I've Actually SEEN a Skin-shade (I think)

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

My take on the subject, after reading 20-30 US newspaper stories from 1945-1975 is that it probably occured, but perhaps just at the behest of Ilse Koch(or a few demented individuals). It almost certainly wasn’t widespread, else they would be available in quantity(and available for DNA testing). How many are there purported to exist? under 10? and almost certainly not all real.

This would not lessen the horrificness? of the act. It just means that depravity knows no boundry, whether in Buchenwald, Auschwitz, or Abu Ghraib. Thank god that such acts are usually limited to a few.

Again, this is not to lessen the acts of killing which the Nazis committed against millions.

22

Which of these news reports offers more evidence than this is just a death camp legend? Rumor is not proof.

23

If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler’s magnum opus and a blueprint for all his actions, I don’t think you will find it hard to believe that his henchmen would treat some humans as lampshade material.

Hitler regarded Jews as a different kind of animal from Aryan humans. Not only were they contemptably beneath him in species status, they were evil & despicable as well. I can see skin lampshades as being both a retaliation and a humiliation tactic.

Not that that proves it happened, of course.

24

So, my roomate who is also a Truman graduate got all industrious and called the “special collections” office at the Truman library. By chance, the woman who has been dooing research lately to authenticate this particular shade was the one who answered the phone.

Apparently it was brought back to the Kirksville area by a local army nurse. Her sister eventually donated the item to the school. So it’s at least from Germany.

As far as DNA testing goes, for such an item it is apparently rather costly, as the tanning process adds all sorts of contaminating elements. Since Truman can’t afford to staff their 1,000 sq ft museum with minimum wage student labor, they sure as s**t don’t have the dough for the test.

Apparently other universities have offered to fund the testing in exchange for posession of the lamp.

For whatever reason, Truman has declined.
They apperently want to keep their lamp.
Even if nobody gets to see it in their closed museum.
Go figure.

thewooz

(p.s. whoever emailed me in response to this, please write again, as I accidentally deleted your mail pre-read.)

25

A few comments:

This article (note that it extends over several pages) on the excellent Nizkor site discusses Koch and the lampshade in some detail, though it’s primarily concerned with claims made on the subject by Holocaust deniers. Drawing on much the same evidence as Cecil examines, it concludes that some lampshade probably did exist. Personally, I think there’s a reasonable difference of opinion here, without anyone having to endorse the deniers’ argument that the lampshade is some sort of “myth”.

There is some confusion if you try to search for a picture of the lampshade. But I suspect the image on this page corresponds to that in Wilder’s documentary, with the lamp being that on the right. Meanwhile, there’s also this image. But this corresponds to the skin in some sort of frame lying in the middle of the table in the previous picture. This may be one of the NA or NMHM samples mentioned by Cecil. However, I’d presume the “irregularly shaped” item “stuck up on an exhibit board” is that in the fourth picture on this page (already linked to).

Cecil makes it clear that some human skin was certainly taken from prisoners in Buchenwald. It’s perhaps therefore slightly superfluous to add the following, but Francis Wheen concludes the introduction to his classic (and generally very funny) biography Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions (1990; Pan 1992) with this macabre anecdote:

Later in the book, Wheen explains how Driberg, as an MP with a substantial journalistic background (he founded the William Hickey column in the Daily Express), was invited to join an all-party parliamentary group touring sites of Nazi war crimes in Germany in 1945. This included a visit to Buchenwald.

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I think it’s worth noting, however, these quotes from the article accompanying the still shot:

I came into this discussion thinking the “lampshades made from human skin” story was documented fact, but now I’m not so sure. I think bonzer spoke well when he said:

There may be some concrete evidence out there that points one way or another; I hope someone brings it to light here. For my part, I still think it happened, but I can understand why some people don’t.
RR

27

For someone to say that they’ve seen a lampshade made of skin is no proof whatsoever that it’s human skin–nor especially that it was made by Nazis. No responsible historian lays store by outrageous claims by purveyors of urban legends. The sad fact is: Gruesome artefacts exist from time well before the Nazis. In England, for instance, philosopher Jeremy Bentham had it put in his will that a book would be bound with his flesh, after death. That book still exists and is on display. Likewise there are such things all over Europe [and, in fact, all over the world] that have nothing whatsoever to do with Germans.
The fact is: We’re dealing with irresponsible (and easily disproven) claims by myth-mongers. The same people that–100 years before the Nazis existed–were circulating rumors that Jews drank baby’s blood and used the bones of Christian children in their “secret rites”.
No reasonably intelligent person believed it then when it was applied to Jews. No educated person should believe it now when applied to Germans. They’re all the same morbid fantasies–just attached to whatever people we find that we dislike in any given century. Shameful!
(I’m waiting for the day–soon–when Jeremy Bentham’s flesh-bound book from the 1700s will be produced as proof that Saddam Hussein skinned people alive and made volumes from the flesh.
Seriously, people. Grow up!

