Ilse Koch may not be as famous as the Holocaust's ringleaders, but she was every bit as evil.

The stories of Gisella Perl and Stanislawa Leszczyńska highlight one vital aspect of human nature: Our ability to persevere and care for others in even the most harrowing and cruel of circumstances.

But the Holocaust also presented many opportunities for humanity’s terrible dark side to run wild, as well. While Adolf Hitler , Josef Mengele , and Heinrich Himmler are rightly remembered as its figureheads, there were others just as villainous, but their names didn’t quite make the history books.

One of these individuals was Ilse Koch, whose sadism and barbarism would lead to her to receive the nickname “The Bitch of Buchenwald.”

Ilse Koch, born Margarete Ilse Köhler, was born in Dresden,

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