<sidebar>
In 1893, John Eugene Osbourne was inaugurated governor of Wyoming while wearing a pair of shoes made from the skin of an outlaw lynched for killing two lawmen.
Bumping this thread…
Just saw the May 1, 2013 episode of PBS’s Secrets of the Dead. It was titled “Bugging Hitler’s Soldiers” and was about British Intelligence’s eavesdropping on German POWs, some of them very high-ranking, during World War II. A Private Pfaffenberger, who had been a political prisoner for more than seven years at Buchenwald before being released and pressed into military service when Nazi Germany grew desperate for troops, was later captured by the Allies. He was taped on Dec. 30, 1944 saying he had been told (but did not see himself) that a hundred prisoners at Buchenwald had been given lethal injections and their tattoos removed to make lampshades for the camp commander’s wife (unnamed in the show). The show did not state whether the lampshade story was true or false, just that he’d heard it.
Here are two books on the MI-19 eavesdropping effort:
I saw that episode. Some very chilling recordings.
A general complained about the SS troops taking Jews out and performing mass executions by shooting them in the streets in public. Even he was appalled that they would do that.
Stories of German soldiers who were talking in presumed confidence (being secretly recorded) with other German soldiers about atrocities they witnessed and participated in. Holding children up by the hair and shooting them in the head. Going into a barracks and shooting hundreds of Jews, just to pass the time.
All of this was recorded, translated, and transcripts printed. It was categorized and filed. Originally it was presumed the materials would be used for War Crimes trials, but at the end of the war the government made the decision that the method of secret tapings was more important to be kept secret than the results being used, so all the materials were filed away. They only came to light recently by accident. Someone made a request for certain files on German submariners, and accidentally was sent stacks of files of these transcripts.
“qpw3141” wasn’t calling it a myth that the SS (the paramilitary branch of the Nazi party) cruelly slaughtered babies. He was describing as a myth that the German military (part of the German state, and NOT the Nazi party) as a whole participated in this slaughter.
ETA: I see your ETA acknowledging this.
That’s hardly new.
See Psalm 137:9 from the Bible:
[Nor is that feeling just ancient history: when SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden during the attempt to capture him, but did not hurt his wives & children, I heard some local Christians denouncing the soldiers for failing ro follow this Biblical injunction!]
I’m not sure which part of this thread is the most sickening now.
I’m against anything that blurs the line between contemporary U.S. military policy and either the Old Testament or Nazi Germany.
puts down Photoshop and backs slowly away…
Just started reading this book. Despite the disturbing subject matter, it’s strikingly well-written; I keep finding myself thinking, “nice turn of phrase.” So if you’re looking for a good old-fashioned entertaining summer read on Nazi human skin lampshades, this is definitely the book for you!
Only last week I watched a TV programme about Trent Park, the country house where captured Nazi top brass were ensconced in comfort to see out the war.
British Intelligence had bugged the house and grounds from top to bottom with ultra-sensitive microphones. Conversations were recorded on disc then transcribed, resulting in 57,000 pages of recorded conversation.
One such between two young officers concerned using tattooed human skin to make lampshades. Neither could believe such a thing could happen. Neither, it seems, could the transcriber, who wrote across the page “I give you this conversation for what it is worth”
See post 62. Same program[me]?
Yes. I should have read all the above posts!.
There is the possibility that Channel 4 may have made a different version, as our ad. breaks are shorter and the original programme would not have filled its allotted time slot.
P.S. I was only 10y/o at the time, but a war crimes trial in the early '60s of one of females in charge of a women’s concentration camp mentioned the lampshade story. It was widely reported in the British press.
I can’t remember whether the story was proved or not, but the answer presumably lies in the transcripts of the trial.
The original article says:
Via an interesting article at Slate’s The Vault, The National Holocaust Museum has a 3 minute clip of German civilians being shown the inside of Weimar Camp. There’s a table with 2 shrunken heads and a lamp allegedly made of human skin. I’m offering this not in the way of evidence, but out of the suspicion that this is the clip referenced above.
Are you sure it’s Weimar Camp (with which I am, I admit, not familiar) and not Buchenwald? The above-mentioned book, The Lampshade, describes this display as “the Buchenwald table,” and it’s a major focus of the book that it happened at Buchenwald.
The caption at the National Holocaust museum says Weimar. The link at Slate says Buchenwald. I gathered from the preceding that Weimar is a subset of or maybe a town near Buchenwald, but honestly that’s a WAG.
Buchenwald Camp is near the city of Weimar, but “Weimar” is also the name of one of the female satellite camps of Buchenwald Camp, so it could go either way.
Harvard U. now says they have such a book - looks like the skin was taken post mortem, at least: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/05/us/harvard-book-human-skin/index.html?hpt=hp_t2