00:50:32The camp held up to 10,000 male prisoners.
00:50:36They were a mixture of Jews, Russians, Eastern Europeans and political opponents.
00:50:41The weak were killed and the healthy worked to death.
00:50:47The camp was for hard labor, not extermination.
00:50:51Unlike Auschwitz, gas chambers weren't needed.
00:50:55Life expectancy was three months.
00:50:59As the wife of the commandant,
00:51:01Ilse led a life of luxury and privilege with her two children.
00:51:05All around her, brutality and degradation thrived.
00:51:09Although she had no official rank in the camp,
00:51:13she enjoyed the power that came with her position.
00:51:17She took it on herself to mingle in the camp's running and affairs.
00:51:22And it was that process that gave her the nickname among the prisoners of Kamanduz,
00:51:30the woman commander.
00:51:34The prisoners were ruled by fear.
00:51:37Life was worthless and murder a daily occurrence.
00:51:40I think Ilse Koch was drawn into that.
00:51:45I think along with her husband,
00:51:47she began to believe that they could punish Germany's enemies in any form,
00:51:52however humiliating, however degrading it might be.
00:51:55In fact, the more humiliating, the better.
00:51:58Imagine a system where the rule of law does not prevail,
00:52:01where in concentration camps there are no laws other than the laws
00:52:07which are the whim of the people running the place.
00:52:13Terrifying.
00:52:14But perhaps for the people actually running the place,
00:52:20exhilarating.
00:52:20As the prisoners lived in fear of their lives,
00:52:25the Kochs lived in luxury.
00:52:28They built their dream home just outside the perimeter fence.
00:52:34The officers lived on a street just outside a camp.
00:52:38They called it Officer's Row.
00:52:40Rather comfortable existence with a row of what were called villas.
00:52:44The biggest villa was the Koch Villa,
00:52:47where Ilse lived during this whole time.
00:52:50So for her,
00:52:51it was something very special and extraordinary
00:52:54to live in a big house with even servants,
00:52:58that meant prisoners from the camp,
00:53:01doing everything for her.
00:53:03As the commandant's wife,
00:53:05Ilse began to revel in the power she held over her prisoner slaves.
00:53:11Well, some prisoners, for example,
00:53:13would park in the garden or even in her kitchen.
00:53:17And the reports say that
00:53:18it was always unclear what would happen in the next moment.
00:53:23Whether she would feel fine
00:53:24and everything is done well from her perspective.
00:53:28Or whether she would say
00:53:29the person didn't fulfill his duties
00:53:33as a slave to her household.
00:53:36And then she could easily say
00:53:37he should be punished back in the camp.
00:53:39She liked prisoners to dress her as Gnädige Frau,
00:53:44which means gracious lady,
00:53:46a kind of term that would have been used
00:53:48to the nobility in the 18th or 19th century.
00:53:52To go with this title,
00:53:54Ilse enjoyed aristocratic pursuits.
00:53:56Early in the camp's history,
00:54:00a special riding hall was built.
00:54:02The Buchenwald report says
00:54:03it probably cost 250,000 marks
00:54:06to build this structure.
00:54:08Thirty prisoners were injured or died
00:54:10in the construction of that riding hall.
00:54:12And it was mainly for her own personal use.
00:54:15And as a matter of fact,
00:54:16she took daily lessons there
00:54:18or daily exercise rides
00:54:19at some points accompanied by music.
00:54:22So a band was there to play for her,
00:54:26creating an atmosphere
00:54:27a little bit like a circus.
00:54:30This exorbitant lifestyle
00:54:32was paid for by money
00:54:33the couple stole from prisoners.
00:54:37Ilse enjoyed dominating the inmates.
00:54:40As one of few women at an all-male camp,
00:54:43she would mock the dying prisoners
00:54:44with her sexuality.
00:54:46She loved clothes.
00:54:47She loved to wear provocative clothing.
00:54:49There's a lot of accounts
00:54:50about her wearing short skirts
00:54:53and tight blouses.
00:54:54In effect, exhibiting herself
00:54:56to the prisoners and the guards.
00:54:59She had an ongoing quarrel
00:55:01with several of the officer's wives.
00:55:03And I think became increasingly
00:55:05an isolated figure among them
00:55:06because she was so different
00:55:08from the rest and so showy.
