Nazi human skin lampshades

[Ed Zotti]

The preserving of tattooed skin removed from murdered inmates is not in dispute; samples were displayed at the Nuremberg trial and are held in the National Archive.

[JohnSawyer]

Bottom line seems to be: there's proof some Nazis did skin prisoners, and used the skin for a variety of things (binding books, lining shelves, etc.), and some kept sections of skin alone, as gruesome standalone "mementos", but that reliable evidence that they also specifically made lampshades, is hard to come by. This is just a detail, rather than some kind of proof that "at least they wouldn't go THAT far", since their proven "uses" of human skin--let alone the act itself of removing the skin--are every bit an atrocity as making lampshades out of that skin.

[Ed Zotti]

Originally Posted by JohnSawyer

Bottom line seems to be: there's proof some Nazis did skin prisoners, and used the skin for a variety of things (binding books, lining shelves, etc.), and some kept sections of skin alone, as gruesome standalone "mementos", but that reliable evidence that they also specifically made lampshades, is hard to come by. This is just a detail, rather than some kind of proof that "at least they wouldn't go THAT far", since their proven "uses" of human skin--let alone the act itself of removing the skin--are every bit an atrocity as making lampshades out of that skin.

No one is disputing this general point. The question is whether the Nazis made household goods out of their victims, such as lampshades, soap, etc. These macabre details are what captured the public imagination following the liberation of the camps and came to epitomize Nazi barbarism. So far as is now known, these details are largely a myth. I'm not aware of any instances of Nazis using human skin to bind books or line shelves - I think you're reading too much into that book excerpt. (If you have information to the contrary please cite; the Master may wish to to pursue this further.) This is not in any way an attempt to excuse atrocities, but rather to understand exactly what occurred. For example, the fact that a Nazi judge found the commandant of a death camp guilty of the frivolous murder of two inmates - surely this tells us something about the bizarre bureaucratic mindset at work here: murder had to be done by the book.

[Cayuga]

I just read an article in New York magazine (last week's issue, I think) about an alleged Nazi-made human-skin lampshade. The author had the shade DNA-tested, and it is indisputably human skin.

That said, the shade was bought at a garage sale from someone who looted it post-Katrina from a house in New Orleans. So there's really nothing other the aforementioned rumors to tie it to the Nazi regime.

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by Cayuga

I just read an article in New York magazine (last week's issue, I think) about an alleged Nazi-made human-skin lampshade. The author had the shade DNA-tested, and it is indisputably human skin.

That said, the shade was bought at a garage sale from someone who looted it post-Katrina from a house in New Orleans. So there's really nothing other the aforementioned rumors to tie it to the Nazi regime.

Link to article.

[Irishman]

Interesting. So it's reasonably certain to be a lampshade made of human skin.

We have no history to connect it to Germany or the NAZIs. We have no confirmation of the identity, ethnicity, etc of the victim.

We're left with speculation of whether it is an authentic NAZI artifact, somehow smuggled to the US and kept in secret until Katrina ravaged New Orleans and caused it to turn up. Or whether it was some later artifact created by a Dahmer with a flair of whimsy, or someone inspired by the NAZI lampshade tale.

The craftsmanship is suggestive of a historical source, but not conclusive. Perhaps further investigation could be performed.

Still, it is chilling.

[bonzer]

Originally Posted by Gray Ghost

No info on lampshades, but towards the end of Richard Rhodes's book on the Einsatzgruppen, "Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust," he cites an interview between Gitta Sereny and the children of several high-ranking Nazis (not Goebbels, obviously...)

Presumably a reference to the Sereny article published in Vanity Fair in July 1990 and reprinted in her excellent collection The German Trauma (2000). The relevant passage is on p299 of the UK Penguin paperback.
Grey Ghost's version above is essentially correct. Under other circumstances one might wonder about the reliabilty of childhood testimony, but Sereny is - both famously and notoriously - sensitive to childhood trauma, so one more or less has to acknowledge what she recorded as Martin Bormann Jr.s experience.

The interesting aspect of the account, in terms of the broader question, however seems to me the issue of shame. These are hidden objects, secreted in the attic of Himmler's mistress and only shown by her to supposedly trusted members of the inner circle.
This is actually evidence that even hardened Nazis with access to the highest levels of the party recognised this as weird shit. Ideologically acceptable certainly. but not mainstream behaviour.