28

This would be on display where?
Precisely because Bentham was prepared to use the occasion of his death to try to dispell superstitious attitudes towards human remains, what happened to his body was deliberately a very public matter. Famously, the head and skeleton became the Auto-Icon that he donated to UCL. This paper from 1958 discusses the Auto-Icon in some detail, including quotations of the relevant parts of his will and its annex. Exactly what should happen to the soft parts is left rather unclear, but there’s no mention of such a book.
Part of his skin apparently does survive in the Science Museum in London. Originally part of the collection of Henry Wellcome, it was exhibited in the magnificent “Medicine Man” exhibition at the British Museum last year and there’s a photo of it in the catalogue - Medicine Man (BM Press, 2003, p157). But this is a small patch with an inscription describing what it is written across it.

It’s not impossible that such a book exists, but we’ve every right to expect the same standard of proof applied to it as to Ilse Koch’s lampshade. So details please.

Bentham died in 1832.

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As for Bentham’s flesh-bound book, it was in a BBC documentary–which also highlighted the gruesome human mannikin he left to that institution in England. From what I remember, the two items are held by the same curators.
As for the correction regarding Bentham’s death, thanks. I knew that Bentham lived in the 1700s. So forgive my mis-statement when I said his flesh-bound book would’ve been from the 1700s. As you point out, he died in the early 1800s.
But none of this detracts one iota from the substance of my assertion: namely, that Europe is filled with gruesome artifacts, among which are tons of flesh-covered books–which predate the Nazis by hundreds of years. Jeremy Bentham’s is just one famous example.
For those still clinging to urban legends as facts (regarding Nazis and lampshades, etc), I refer them to Michael Shermer’s book, “Skeptic”. Mr. Shermer (who happens to be Jewish) lambasts the holocaust revisionists–but also puts to rest myths parroted as “facts” by well-meaning yokels–among these are the lampshades made of human skin, soap made from Jewish fat, et al.
When quoting this particular book, a person I had confronted with this was hard-pressed to name a source for the “beliefs” they had regarding these facts. I put them on the spot, knowing full well that if I had them examine the truth, they would have to confront the fact that they didn’t “learn” about Nazis and lampshades from any book–but were, rather, parroting urban legends picked up from schoolyards . . . which they then dutifully passed on as if it were historically-documented fact. They then dishonestly claimed that they had read it in the august classic, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” --Thanks to technology, one can quickly go to Amazon.com and make use of the handy “Search-Within-the-Book” function. Typing in keywords, one can look for any passage throughout the whole book. Taking advantage of this, I proved to them within thirty seconds that the phrases “lampshades,” “human flesh,” “soap from Jewish fat” appear nowhere in the whole work. I then asked them for suggestions for our search. Embarrassed, they then demured and coughed out that they must have gotten it from another book.
With the threat of Amazon.com’s “Search-Within-the-Book” function hanging over their head, they conveniently couldn’t cite the “book” they’d gotten these “facts” from. The title just slipped their mind.
How surprising!
I have no qualm citing my own sources–like the aforementioned “Skeptic” by Michael Shermer.
The next time people parrot these pathetic urban legends, I invite each and every one of you to put them to the test. Ask them to quote sources and check their alleged sources–and I’m sure you’ll find out (just like I did) that most of what passes for “fact” in the minds of some people is just rumor, innuendo, war-time propaganda.
Lest we ever forget, during World War II Americans were told that Japanese people had tails like monkeys. Or, during World War I, when the ministry of propaganda put out phony stories that the “Huns” were killing Belgian babies and hanging people on crosses. (Thank God for journalists like Gilbert Seldes, who were there and catalogued all the war-time lies that he and other journalists were told to print, knowing full well that these stories were complete fabrications. Thank God for other historians who have written extensively on war-time propaganda.) Nevertheless–despite all the efforts of honest men–there will always be the yokel who swallows propaganda whole, thinking dully, “It MUST be true. The government said so!” --Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

PS–It’s a sad day when the Nazis can’t be criticized on the merits of their actual acts. Are we so desperate that we have to say they drank baby’s blood and raped kittens?

30

Gruesome acts and artifacts have indeed been around for centuries. The Nazis were bad when judged on their social merits. Myths exaggerating the terrors of the holocaust are pretty extraneous, so this whole debate is pretty extraneous. People do attach myths to folks they don’t like and always have.

But I don’t see how these myths are so “easily disproven”. There is more evidence that Nazis brutalized Jews to outrageous degrees than there is that Jews drank the blood of Christian children two centuries ago.