00:55:10She would be lying in bed
00:55:12with the nightgown on
00:55:14or very, very flimsy clothing
00:55:15and ask the male prisoners
00:55:17to come and serve her
00:55:18to bring her food and other things.
00:55:21And obviously she wanted
00:55:22to show herself off.
00:55:23She wanted her body
00:55:24to be seen by these prisoners.
00:55:26So she liked to tease.
00:55:30Unlike other German women,
00:55:32Ilse didn't have to do any housework.
00:55:34In the Nazi ideal home,
00:55:36a housewife would spend
00:55:38a great deal of her day on chores.
00:55:41But if you live in a really
00:55:43privileged household,
00:55:45and of course the SS was
00:55:47the aristocracy in Nazi Germany,
00:55:49then you don't have these chores.
00:55:52And so all you can really do
00:55:55is amuse yourself.
00:55:58And different people amuse themselves
00:56:00in different ways.
00:56:01Some may read, listen to music,
00:56:05and others may go out
00:56:06and view concentration camp prisoners
00:56:09being put through their paces.
00:56:11She was interested
00:56:12in watching the punishments
00:56:14and did take part in that
00:56:16and often ordered prisoners
00:56:18to be punished.
00:56:19One time when a work detail
00:56:21went by the Koch Villa,
00:56:23she ordered them punished
00:56:24because some of the men
00:56:26had stared at her.
00:56:29Ironically enough,
00:56:29she wanted them to stare at her,
00:56:31and that was the whole point
00:56:32of the provocative clothing.
00:56:34But any male prisoner
00:56:35who dared stare
00:56:36at the commandant's wife
00:56:37often had lashes or punishment,
00:56:40or perhaps even sent
00:56:41to the cell block,
00:56:42which often meant death.
00:56:46With time on her hands,
00:56:48she looked to the camp
00:56:49for entertainment.
00:56:51New prisoners had to spend
00:56:52their first night
00:56:53standing naked in the square.
00:56:55One of the famous stories
00:56:57in the Buchenwald report
00:56:58is that she and some officers' wives
00:57:00went to watch male prisoners
00:57:03who were standing naked
00:57:04at roll call
00:57:05and apparently took great interest
00:57:07in what she saw.
00:57:09Temperatures could go down
00:57:10to 20 centigrade minus,
00:57:14lots of snow,
00:57:16and even then,
00:57:17prisoners would have to stay
00:57:18on the roll call place
00:57:19sometimes for hours,
00:57:21not only to be counted,
00:57:23but also to punish.
00:57:25And some really decided
00:57:26better to run into
00:57:27the electric fence
00:57:29and to commit suicide
00:57:30to survive under these conditions.
00:57:33While starving prisoners
00:57:37were committing suicide,
00:57:39the cocks went short of nothing.
00:57:43At one point,
00:57:44several prisoners
00:57:45went into her cellar
00:57:46and they were supposed
00:57:48to shovel coal.
00:57:50And they happened to see
00:57:51that there were rows
00:57:52of bottles of wine
00:57:54and champagne.
00:57:55There were hams.
00:57:57There were other kinds
00:57:58of foodstuffs
00:57:59that were extremely scarce.
00:58:00prisoners and I think
00:58:01the prisoners were shocked
00:58:02when they discovered that.
00:58:05Yes, I sometimes used to
00:58:06look out through the fence
00:58:09and seeing sometimes
00:58:11civilian people pass
00:58:13and I thought to myself,
00:58:14these people are free.
00:58:16They eat,
00:58:18they're human beings
00:58:20and we were treated
00:58:22as subhumans.
00:58:24As the Nazi war machine
00:58:25became bogged down
00:58:26on the Eastern Front,
00:58:28Ilse was treating
00:58:29her death camp
00:58:30like a playground.
00:58:32This was only the beginning
00:58:33of Ilse's terror.
00:58:35There was a far more
00:58:36gruesome side to her
00:58:37that was about
00:58:38to be unleashed.
00:58:42Ilse Koch,
00:58:43the camp commandant's wife,
00:58:45was so feared
00:58:46by the prisoners
00:58:46that she was known
00:58:47as the bitch
00:58:48of Buchenwald.
00:58:51New arrivals
00:58:52quickly learnt
00:58:53why she was called
00:58:54the bitch.
00:58:56We arrived in Buchenwald
00:58:58half dead,
00:59:00hardly walking.
00:59:01This has allowed us
00:59:03to go in for a shower
00:59:04and then they disinfected us
00:59:07with disinfectant powder
00:59:09and then we got
00:59:10some clothes on
00:59:11and I was put
00:59:14into a barrack
00:59:16with some Russian
00:59:16prisoners of war.
00:59:18Well, everybody
00:59:19was talking about it
00:59:20and some of the prisoners,
00:59:24you know,
00:59:24when they passed
00:59:25the square,
00:59:27the big square,
00:59:28they were terrified
00:59:30because she could
00:59:31lash out
00:59:32just at anybody.
00:59:35Ilse wasn't content
00:59:36with the daily physical
00:59:38and mental abuse
00:59:39she dished out
00:59:40to prisoners.
00:59:41Her bullying
00:59:42took a much
00:59:43darker twist.
00:59:45Dr. Wagner
00:59:45was one of the
00:59:47camp doctors
00:59:47with whom
00:59:48Ilse was friendly.
00:59:50She apparently
00:59:50had several friends
00:59:51among the camp doctors
00:59:52and he needed
00:59:54to do a dissertation.
00:59:55The topic
00:59:56for his dissertation
00:59:57was tattooing.
00:59:59He was supposed
00:59:59to find out
01:00:00if tattooing
01:00:01was an indicator
01:00:01of criminal behavior
01:00:02and so began
01:00:04the project
01:00:05of collecting
01:00:05tattoos from
01:00:07the skin
01:00:08of prisoners.
01:00:09It was the wife
01:00:10of the commandant
01:00:11it was Ilse Cook
01:00:12who suggested
01:00:12the project
01:00:13and suggested
01:00:14collecting
01:00:15the tattooed skin.
01:00:17Ilse used
01:00:19this study
01:00:19to create
01:00:20one of the most
01:00:21enduring
01:00:22and revolting works
01:00:23of the Third Reich.
01:00:24She began
01:00:25using prisoners' skin
01:00:27to make lampshades
01:00:28and book covers.
01:00:30She preferred
01:00:32to choose
01:00:32her victims
01:00:33personally.
01:00:33the prisoners
01:00:35alleged
01:00:36that she would
01:00:37go to places
01:00:38like the quarry
01:00:39on horseback
01:00:40and watch them
01:00:41work
01:00:41often without
01:00:42shirts on
01:00:43and that she
01:00:44would identify
01:00:45a prisoner
01:00:45with an interesting
01:00:46tattoo
01:00:47write his number
01:00:48down
01:00:48a day or two
01:00:49later
01:00:50that prisoner
01:00:50would end up
01:00:51dead.
01:00:52When we arrived
01:00:53in Buchenwald
01:00:54from Auschwitz
01:00:55we were a bit
01:00:57worried
01:00:57because
01:00:58we heard
01:01:01that people
01:01:02who came
01:01:03with numbers
01:01:04from Auschwitz
01:01:04and Ram
01:01:05if she liked
01:01:06the numbers
01:01:07she used to
01:01:08send them
01:01:09into the place
01:01:09to have it
01:01:10cut out
01:01:10and put it
01:01:12on the lampshades.
01:01:15Ilse commandeered
01:01:16the camp workshops
01:01:16to produce
01:01:17these artifacts.
01:01:20Prisoners
01:01:20were forced
01:01:21to decorate
01:01:21the skins
01:01:22of their dead
01:01:23comrades.
01:01:25Apparently
01:01:25many of the
01:01:26objects of human
01:01:27skin
01:01:27were given
01:01:27away as gifts
01:01:28and there
01:01:30was a special
01:01:30workshop
01:01:31an artist
01:01:32studio
01:01:33actually
01:01:33at Buchenwald.
01:01:35They bound
01:01:35books
01:01:36and they
01:01:36created works
01:01:37of art
01:01:38many of which
01:01:39are shipped
01:01:39to other camps.
01:01:43The Buchenwald
01:01:43doctors
01:01:44were indulging
01:01:45in other
01:01:46bizarre experimentation.
