Ilse Koch - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The commandant in Lina Wertmüller's film Seven Beauties was based on Koch, as was the title character of the 1974 Nazi exploitation film Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

Some scholars contend that the character of Hanna Schmitz, played by English actress Kate Winslet in the critically acclaimed film The Reader, is also vaguely based on Ilse Koch. Bernhard Schlink, the author of the novel on which the film is based, has denied this.

Richard Zimler's The Warsaw Anagrams takes place in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940–41. The mystery plot involves a link to Ilse Koch and her murderous activities.

Woody Guthrie wrote "Ilsa Koch", a song about her abuses in Buchenwald, her imprisonment and release; it was recorded by The Klezmatics.

The American speed metal band At war recorded the song "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS", based both in the film of the same name and on the character of Ilse Koch.

Read more about this topic:  Ilse Koch

Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:

    “Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
    —F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    “It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)