Frau Ilse Koch

"The real complaining party at your bar is civilization," said Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the opening of the war crimes trials. Since the world could not survive a repition of the crimes of the Nazis, it could not afford to ignore them. The American Military Government in Germany did worse than ignore them last week. It minimized them. It reduced the sentence of Frau Ilse Koch from life imprisonment to four years.

Frau Koch, widow of a former Buchenwald commandant, is known as the Bitch of Buchenwald. At her trial she was convicted of having prisoners beaten to death, of using their skins as lampshades and other ornaments, and of taking part in the common design of cruelty in the camp. The most damaging testimony was presented by her own defense witnesses.

That is not all. One of her prosecutors has made public his notes since the reduction of her sentence. He described her as depraved and a Nazi sadist. Because of the limitations of time only a small part of the evidence against her was presented at the trial. No mention was made of her sexual depravity which could be described only as maniacal. She escaped the death penalty because she conceived an illegitimate child during her internment. She is an incredibly amoral woman.

She will be free a year from now.

Frau Koch will not be alone next year. Hjalmar Schacht has been released. There is no counting the former Nazis now honeycombing the German bureaucracy. Denazification has been handed over to the Germans. This sort of carelessness bankrupts our program for the rehabilitation of Germany.

Perhaps involvement in the very real complexities of cold war has blinded General Clay to other problems. If the Military Government has forgotten the reason that there is an American army in Germany, they must be reminded, and the rest of the world reassured. Congress should appoint a committee to investigate the entire punitive and denazification program. If the Congress does not act the President should create his own executive committee.

Civilization is still the complaining party. And cold war or no, Fascism is still in the dock.