01:01:49The pathology
01:01:49lab had
01:01:50several shrunken
01:01:51heads.
01:01:52Why they prepared
01:01:53them is hard
01:01:54to imagine.
01:01:55There's something
01:01:56barbaric
01:01:57about that
01:01:58too.
01:01:58But apparently
01:01:59one of the
01:01:59camp doctors
01:02:00had read
01:02:00about how
01:02:01South Sea
01:02:02Islanders
01:02:02did this.
01:02:03He decided
01:02:04to try it
01:02:04on a prisoner.
01:02:06These heads
01:02:07were said
01:02:08to have
01:02:08decorated
01:02:09Ilse's dining
01:02:10room
01:02:10where she
01:02:11entertained
01:02:12guests
01:02:12and played
01:02:13with her
01:02:13children.
01:02:16For those
01:02:17who didn't
01:02:17witness these
01:02:18macabre
01:02:19objects,
01:02:20their existence
01:02:20seems hard
01:02:21to believe.
01:02:23Frankly,
01:02:23if I didn't
01:02:24know what
01:02:24else went
01:02:25on at the
01:02:25camp at
01:02:26the same
01:02:26time,
01:02:27I too
01:02:27might doubt
01:02:28it.
01:02:28But having
01:02:29seen examples
01:02:30of medical
01:02:31experiments
01:02:31where they
01:02:33took organs
01:02:33out of
01:02:34living prisoners,
01:02:35where they
01:02:36had the
01:02:36typhus
01:02:37block and
01:02:37they
01:02:38experimented
01:02:38with typhus,
01:02:40where they
01:02:40operated on
01:02:41homosexuals to
01:02:42change their
01:02:42sexual orientation,
01:02:44where they
01:02:44burned
01:02:45prisoners with
01:02:46phosphorus
01:02:46to see how
01:02:48to treat
01:02:48phosphorus wounds,
01:02:49where they
01:02:50shot prisoners
01:02:51with poison
01:02:51bullets,
01:02:53when all of
01:02:53these things
01:02:54are going
01:02:54on at
01:02:55Buchenwald
01:02:55camp as
01:02:56a matter
01:02:57of routine
01:02:57business,
01:02:58then the
01:02:59existence of
01:03:00these skins
01:03:00in the
01:03:00pathology lab
01:03:02is not
01:03:02so unusual.
01:03:05The prisoners
01:03:05who weren't
01:03:06victims of
01:03:07experiments
01:03:07faced a
01:03:08battle for
01:03:09survival.
01:03:11On a
01:03:12Sunday,
01:03:12we used to
01:03:13get two
01:03:14boiled potatoes
01:03:15and jackets
01:03:16and
01:03:18I
01:03:19couldn't
01:03:20eat the
01:03:20peels
01:03:21because
01:03:21they
01:03:21used to
01:03:21burn
01:03:22me.
01:03:23I was
01:03:23very thin,
01:03:24just like
01:03:25a skeleton
01:03:25and
01:03:26as I
01:03:27started
01:03:28peeling,
01:03:29some
01:03:29Hungarian
01:03:30Jews
01:03:30came in
01:03:30and held
01:03:31their hand
01:03:31underneath
01:03:32as I
01:03:33was peeling
01:03:33and taking
01:03:34the peels
01:03:35and eating
01:03:35it and
01:03:36I felt
01:03:37somehow,
01:03:39I've never
01:03:41felt so
01:03:41bad.
01:03:42Here I'm
01:03:42starving
01:03:43and here
01:03:44the people
01:03:45taking my
01:03:46peels
01:03:46to eat
01:03:48just to
01:03:48try to
01:03:49survive.
01:03:51It was
01:03:51a very
01:03:52pathetic
01:03:53situation.
01:03:57In total
01:03:58contrast to
01:03:59the emaciated
01:04:00prisoners,
01:04:01the high
01:04:01living
01:04:02Kochs
01:04:02stepped up
01:04:03their
01:04:03racketeering.
01:04:04They stole
01:04:05gold teeth
01:04:06and jewellery
01:04:06from the
01:04:07prisoners
01:04:07and deposited
01:04:08the plunder
01:04:09in secret
01:04:10Swiss
01:04:10bank
01:04:10accounts.
