In regards to the nazi’s making lampshades from jews and what-not, it was a Dr. Mangela. I know even the name sounds made up but it is true. My grandmother was part of hitler youth,(not to her liking however) and she remembers hearing of such things. They even made wallets out of jews. In the midst of her own ordeals from being shot at when she was stealing potato skins that were to be discrded anyway to seeing people looking for dead bodies and removing the fingers to get the gold rings from the bloated corpses, and even so much as watching hewr own grandmother be sucked into a giant fire from americas incindeary bombings, she still remembers hearing of the beloved doctor and his bizarre experiments and his many ideas of trying to find a way to use the dead jews’ corpse parts for some kind of practical use. So yeah, at least from what I have heard that is true. The wallet part is what really gets me though…A jewish man’s skin making my wallet?..hmmmmmmmmmmm…No wonder why I swear I have more money than I find in my wallet. 
Hi, skullgrizzle.
Generally it’s helpful around here to give a link to the column you’re talking about (Cecil’s writted a lot of them!) - in this case http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040604.html
The reason I post is a little extra information that could be relevant to the column - on display in the museum at Auschwitz is a lampshade, which visitors are told is human skin. Given that there’s also huge piles of locks human hair, squeamishness at showing the genuine article doesn’t come into play. However, I’ve no idea if this particular item has ever been examined properly - maybe somebody with good Google skills (or a knowledge of Polish) could find out?
Sorry, but cannot resist nit-picking: It is Dr. Mengele and no there’s no connection between him and the lampshades and yes he was involved in many atrocities that are in my eyes much worse than what they did to corpses.
-yay
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
Eve . . . apple. Hee.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread.
RR
Long way to go for your “saw it coming down 5th Avenue” punchline skulldrizzle. What’s the matter is the Stormfront board down?
My thoughts exactly. I didn’t think I shocked that easily…
I’m not a historian, but nothing I’ve read about Josef Mengele ever mention him doing anything of this sort. He did plenty of other nauseating things, but I don’t think making wallets out of skin sounds in character for him. I can understand where something like that would circulate as a rumor in the Hitler Youth, but that doesn’t mean it actually happened. Rings and other items being taken from dead Jews, on the other hand, was something pretty well-documented, since I’ve seen photos of piles of glasses and other personal items at Holocaust museums.
I agree with this. From what I understand, Josef Mengele did very horrible things to people, but “justified” most of it by claiming it was in the name of medical or scientific research. Though most of his experiments had no real scientific value that I know of, he hid his more sadistic side behind that excuse. Making wallets or lampshades out of skin doesn’t seem to be something he would do, as he probably would not be able to find a scientific or medical reason, however weak, to do so.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/mengele/index_1.html
plenty of info on him there, if you care to read