“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” is an august book which spends relatively little time focusing on the Nazi treatment of Jews in concentration camps. This is not a weakness, per se, as the author discusses history in a broad context. However, it certainly does discuss these incident, on p.983-5 of my 1960 edition, in Chapter 27, the “New Order”.

"Not only skeletons but human skins were collected by the masters of the New Order were colelcted by the masters of the New Order… The skins of concentration camp prisoners, especially executed for this ghoulish purpose, had merely decorative value. They made, it was found, excellent lamp shades, several of which were expressly fitted up for Frau Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald and nicknamed by the inmates the “Bitch of Buchenwald”. Tattooed skins appear to have been the most sought after. A German inmate, Andreas Pfaffenberger, deposed at Nuremburg on this:

… All prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary. After the prisoners had been examined the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were killed by injections. The corpses were turned over to the pathological department where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached fromthe bodies and treated further. The finished products were turned over to Koch’s wife, who had them fashioned into lamp shades and other ornamental household articles" (footnote 78 --NCA, VI, pp.122-3 ND 3249 PS).

A Czech physician prisoner, Dr. Franz Blaha, testified at Nuremburg that:

…Sometimes we would not have enough bodies with good skin and Dr. (sigmund) Rascher would say, “All right, you will get the bodies.” The next day, we would recieve twenty or thirty bodies of young people. They would have been shot in the neck or struck in the head, so that the skin would be uninjured. The skin had to be from healthy prisoners and free of defects." (footnote 79 --NCA, V, p.952, ND 3249 PS).

Both of these quotes are in “Third Reich”. Both have footnotes from the NCA, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 10 vols. published by the US Govt Printing Office in 1946).

Being in a book does not make it true, even Shirer’s masterpiece, even footnoted, even when mentioned by a German, but it hardly makes it “easily disproven”. I find Shirer’s view more balanced than Styron’s.

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Actually, what they did to kittens was bad enough.

Nazi laws passed in mid-summer 1941 prohibited Jews from having kittens or any other pets. And they were prohibited from selling or giving away to friends any pets that they already owned, or even putting them to sleep, instead they were required to deliver them up to collection depots. (I haven’t been able to find any documentation on what happened to these pets after that; possibly they went to their own Nazi pet extermination camps.)

I remember first reading about this, and thinking about the absolute meanness it would take to pass such a law. As a pet owner, it just makes me shudder to think of such carefully calculated evil.

Yes, indeed, the Nazi’s were certainly bad enough on their own.

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These ‘myth-mongers’ clearly include the historians working at Auschwitz - or did I imagine posting that I’ve been shown a “skinshade” there? If this one is so easily debunked, then debunk away.

33

Which BBC documentary? Because as it is, this is still the weakest assertion anybody has made in this thread. At least with most of the other undocumented claims that have been raised, these have been about items that people are claiming to have seen at first hand.
Note that I’ve already linked to the UCL site about the Auto-Icon - this is maintained by those “same curators” and it makes no mention of such a book. (Incidentally, I’ll hereby correct a minor mistake in my last post: Bentham didn’t specify that it be donated to UCL himself. That was done several years later by the surgeon Dr. Southwood Smith.)

Sure Europe has plenty of “gruesome artifacts”, but these come with some sort of context and it’s invariably important to understand this.
Indeed, in the case of Bentham, to casually describe the Auto-Icon as “gruesome” is to completely misunderstand his motivation. He was voluntarily agreeing to a procedure associated with executed criminals, fully realising that many of his contemporaries would react with horror. But his decision was intended to undermine this reaction.
Those contemporaries did not quite react in this way when criminals were autopsied and flayed. If you want an example of someone who was used to bind a book, then there’s William Burke (of Burke and Hare) just a few years before Bentham’s death. This is surely the interesting parallel with Koch and her alleged lampshade: the hanged murderer regarded as so sub-human and degradable that their skin can be reduced to an item of curiosity. Far from being a comparison, Bentham stands out as the person who did not share this mindset.
This article is another detailed discussion of Bentham’s posthumous fate, including a particularly nuanced consideration of the context. It also manages to overlook any book bound with his skin.

Shermer hasn’t written any book called “Skeptic”. That’s the name of the magazine he edits. Together with Alex Grobman, he has however written Denying History (California, 2000), which examines Holocaust denial. As far as I can tell, apart from the reference to be discussed below, lampshades are only ever alluded to in passing on p113. He does discuss the soap issue in p114-7. But it’s a stretch to read this section as him arguing that this is a “myth”. He quotes at length evidence for experimental soap manufacture at Stutthof. Then he quotes Raul Hilberg from an interview, also at some length, in which Hilberg mulls over whether soap was made: “In my opinion it was not.” Shermer’s own conclusion is less decisive:

Which is pretty much identical to what both Cecil and Captain Lance Murdoch said when they touched on the question of the soap. There are “well-meaning yokels” who believe otherwise, but that’s not the audience you’re addressing here.
The Hilberg interview that Shermer quotes does also mention lampshades:

So what was that BBC documentary again?