01:04:11Her husband
01:04:15and she
01:04:15were trying
01:04:17to grab
01:04:17as much
01:04:18as they
01:04:18could
01:04:18from their
01:04:19position.
01:04:20That means
01:04:21they also
01:04:21came into
01:04:22conflict
01:04:22with rules
01:04:23of the
01:04:23SS itself.
01:04:25I think
01:04:25one of the
01:04:26key
01:04:27factors in
01:04:28the fall
01:04:29of the
01:04:29Kochs
01:04:30is that
01:04:30many of the
01:04:31campguards
01:04:31witnessed this
01:04:33corruption
01:04:33and resented
01:04:34it to some
01:04:35extent
01:04:35that the
01:04:37Kochs
01:04:37were using
01:04:38embezzled
01:04:39funds
01:04:39to enjoy
01:04:40a very
01:04:41lavish
01:04:41lifestyle.
01:04:42He bought
01:04:42a big
01:04:43car,
01:04:43he bought
01:04:43a boat,
01:04:44bought a
01:04:45house on
01:04:45the lake,
01:04:46all this
01:04:47on a
01:04:47salary that
01:04:48was a
01:04:49modest
01:04:49salary,
01:04:49at least
01:04:50officially.
01:04:51People
01:04:51began to
01:04:51ask
01:04:52questions,
01:04:52where is
01:04:52the money
01:04:53coming
01:04:53from?
01:04:56In
01:04:561942,
01:04:57the couple
01:04:58were charged
01:04:58with corruption
01:04:59by an
01:05:00SS court.
01:05:03Karl
01:05:03took the
01:05:04blame and
01:05:04was sent
01:05:05to run
01:05:05a Polish
01:05:05extermination
01:05:06camp to
01:05:07be sentenced
01:05:07at a
01:05:07later date.
01:05:09Ilse Koch
01:05:12was acquitted
01:05:13of charges
01:05:14of misuse
01:05:14of funds,
01:05:16although her
01:05:16involvement,
01:05:17I think her
01:05:17involvement is
01:05:18clear by her
01:05:19being included
01:05:19in the trial
01:05:20in the first
01:05:20place,
01:05:21that many
01:05:22SS officers
01:05:23believed that
01:05:24she did take
01:05:25part in running
01:05:25the camp and
01:05:26certainly knew
01:05:28about many of
01:05:28the corrupt
01:05:29elements of the
01:05:30Koch administration.
01:05:33Ilse remained
01:05:34at the camp.
01:05:35With her husband
01:05:36out of the
01:05:36picture, she
01:05:37sought male
01:05:38allies.
01:05:40She had
01:05:40affairs with
01:05:41several high
01:05:41ranking
01:05:42SS officers.
01:05:43Some of the
01:05:44men worked
01:05:44outside the
01:05:46fence and
01:05:46the SS
01:05:48barracks and
01:05:49so on.
01:05:49And they
01:05:50brought back
01:05:51stories also
01:05:51about her
01:05:52sexuality and
01:05:55that she was
01:05:56going with
01:05:57all different
01:05:57SS men and
01:05:59officers.
01:06:00soldiers.
01:06:02In 1944,
01:06:04Karl returned to
01:06:05Buchenwald to
01:06:06face trial for
01:06:06corruption.
01:06:08Torture and
01:06:09murder was
01:06:09nothing compared
01:06:10to ripping off
01:06:11the Reich.
01:06:12On a cold
01:06:13morning in
01:06:14April 1945,
01:06:16Karl was taken
01:06:17outside and
01:06:18shot in the
01:06:20yard of his
01:06:20own camp.
01:06:22As the
01:06:23Russians
01:06:23advanced and
01:06:24the Third Reich
01:06:25began to
01:06:25crumble,
01:06:26Ilse realized
01:06:27her days of
01:06:28indulgence were
01:06:29over.
01:06:30She attempted
01:06:31to melt back
01:06:32into the
01:06:32German population
01:06:33and joined
01:06:34thousands heading
01:06:35westwards looking
01:06:36for safety from
01:06:37the Allies.
01:06:37on the 10th of
01:06:41April 1945,
01:06:43the U.S.
01:06:43army entered
01:06:44Buchenwald.
