Grese was among the 45 people accused of war crimes at the Belsen Trial which was held in Lüneburg, Lower Saxony. She was tried over the first period of the trials (17 September – 17 November 1945) and was represented by Major L. Cranfield. The trials were conducted under British military law, based on charges derived from the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding the treatment of prisoners. The accusations against her centred on her ill-treatment and murder of those imprisoned at the camps. Survivors provided detailed testimony of cruelties; they also claimed that she beat some women using a plaited whip. Under direct examination, Irma Grese testified about her background: I was born on 7 October 1923. In 1938 I left the elementary school and worked for six months on agricultural jobs at a farm, after which I worked in a shop in Lychen for six months. When I was 15 I went to a hospital in Hohenlychen, where I stayed for two years. I tried to become a nurse but the Labor Exchange would not allow that and sent me to work in a dairy in Fürstenberg. In July 1942, I tried again to become a nurse, but the Labour Exchange sent me to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, although I protested against it. I stayed there until March 1943, when I went to Birkenau Camp in Auschwitz. I remained in Auschwitz until January 1945. During the trial, the press labelled Grese as "the Beautiful Beast" alongside former SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Kramer ("the Beast of Belsen"), the former commandant at Birkenau. After a nine-week trial, Grese was sentenced to death by hanging. Although the charges against some of the other female warders (a total of 16 were charged) were as serious as those against Grese, she was one of only three female guards to be sentenced to death. Execution Grese and two other concentration camp workers, Johanna Bormann and Elisabeth Volkenrath, were convicted, along with eight men, for crimes committed at Auschwitz and Belsen, and sentenced to death. As the verdicts were read, Grese was the only prisoner to remain defiant. Her subsequent appeal was rejected. According to Wendy Adele-Marie Sarti, the night before her execution, Grese sang Nazi songs until the early hours of the morning with Johanna Bormann. On 13 December 1945, in Hamelin Prison, Grese was led to the gallows. The women were executed individually by long-drop hanging and