[choie]

There's another excellent article about Mark Jacobsen's The Lampshade, including a discussion about the DNA analysis and the (apparently) age / European origin of the frame in the Independent.

Antique experts confirmed that the shade's frame is European (to this day, American lampshades differ markedly in their design) and 60 to 80 years old. It has tassels in Mardi Gras colours; these, they said, were attached more recently.

Dr Robert Bever, Bode's vice-president and head of research, told Jacobson that there are two kinds of DNA in every cell. "He explained that there's nucleotide DNA, which is the full ledger of a human being's hereditary dossier, and something called mitochondrial DNA."

(...) Bever said Bode would attempt, but not guarantee, to identify the mitochondrial DNA, for a fee of $5,000. "The report came back on 20 April 2007," Jacobson says. "It found a 100 per cent probability that the profile was human. Two human profiles were found, one major and one minor."

It was the judgement of the laboratory that the minor profile might be due to handling, but that the major profile was from the lampshade itself. Dr Bever stated that, on this evidence, he would be prepared to appear in court to testify that the lampshade was of human origin. The skin is that of a white person, or persons; the precise ethnicity cannot be ascertained.

On the other hand, the person who allegedly stole the lampshade, Dave Dominici, has some questionable provenance himself:

Dominici, Jacobson discovered, was a substance abuser who had served long sentences for stealing from graveyards. "He told me: 'I am not a nobody. I am the famous cemetery bandit.' In New Orleans," the author explains, "bodies are buried above ground, because of the high water table. Dominici stole marble angels, urns and other works of art, from tombs."

It became clear that Dominici, a fan of Nazi documentaries on the History Channel, had no knowledge of the true nature of the object he had sold to Henderson. He lied repeatedly about where he had obtained the lampshade, eventually admitting that he'd looted it from an abandoned house in Lamanche Street, New Orleans.

I have to say though that I find the attitude of the Holocaust Museum head of collections very odd. (Note: I'm Jewish myself.) She seems determined that it's fake and doesn't want it in the Museum:

When he met Diane Saltzman, then head of collections at the museum, Jacobson recalls, "She said that none of the lampshades that have surfaced over the past 50 years have proved to be real," and maintained that the DNA test "proved nothing".

Saltzman argued, said Jacobson, that what she termed "distractions" such as human lampshades had created "fodder for the Holocaust deniers". She suggested, not unreasonably, that further laboratory tests might precisely date the lampshade's frame or stitching, but the Holocaust Museum, which has a private endowment of almost $200m and annual revenue in the region of $80m a year, declined to assist in the process. "Even if you could document this 100 per cent," Saltzman argued, "it would still be a myth."

Italics are mine. While I understand her reasoning that since lampshades have often been debunked, Deniers use this claim as proof of widespread fakery, an actually true appearance of a lampshade would be an important discovery. And that last line in particular makes no sense to me. Unless she's talking from the deniers' POV. But honestly, I don't think historians should give a rat's ass that deniers will continually deny truth and evidence; if something exists that could be of historical value -- and it seems to me this certainly counts -- it should be researched and, if its origins are uncovered and turns out to be a genuine object, displayed in public.

Anyway, Ed, have you had a chance to read the book yet? I'm curious to know your thoughts or whether this is worth including in an update to the original column?

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by choie

"Even if you could document this 100 per cent," Saltzman argued, "it would still be a myth."

The way I read that, she is saying that even if it is proven to be human skin, there is still no proof that it is skin from a Holocaust victim. Therefore they don't want it in the museum. Seems a reasonable position for a curator.

Especially as the whole theme of a very few purported human skin lampshades, book bindings, shelf liners, etc. seems a distraction from the major point -- that the Nazi government systematically killed 12 million people (about 6,000 per day, every day of the war). That is the point to remember.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by choie

"Even if you could document this 100 per cent," Saltzman argued, "it would still be a myth."

The way I read that, she is saying that even if it is proven to be human skin, there is still no proof that it is skin from a Holocaust victim. Therefore they don't want it in the museum. Seems a reasonable position for a curator.

Especially as the whole theme of a very few purported human skin lampshades, book bindings, shelf liners, etc. seems a distraction from the major point -- that the Nazi government systematically killed 12 million people (about 6,000 per day, every day of the war). That is the point to remember.

[Fear Itself]

<sidebar>

In 1893, John Eugene Osbourne was inaugurated governor of Wyoming while wearing a pair of shoes made from the skin of an outlaw lynched for killing two lawmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nose_George