01:06:45The camp was
01:06:46built to house
01:06:478,000.
01:06:48The population
01:06:49had swelled to
01:06:50ten times that
01:06:51number.
01:06:54A hundred
01:06:54thousand people
01:06:55had died at the
01:06:56camp in seven
01:06:57years.
01:06:59Well, the
01:06:59American
01:07:00liberators, when
01:07:01they first walked
01:07:01into the camp,
01:07:02were shocked by
01:07:03what they saw.
01:07:04They were
01:07:04absolutely stunned.
01:07:06Many of the
01:07:07prisoners were
01:07:08walking skeletons.
01:07:09They had been so
01:07:10systematically starved
01:07:11that they had
01:07:13no body fat
01:07:15left.
01:07:16One of the
01:07:17French generals
01:07:18told the
01:07:19Americans that
01:07:20he normally
01:07:21weighed 170
01:07:22pounds, and
01:07:24he weighed at
01:07:24that time
01:07:2585 pounds.
01:07:27They found
01:07:28corpses lying
01:07:29around, beside
01:07:30the crematorium,
01:07:31for example,
01:07:32and lots of
01:07:33people stuck in
01:07:34these overcrowded
01:07:35barracks in the
01:07:36little camp.
01:07:38This was so
01:07:39shocking for them
01:07:40that General
01:07:41Patton ordered
01:07:41that the people
01:07:43from Weimar,
01:07:44more than
01:07:441,000, mostly
01:07:46Nazi party
01:07:47members, should
01:07:48be sent up
01:07:49here to see
01:07:50what happened
01:07:50up here.
01:07:521,200 civilians
01:07:53walked from the
01:07:54neighboring city of
01:07:55Weimar to begin
01:07:55a forced tour of
01:07:56the camp.
01:07:57There are many
01:07:57smiling faces, and
01:07:58according to
01:07:59observers, at
01:08:00first the Germans
01:08:01act as though this
01:08:01was something being
01:08:02staged for their
01:08:03benefit.
01:08:03On a table for
01:08:05all to gaze upon
01:08:05is a lampshade
01:08:06made of human
01:08:07skin, made at
01:08:08the request of
01:08:09an SS officer's
01:08:10wife.
01:08:12The camera records
01:08:13the changes in
01:08:13facial expressions
01:08:14as the Weimar
01:08:15citizens leave
01:08:16the parchment
01:08:16display.
01:08:17But the liberated
01:08:20prisoners hadn't
01:08:20forgotten Ilse
01:08:21Koch.
01:08:23She was finally
01:08:24caught and
01:08:25imprisoned in
01:08:251947.
01:08:28She went for
01:08:29trial whilst
01:08:30pregnant by a
01:08:30fellow inmate.
01:08:35Ilse was
01:08:35charged with
01:08:36personally selecting
01:08:37prisoners for
01:08:38murder.
01:08:40A gruesome
01:08:40selection of
01:08:41skins and
01:08:41shrunken heads
01:08:42were shown to
01:08:43the court.
01:08:45She denied
01:08:46everything.
01:08:47claimed she had
01:08:48been framed by
01:08:49the Allies.
01:08:50Crowds gathered
01:08:51outside the
01:08:52courtroom, calling
01:08:53for her
01:08:53execution.
01:08:55She was
01:08:56sentenced to
01:08:57life imprisonment.
01:09:01By 1967, Ilse
01:09:04had been in
01:09:04prison for 24
01:09:05years.
01:09:06During this time,
01:09:07she'd shown no
01:09:08remorse or sorrow
01:09:09for her crimes.
01:09:11On the 1st of
01:09:12September, she
01:09:13knotted some
01:09:14bedsheets together
01:09:15and hanged
01:09:15herself.
01:09:17she was 61
01:09:18years old.
01:09:20In a final
01:09:21letter, she'd
01:09:21written,
01:09:22there is now
01:09:23no other way
01:09:24for me.
01:09:26Death is the
01:09:27only deliverance.
01:09:32And History Night
01:09:33continues after the
01:09:34break as we learn
01:09:34how the decadent
01:09:35behaviour of royals
01:09:36such as Henry VIII
01:09:37have turned them
01:09:38into a laughing stock.
01:09:39in a laughing stock.