# Nazi human skin lampshades **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 26, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113 "2010-07-26T22:42:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/41 "2010-08-31T01:14:29Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > A year or so back I read of one son of some dignitary in the Nazi party — who would have no reason at all to exaggerate the crimes he was virtuously distancing himself from, no sirree — declaring that Martin Bormann had furniture made exclusively from human bones. Why do you think he would have “no reason at all”? There were very serious feuds and power grabs going on in the Nazi government hierarchy (like most), with various branches trying hard to discredit the others and gain power (i.e., Hitler’s approval) over the others. If this guy was in a branch of the Nazi government that was competing against the Bormann branch, he would certainly want to denigrate Bormann any way he could. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/42 "2010-08-31T02:26:29Z")
I have difficulty understanding why some folks get so worked up over the authenticity of Nazi human skin lampshades. It’s not like, if that story was conclusively debunked there wouldn’t remain tons of unbelievably appalling evidence of [Nazi atrocities](http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery2/77021.htm). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/43 "2010-08-31T04:09:47Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I have difficulty understanding why some folks get so worked up over the authenticity of Nazi human skin lampshades. > > It’s not like, if that story was conclusively debunked there wouldn’t remain tons of unbelievably appalling evidence of [Nazi atrocities](http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/gallery2/77021.htm). There are people who claim that the Holocaust was some sort of exaggeration of the ordinary conditions of war. They look for any common meme that can be debunked, and then claim that everything else must be a lie. Leaving stories in place that are not factual, provides an opportunity for these people to mislead others. Rational people understand that a single inaccuracy does not reflect on the overwhelming evidence of atrocities. But rational people did not commit these acts, or abide them. Those people may always be among us, looking for the reason to justify another reign of terror. As time goes by, the eyewitnesses to the Holocaust are passing away. The future will one day evaluate our present by the quality of the record we leave behind. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/44 "2010-08-31T13:41:29Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > > [@Claverhouse](#): > > > > A year or so back I read of one son of some dignitary in the Nazi party — who would have no reason at all to exaggerate the crimes he was virtuously distancing himself from, no sirree — declaring that Martin Bormann had furniture made exclusively from human bones. > > Why do you think he would have “no reason at all”?(…) Re-calibrate sarcasm detector. As for the OP’s personal witnessing of a neighbor’s skin lampshade: I’m friends with a German immigrant who tried to join the army (as a submariner) around 1944 when he was 14. They told him to come back next year. Every week we play chess under a deteriorating floor lamp with a lampshade of translucent leather. He isn’t a kidder, and as a German he isn’t going to joke about war atrocities, but I can easily imagine a G.I. with a rascally streak feeding a 12 y.o boy horror stories about a lamp like that. –And just to inject some politics into this forum, my friend was absolutely horrified when Bush/Cheney initiated the invasion of Iraq. He had no trouble Godwinizing their actions, and said it reminded him of the build-up to war in the 1930s. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/45 "2010-08-31T15:37:24Z")
**Baal Houtham** said: > [@](#): > > –And just to inject some politics into this forum,… You might not want to do that. It’s considered bad form. Check the rules. Keep politics to Great Debates and Election 2010 forums, or if you must, the BBQ Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/46 "2010-08-31T15:55:13Z")
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](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Death-SS-Einsatzgruppen-Invention-Holocaust/dp/0375708227)_,” he cites an interview between Gitta Sereny and the children of several high-ranking Nazis (not Goebbels, obviously…) The now-grown children were gathered as part of group therapy for the relatives of these Nazis, to help them deal with what they experienced, and they graciously allowed Sereny to interview them. In the interview, the kid of Martin Bormann talks about visiting Himmler’s house. Himmler was out, but his long-term mistress was in, and she showed them in. At some point during the visit, she leads them up to the attic, after getting their promise not to tell anyone what they were about to see. Up in the attic is a copy of Mein Kampf, bound in human skin, as well as a small table and chairs made of human bones. The kids saw them, then claimed they were horrified, and ran out of the house. Naturally, there aren’t any pictures, or other first hand accounts. No mention is later made of what happened to the atrocity evidence. If I could find my copy of “_Masters_” I’d give the page number. Google Books’ blank spots cover the quotes in question too, alas. It’s in the last chapter, right before he describes the death of Himmler. ---
**Author:** ![zephinia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/848f3c/32.png) [@zephinia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zephinia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/47 "2010-09-09T18:06:27Z")
For further confirmation on this issue please read the book THE LAMPSHADE by Mark Jacobson. Simon & Schuster copyrite 2010. Bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of a human skin lampshade and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning of what can only be described as an icon of terror. The lampshade was found just months after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans at a rummage sale. DNA analysis proves it is human skin. Jacobson then traveled to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany where further evidence was found to establish its authenticity. ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Zotti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/fbc32d/32.png) [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/48 "2010-09-09T18:29:52Z")
I haven’t seen this book, which apparently won’t be officially published till late this month, but I did find the following quote from Publishers Weekly on Amazon: > [@](#): > > A lampshade possibly made from the skin of a concentration camp prisoner fitfully depicts the limits of human brutality in this beguiling but unfocused odyssey. When DNA tests proved a lampshade, found in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, to be made of human skin, New York magazine contributing editor Jacobson (12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time) set out to establish its provenance and meaning. Both prove elusive: evidence linking it to famous allegations that Nazis made lampshades from concentration camp victims is scanty, and Holocaust museum curators dismiss such claims. But as Jacobson’s investigation takes him to places with legacies of racial hatred and mass killing–Buchenwald, Dresden, Israel, and the West Bank–he ponders the lampshade’s mythic resonance as both a “particularist” emblem of Jewish victimization and a “universalist” token of human suffering. The author excels at sketching haunted locales and oddball characters, especially in atmospheric New Orleans, but his project is gimmicky–he calls in psychics and dubs the lampshade “Ziggy”–and his habit of seeing shades of the Holocaust everywhere feels forced. Jacobson’s reportage is intriguing, but it doesn’t pierce the darkness. ---
**Author:** ![BayouHazard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BayouHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BayouHazard)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2010, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/49 "2010-09-10T01:02:51Z")
While this is not proof, I think it’s common knowledge that they did this-melting down dental fillings from massacred people: [http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holocamp.html](http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holocamp.html) I also didn’t realize they used human hair to make fabric: [http://www.rudyfoto.com/hol/campstory.html](http://www.rudyfoto.com/hol/campstory.html) So it seems no stretch of depravity to think they’d make lampshades out of stretched human skin… after all, they were into efficiency, they were throwing their country’s resources into a war, so it would have been hard to get parchment for lampshades. But from what my searches turned up, the lampshade thing may not have been done in an assembly-line fashion, the way the fillings were removed and the hair was used. I believe there’s a good reason for that-human skin tears pretty easily-so I’ve been told. Thus it would not lend itself well to machining or assembly-line practices of lampshade production. Do y’all think I’m right on this? If not, feel free to correct me. I’m guessing-JUST guessing-human lampshades were the work of individual guards or their command staff at the camps, handmade individually. So no records. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/50 "2010-09-10T01:16:29Z")
From page 64 of ‘Gypsies Under the Swastika’ by Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon: > [@](#): > > One man, Louis Simon, born at Perigueux, met a particularly bizarre death. It was noticed that his body was richly tattooed - a souvenir from service in the Foreign Legion. First he was given injections which caused him to swell horribly and die, following which his dead body was carried to Buchenwald and the skin used as a decoration for a shelf. [Google Books link](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9yfpTX1w3KcC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22donald%20kenrick%22&pg=PA64) ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Zotti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/fbc32d/32.png) [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2010, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/51 "2010-09-10T18:11:25Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![JohnSawyer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7cd45c/32.png) [@JohnSawyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnSawyer)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/52 "2010-09-12T09:35:59Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Ed\_Zotti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/fbc32d/32.png) [@Ed\_Zotti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ed_Zotti)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/53 "2010-09-12T19:26:37Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/54 "2010-09-15T17:44:54Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/55 "2010-09-15T17:59:56Z")
> [@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.](http://nymag.com/news/features/67963/) ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/56 "2010-09-15T20:05:40Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2010, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/57 "2010-09-24T00:30:57Z")
> [@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](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Death-SS-Einsatzgruppen-Invention-Holocaust/dp/0375708227)_,” 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. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/58 "2010-11-07T16:26:50Z")
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](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-lampshade-that-drives-its-owners-mad-strange-truth-behind-20th-centurys-most-disturbing-object-2117357.html). > [@](#): > > 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? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/59 "2010-11-07T19:26:25Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113/60 "2010-11-07T19:35:35Z")
> [@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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nazi-human-skin-lampshades/548113.md?page=4)