Ilse Koch was a German war criminal notorious for her cruelty at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where her husband Karl Otto Koch was commandant from 1937 to 1941. She was known as the "Witch of Buchenwald" and accused of sadistic acts including beating prisoners, ordering prisoners with "interesting" tattoos to be killed, and allegations that she had prisoners killed to make items like lampshades and book covers from their tattooed skin. Although these horrific allegations gained worldwide media attention during her 1947 trial, the most extreme claims about making items from human skin were ultimately found to lack solid proof in her legal trials. Nonetheless, she remains remembered as one of the most infamous and cruel figures associated with Nazi concentration camps. Ilse Koch died by suicide in 1967 while serving a life sentence for war crimes.