The passage discusses the lives of three people known for their cruelty and brutality.
1. Madame Delphine LaLaurie: A wealthy socialite in 19th-century New Orleans who tortured and brutally treated her slaves, including chaining them to the stove, mutilating their bodies, and forcing them to wear iron collars with spikes. When a fire broke out in her mansion, responders found charred bodies and mutilated slaves, leading to an investigation and LaLaurie's eventual flight to France.
2. Dr. Shiro Ishii: A Japanese microbiologist who conducted inhumane experiments on prisoners during World War II. He used soldiers and civilians as test subjects, infecting them with diseases like the bubonic plague and subjecting them to extreme cold. He also forced women to become pregnant so he could experiment on them and their unborn children.
3. Ilse Koch: A German woman who, along with her husband, oversaw the Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II. She was known for her sadistic behavior, including whipping prisoners, stealing their belongings, and removing tattoos from their skin without anesthesia. She was eventually arrested, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, she was released in 1949, sparking protests in Germany. She was later retried and sentenced to life imprisonment again, which led to her psychological downfall and eventual suicide in 1967.
1. Madame Lalaurie was born in March 1775.
2. She was a member of a family of French aristocrats.
3. Madame Lalaurie moved to New Orleans in the United States in her childhood and youth.
4. She was married three times and her surname "Lalaurie" came from her third and last marriage with Doctor Leonardo Nicolay in 1831.
5. Madame Lalaurie was known for financing America's parties in its formation.
6. Guests at her parties began to notice that there was something wrong with the slaves in the house.
7. A 12-year-old slave girl named Lia jumped to her death from the roof to avoid Madame Lalaurie's abuse.
8. The incident caught the attention of the authorities, who started an investigation into Madame Lalaurie's household.
9. Nine slaves disappeared under Madame Lalaurie's care, but the case against her didn't go any further.
10. Two years later, Madame Lalaurie's home was revealed to have slaves chained to the stove, mutilated, and subjected to various forms of torture.
11. Madame Lalaurie fled to France, where she died in 1842.
12. Dr. Shiro Ishii was a Japanese microbiologist who worked on biological and chemical weapons between the first and second world wars.
13. Dr. Ishii was invited by the Japanese army to be the chief of Unit 731, a secret organ for experiments and research.
14. Dr. Ishii used captured soldiers as guinea pigs for his experiments.
15. He infected prisoners with bubonic plague and forced women to become pregnant to use them as test subjects.
16. Dr. Ishii conducted experiments on prisoners, including freezing parts of their bodies and compromising local cellular tissues.
17. Dr. Ishii planned to attack the United States with the bacteria yersinia pestis but was prevented from doing so due to Japan's surrender.
18. Dr. Ishii was not taken to court-martial and instead made an agreement to exchange information about his experiments.
19. Dr. Ishii passed away in 1959 at the age of 67 due to laryngeal cancer.
20. Ilse Koch was a German woman who joined the German National Labor Party in 1922 and married General SS Karl Koch.
21. Ilse Koch worked as a secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and later became the first female commander at the Buchenwald camp.
22. Ilse Koch was known for her cruelty and sadism, including torturing prisoners, forcing them to remove tattoos, and using their skin for lampshades and other objects.
23. Ilse Koch was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and acquitted in 1945.
24. Ilse Koch was arrested again in 1945 and sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1950s.
25. Ilse Koch killed herself on September 1, 1967, at the age of 60.