I’m reading a book called “Why People Weird Things” by David Shermer, and among the weird non-mainstream beliefs he takes on is Holocaust denial. Although he is firmly on the side of the majority that believes the holocaust did indeed take place as most people believe, he did refer to the stories of the Nazis making soap from their Jewish victims’ bodies as a myth.
I don’t have the book in front of me, but if I recall correctly, he had two points:
There was no large scale effort to make soap from bodies
No bar of soap has ever tested positive for human remains
I don’t know what exactly is meant by “large scale” so maybe if there was evidence that experiments were done only once or twice to see if they could make soap he wouldn’t think that that validated the myth. I suppose what he considers a myth is that the soap manufacturing occurred on a large scale.
Also, IIRC Shermer also indicated that mainstream holocaust scholars (non-deniers) pretty much don’t talk about the soap story as myth, even thought they pretty much agree it is a myth, and this gives the deniers a point of attack. His argument is that the serious scholars need to clear the air on the subject to deny the deniers any ammunition.
So, to what extent is the soap story validated? Is there any evidence? Is it based soley on eye-witness accounts from concentration camp victims? Had any nazis ever talked of this after the war?
I did searches, and couldn’t find any article by Cecil or any other thread on the board about this subject. I couldn’t find anything on Snopes either.
In spite of the debatable nature of these question, I’m hoping that this can be answered in a factual manner, hence I’m asking this in Gen Questions.
When I was around 15 years old, I attended a talk by a survivor of Aushwictz (sp). There were maybe 100 Jewish teens there for the talk. His three children all died in the Camps. He had three bars of soap that he showed us. He said that he took them from the camp when it was liberated to remind him of his three children.
When I saw the title of the OP I was going to tell the poster to read Shermer but clearly that’s unneccessary. I read an article he had written for Skeptic about this issue. I seem to remember that he said that some experiments were done but that it was not a widescale thing. He said the same thing about lamp shades from human skin.
Perhaps there really was a soap making operation in some of the Camps but the soap was, for the most part, made the standard way. The supposed nature of the soap was probably an urban legend of the time.
Shermer’s point bears repeating: Publicizing the truth about these sorts of issues gives the deniers less amunition. Shermer has spent a great deal of his life on this cause. Fighting ignorance is more than just a hobby for him.
And, of course, when making soap from animals, it is, indeed, the fat that’s used. I hate to approach this from such a detached standpoint, but how much fat would the Holocaust victims have had on them, in the concentration camps? I mean, in the camps, they would have been fed the bare minimum for survival, if anything, and even before they were rounded up, most of them weren’t exactly living in luxury.
In answer to Chronos, some victims were right off the train and so presumably had some fat on their bodies. They hadn’t been worked or starved to death first.
Still, as my second link above indicates, the soap making practice was not widespread.
Of greatest importance is that any doubt about the magnitude or even the existence of soap making from bodies must not substract from the evidence attesting to the enormity of the Holocaust itself.
I had to read it pretty quickly, but it looks like the Nizkor site concludes that the the soap making was confined to one experiment that was considered a failure. I’ll check out the first site later (I have a meeting I need to go to) and I’ll re-read the Nizkor site more carefully if I have time.
The revisionist tradition of dismissing atrocities of this kind as ‘only’ isolated incidences or downright denying them is for lack of a better and stronger word revolting.
The argument that the Holocaust is better viewed objectively? Hullo? How do you view the methodology of the systematic murder of millions of people objectively? We can view the events that led up to it, the reasons and the grounds for it objectively, but it is nearly impossible to view the details of these acts objectively, and we don’t need to.
I have browsed through thousands of photos of the horrid experiments carried out in the concentration camps. I have seen the piles of glasses, shoes and human hair at Auschwitz. I have seen lampshades made from human skin, ashtrays carved from human skulls and I have seen soap bars made from human fat at Auschwitz and Dachau. I get tears in my eyes when I think back on it, there is no way, none whatsoever that you can see this ‘objectively’. If it was ten or ten thousand or a million cases is immaterial. The uncontestable fact is that it did happen and it cost by the lowest realistic estimate 6.5 million human lives and unfathomed suffering for millions more.
Don’t read Shermer if not as a counterpoint after having gone back to the sources themselves or having read more serious works. Start with Shirer’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’, it’s the easiest to read and most definitive account written for the general public that is available.
I agree, what was or was not done with the bodies afterwards doesn’t change the immorality of the situation in any way. I’m only trying to get the Straight Dope on something I believed, that now possibly appears to be a myth, or at least exaggerated.
Sparc, no one (in this thread at least) is in the camp of the holocaust deniers. Whatever was done with bodies after the murder is of little moral consequence IMHO, compared to the murder itself. Even if they were given proper burials according to Jewish tradition, it would still be murder and attempted genocide, and unforgivable. I have no doubt that the standard historical view, that at least 6.5 million people were systematically slaughtered in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish race, is correct. I’m just trying to get the truth about the soap story that I’ve “known” for all my life.
Um, that Nizkor site supplied by <b>KarlGauss</b> is better amunition for the case against soap being made from the remains of concentration camp victims than vice-versa. It would be easy enough to prove. Just produce the bars of soap. I never saw any when I was at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. The evidence for the soap story seems to be built of rumors.
It’s important to get these facts straight lest the deniers point out that things are being invented. In their logic, if one detail is false than the entire holocaust is false.
The truth is horrific enough. It needs no embellishment.
I have to disagree with you about what was done with the bodies AFTER they were murdered being of little moral consequence.
I think using prybars and crowbars and pliers to extract gold fillings is a monsterous thing to do and shows utter contempt for the bodies.
As is making lampshades out of skin and making furniture out of bones of those who were murdered. (Himmler had several chairs and tables made of human bones.)
But then as Hitler said, “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they aren’t human.”
That goes to the heart of it. If you see something as “subhuman” then you have little moral feelings about what you do to the “subhuman.”
I discussed this issue with a Jewish friend of mine, he also never saw any soap or lampshades in any of the Holocaust museums he’s visited. He didn’t say which ones he went to, perhaps ones in New York City where he used to live.
It seems logical enough to me to assume based on available evidence that the human fat/soap production was very limited. Auschwitz was primarily a factory of death, with little regard for any possible industrial benefit.
I see no need to discuss additional and possibly fictional horrors on top of what was already an immense monstrosity. Incidentally, the number of civilians exterminated by the Nazis is typically estimated at 12 million, of which roughly half were Jews.
Can someone be a revisionist in this case without being a Nazi sympathizer? My great Uncle (a Jew) is a writer/scholar on the holocaust and has written a few articles on the soap thing, saying it was complete BS. In his research he found that at worst, a couple of SS dudes did it for kicks and it got blown out of scale. Sorry I don’t have cites but you can call my uncle.
Thanks Spanky, dunno how I got David from Michael.
David Cole is indeed a denier mentioned in the book; also Mark Weber, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, and Ernst Zundel. (I’m looking at chapter 13 of the book)
Let me first affirm that the holocaust did take place. It was evil enough without the soap so whether or not soap was made is, in my opinion, irrelevant.
I was stationed at Schleissheim, Germany just down the road from Dachau, about 10 miles east, shortly after WWII ended. A friend of mine and I went up to the camp. We looked the crematory ovens over pretty thoroughly and I’m convinced that no fat was rendered and collected at Dachau. I’ve seen fat rendered on the farm and there was no collection apparatus connected to the ovens in any way that I could see.
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