Free The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski Page A

prisoners were sent to the hospital from work details where Ilse Koch had passed by and seen them,” said Kurte Sitte, who had been a Buchenwald prisoner during the entire war. “These prisoners were killed in the hospital and the tattooing stripped off.”
    Heidenberger, who covered all these testimonies, has no doubt that Koch was guilty of systematic brutality, but was also the subject of unconfirmed rumors. Her reputation as an “oversexed” sadist preceded her trial, and she was particularly hated by the inmates because of the way she flaunted her sexuality and power. When she showed up to testify in her case, the fact that she was obviously pregnant—even though she had been imprisoned since her capture—only added to the inflamed passions in the court. This prompted a scramble among the journalists to find the right nickname for her. According to Heidenberger, a Stars and Stripes reporter rushed into the press room to announce: “I’ve got it. We call her the Bitch of Buchenwald.”
    The name stuck and she became the she-devil of the trials.It didn’t helpher cause that the prosecution also brought in the shrunken head of a Polish prisoner who had reportedly escaped from the camp, and then was captured and executed. According to one of the witnesses, it had been displayed to visitors by the camp authorities. Although the prosecution pointed out that there was no demonstrated connection to Koch, it was admitted as evidence.
    Soloman Surowitz, one of the American lawyers on Denson’s team in the Buchenwald case, became convinced that the uproar over Koch was undermining the whole notion of due process—and he resigned from the case. “I can’t stand it,” he told Denson. “I don’t believe our own witnesses—it’s all hearsay.”
    The two men parted without acrimony, and Denson remained convinced that he had to present the evidence he had, which was strong enough to convict her with or without confirmation of some of the most sensational claims. Koch was sentenced to life imprisonment, but her case would take several more twists and turns as the atmosphere around the war crimes trials began to shift. And, back in the United States later, Denson would find himself on the defensive about Koch, particularly when the stories about lamp shades made of human skin looked increasingly questionable.
    Heidenberger admitted his misgivings about his own role in playing up some of the unverified stories in his articles, contributing to the sensationalized atmosphere around the trial. But he has no doubt that Koch and the other defendants in the Buchenwald case fully merited their guilty verdicts. And despite their flaws, those trials convinced him that he was wrong in his initial belief that the major perpetrators should have faced summary execution instead of a judicial process. “In spite of the legal issues raised by the war crimes trials, they furnished the best and most reliable evidence of what actually happened during the Holocaust,” he concluded.
    In 1952, Heidenberger immigrated to the United States with his wife and two sons. As one of the first German reporters in Washington after the war, he found himself attending Truman’s press conferences in the White House. But he had already studied law in Germany and soon enrolledin George Washington University Law School. After graduating, he launched his legal career in Washington, sometimes representing victims who were seeking reparations from the German government and later as an advisor to the German government on Holocaust cases. Among his early colleagues and mentors was his old friend William Denson.

CHAPTER FOUR
The Penguin Rule
    “His voice was excellently modulated, his hands well-shaped and carefully groomed, and he moved gracefully and self-confidently. The only blemish in the perfection of his personality was that he had killed ninety thousand people.”
    Judge Michael Musmanno, describing defendant Otto Ohlendorf during the trial of the