Margarete Ilse Köhler met her future husband, Karl Otto Koch, through the The National Socialist German Workers' Party. They were married in 1936. The following year, Karl was made Commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. It was one of the first and largest of the camps, opened shortly after Dachau.
Woody Guthrie wrote the words and Lorin Sklamberg, of the Klezmatics, the music to "Ilsa Koch". An ironic song about Ilse Koch operations in the Buchenwald camp and her appearance at the General Military Government Court for the Trial of War Criminals in 1947.