Content:
„You have to understand to go with the times“ ‚ this is how the young Ilse Koehler justifies joining the NSDAP in1932. She meets Colonel Karl Koch and in 1937 moves to Ettersberg, a lovely hill near Weimar on which Goethe once wrote „Wanderers Nachtlied“. Here Koch becomes the commander of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The years spent in the „Villa Koch“, which was located directly next to the concentration camp, are later described by Ilse Koch as „the best times“ of her life; times of abundance marked by a luxurious and dissipated way of life.
In 1951 the „Commanderess“ – this is what the prisoners called her as a result of her cruel and unpredictable behaviour at the camp ‚ was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment for inciting manslaughter and murder. In post-war Germany Ilse Koch filled the headlines as the „Bitch of Buchenwald“ and even after 22 years‘ imprisonment still claimed: „I can’t remember anything. I never concerned myself with camp matters or politics. I always did my best to be a good wife to my husband and a good mother to my children.“
The production has guested in English in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary.