True for sure. There were a lot of tests done in regard to temperature extremes, and a lot of experiments were done in the area we now know as plastic surgery.
Yes, that was the point. Already gruesome facts were all to readily embellished.
This particular embellishment was particular obnoxious because it demonised almost the entire adult , male, German population.
Well the obvious way is to treat those things that are extremely well documented (such as the temperature experiments) in a completely different manner from those for which no reliable documentation seems to exist. The former can be considered probable historical facts, the latter probable myths
It helps when the winners capture the criminals involved and the relevant records, as well as secure the release of victims who can provide testimony before they’re all exterminated.
That last sentence is ambiguously written in such a way that suggests the were rescued, testified, and then were exterminated. I don’t think that was your intent.
I guess your mileage may vary regarding human remains and appropriate treatement/display.
I find the original Bodyworks exhibit fascinating; I know the display items consented to donate their bodies for the purpose. Howeevr there is a rival Bodies exhibit that seems to consist mainly of Chinese bodies; it was the subject, IIRC, of a 20/20 investigation where several chinese people hinted that the bodies were either stolen or maybe deliberately murdered by corrupt Chinese officials, since the reverence for anscestors is strong in China and most people would never consent to such a display.
There are the catacombs of Paris, where the bones from the overful parish graveyards of the city were dumped after the revolution. Whole graveyards were dumped behind walls of neatly piled thigh-bones; occasionally a cute display of skulls, some in cross or heart shapes, was added. It’s a tourist attraction. A similar ossuary building can be found, IIRC, in a church in Slovenia, the walls and celing lined with bones in a pattern that would make H.R.Giger proud…
There is the display in a church in Sicily where people were mummified, dressed in their SUnday best and posed like dolls. The last person, IIRC, was done in the 1920’s.
Not to mention the numerous remains of rominent church people - bishops, saints, popes, etc - preserved in various ways; or Lenin or Mao. Plus all those mummies and shrunken heads on display.
A teacher once told me about the police investigation when a Quebec man blew up an airplane. It was one of the first times a bomb had been put on an airplane - the guy did it to murder his wife. Apparently (so he says) the locals took some souvenirs like arms and hands home when odd stuff rained out of the sky; the police in those days were less sensitive about warrants and just kicked in doors if they had information about this.
So people can be odd and perhaps by our view callous about human remains; although from previous threads, it seems most of the lampshade stories come from rumours and desires of revenge against one particularly nasty commandant’s wife. (for example, the evidence suggested a pair of lamps were found in the commandant’s house during the liberation, yet this woman’s husband had been executed for embezzlement 2 years before. Why would that still be kept and a part of the camp decor 2 years later?)
Whenever one group wants to slander another, cruelty to babies is a favourite target. Christians accused Jews in the middle ages of ritual killing of kidnapped Chirstian babies; the Germans in WWI were accused of bayonetting Belgian babies in their march west; Iraquis allegedly dumped Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators to steal the equipment for Baghdad hospitals. (all untrue).
On the subject of the Human skin Lampshades being real or not, I do know that they were real! I happen to have seen 4 of them about 15 years ago in San Diego at the home of a former German soldier. The house was full of antiques and I’m pretty sure they were looted out of Germany after WWII. How he got them out of Germany, I have no idea.
So, If we are to conclude there never was a human skin lampshade just what was the intended purpose of the 6 skins liberated from Buchenwald and presently held in Washington?
There’s also an eyewitness account of human-skin lampshades by an American GI here (look about 1/3 of the way down, the paragraph that starts with, “Sergeant Blowers told us some things about the Commandant of Buchenwald and his wife.”)
One American GI relating a tale told by another American GI of something he must have heard from someone else because he could not have possibly witnessed it himself is hardly an “eyewitness account.”
It’s been argued (by me among others) that nobody really believes the Holocaust didn’t occur, and thus Holocaust denial is a deliberate, knowing lie for the purpose of altering the political landscape (a method advocated in Mein Kampf, by the way).
If my argument is correct – and it certainly seems, to me, like a reasonable interpretation of what we observe in Holocaust deniers – then allowing it to be promulgated has little to do with legislating belief and much more in common with prosecuting fraud, which most people seem comfortable with.