In your response to the question on the alleged Buchenwald human skin lampshades you wrote …
“In short, the story may be a legend.”
The story is not a legend, it is a deliberate and very malicious hoax. It is also representative of standard wartime propaganda.
You also wrote …
“Does this prove the Holocaust didn’t happen? Of course not, whatever deniers claim.”
The last sentence is a silly denigration of holocaust deniers, deniers do not claim that the holocaust is a hoax because the human skin lampshades are a hoax.
The Billy Wilder film you referred to documented several hoaxes as fact, the lampshades, the shrunken heads (!), and the human fat soap. These hoaxes were widely publicized in the US and accepted as fact for many years. Now it is agreed that they were hoaxes.
It is important to distinguish fact from fiction when studying the holocaust, and that is difficult because of the deliberate lies that have been promoted as fact by the government and the media.
And as I said there, I give a lot of credence to the actual eyewitness testimony of rural Iowa mailman James Hoyt, who was one of the first 4 soldiers to enter the camp, and who says he personally saw this one lampshade.
Welcome to the SDMB, Allan. I’ve edited your post to add a link to the column. In the future, please keep in mind that a link is appreciated so everyone knows what column you’re commenting on.
The lamp disappeared shortly after the photos were taken. It is an obvious hoax, the lampshade is not made from skin.
Get this, Buchenwald was the first or second camp captured by the US/Brits, and within four days Billy Wilder, famous Hollywood director, was on the scene filming a ‘documentary’ that transformed obvious war propaganda into ‘fact’ (see second link above). The film was widely distributed in the US and the lampshade hoax, the shrunken heads hoax, and the soap from human fat hoax, all ‘established as fact’ by the movie, were believed for many years in the US. The movie was also shown as fact in trials of Nazi defendants. Not a court you’d want to be a defendant in.
It may be an obvious hoax to you. I’m not sure anyone is qualified to judge hoax vs. truth from those pics. Are you just agreeing with the “logic” offered in the video about sunlight/no tattoos?
I have no ax to grind here, and personally think that the lampshade was a one-off deal, no matter the origin of the material used for the shade.
You have to consider the context. The lampshade, shrunken heads, and human soap were ALL hoaxes.
How do we know the lampshade is a hoax? First, there is not a shred of evidence that it is anything but a hoax. Second, it disappeared shortly after the movie was made. If it had been legit it would have been used at the trials.
Note that the shrunken heads, which actually were shrunken heads, were used at the Nuremberg trial. Of course there is not a shred of evidence that these heads were produced at Buchenwald.
Also, from the first link I think, that the propaganda about the human skin lampshades had existed before the end of the war and was investigated by Konrad Morgen, who found it to be … absurd.
We are conditioned to believe any absurdity about the Nazis. The Billy Wilder film was instrumental in that conditioning. It is time to stop excusing these grotesque lies and monumental slanders.
Even the holocaust ‘authorities’ now agree that the lampshades, shrunken heads, and soap were all hoaxes, or, legends if you want to be PC.
There’s no sense beating this dead horse too long. Here is the question I would like to ask Cecil, but I recognize that even the question cannot be asked in the US media.
The question - Is the holocaust a hoax? That is, did 1) the Nazis have a plan to exterminate the European Jews, 2) did the Nazis build and use gas chambers for killing persons, and 3) did the Nazis kill on the order of six milllion Jews.
Each of the three questions above is categorically false, absurd even. Yet, it is impossible to raise these questions in the US media, and will get you thrown into jail in Europe.
It is easy to prove that the holocaust is a hoax and if you ask me, I’ll do it very briefly in the reply (this post is getting to be too long).
Cecil concluded the lampshade was a ‘legend’, and I’m just calling it a hoax. No sense quibbling there. Besides, even the authorities now agree the lampshades, shrunken heads, and soap are hoaxes. No real need for cites as it’s commonly accepted knowledge. However … if you want one for the soap … I’ll google… here tis …
If you must attempt such a thing, don’t do it in this thread. It’s too far removed from the topic of Cecil’s Column. Do it in Great Debates where it will get a proper fact-based response from more people.