34

From an Oct. 7, 1948 story in the Washington Post.

35

Please see my above quotes from “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. I would advise you to read books rather than place too much faith in amazon.com’s “search within the book” function.

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To those critics who cling to urban legends, I offer you a quote from Jewish editor of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer. While attacking holocaust revisitionists, he admits: “Some revisions in Holocaust history have been generally accepted. Stories that Jewish remains were manufactured into soap and lampshades have been dismissed as myth. There were, most historians now agree, no human gasings at Dachau. Deaths at Auschwitz, once estimated, based on the testimony of Nazi commanders, at up to 3 million have been scaled back to about 1.1 million. Even the widely accepted figure of 6 million Jewish dead all over Europe has been questioned in recent years by some of the world’s most prominent Holocaust scholars.”

Here’s link to the article.

http://www.skeptic.com/newsworthy05.html

In your face, halfwits!
Deal with it.

37

Deal with what? Your misguided claims about “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”? Shermer is hardly a Holocaust scholar. Shirer was present in Nazi Germany from 1930 to after 1945 and published a famous, meticulously researched and documented book.

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Styron. Are you saying that there were NO lampshades? Not even one? Is Shermer saying that there was NEVER a lampshade made out of human skin recovered at Buchenwald? Not even ONE? What proof does he have if they “disappeared” and there is no chain of evidence?

There is little doubt that there existed tattooed skin pieces from that camp. Whether they were made into lampshade(s) is debateable. Whether Frau Koch had anything to do with it is probably unproveable.

I personally agree that the Ilse Koch trial inspired most of the urban legends about the ideas that it may have been widespread. And I’ll grant that the skins used most likely weren’t Jewish, if they were tatooed. At least not from practicing religious Jews. But to deny that there existed even one shade is foolish.

39

Michael Shermer says that Holocaust historians dismiss the “lampshades” and “soap made from human fat” urban myths. Cecil from the “Straight Dope” basically agrees.

I’ve cited sources. It’s time for you to do the same.

If those of you who are so willing to believe things without evidence want to convince Michael Shermer, Cecil from the “Straight Dope,” me, or anyone else, then site the alleged sources you have, the historians, etc. If you can’t produce any evidence (or any legitimate historians to back your position) then–if you’re intellectually honest–you’ll abandon ridiculous urban legends. . . . Sadly, though, I think that–just like the neo-Nazis on the other extreme who believe that Jews drink Christian baby’s blood during their rites–you’ll never give up your irrational impulse to attribute inhuman evils to your enemy . . . in effect de-humanizing them so that your own hatred seems rational (when it’s not).

PS–And for those of you who are tempted to quote Jewish Holocaust survivors from the Kangaroo Court trials that happened in Israel after WWII, don’t bother. Most of the urban legends were started there–causing historians to examine alleged artifacts–only to come away embarrassed . . . finding that chess sets allegedly made of human bones were made from animal bones, that “lampshades” were made of deer skin, etc. . . . I want you to name LEGITIMATE historians and give me book titles. If you can’t do that, then your position is utterly without foundation.

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To Dr. Paprika–who was challenged to come up with a source for lampshades-made-from-human-skin–thanks for using as your only source the anecdotes about the “Bitch from Buchenwald” which Cecil in his “Straight Dope” column says was investigated and utterly found without foundation. No such lampshades were discovered in Ilse’s home or possession–or anywhere else, for that matter. But still it MUST be true–because someone alleged it. [Laughter]
I guess Japanese people MUST have tails, too, because in WWII government propagandists said it was true. It MUST be true. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha
Since as Michael Shermer–who studied all the major streams of Holocaust history for his book “Skeptic: Why People Believe Strange Things”–admits that “most historians dismiss lampshades and soap-made-from-human-fat” as myths; and since Cecil from “The Straight Dope” even admits that there’s little legitimate evidence for such accusations; the burden of proof is on YOU.
Michael Shermer–as aforementioned–said that all mainstream Holocaust historians dismiss these legends as myth. So, since you’re running contrary to legitimate historians, the burden is on YOU.
Give the proof.
And please no more anecdotes which even Cecil from “The Straight Dope” has followed up on and shown were dubious. No more “butcher of Buchenwald”. If you want to rant about that, I refer you to Cecil’s write-up on it.
It’s up to you–since you apparently know more than the mainstream historians–to give us proof. And by the way–while you’re at it–tell us all where you got your phD in history–since you obviously know more than all these Holocaust historians.