Waner J
|
Yes!The National Archives in
College Park, Maryland, has identified "a human skin lampshade, or part of
one," from the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald. The National Museum of
Health and Medicine holds three pieces of tattooed human skin, also from
Buchenwald.
Ilse Koch (her first name has two syllables; her last name sounds like the
Scottish "loch") is the most famous of all Germans accused of having
committed atrocities during the war. She was the wife of the commandant of
the Buchenwald camp. She was twice convicted in post-war trials, once by an
international court and once by her own country. The chief charges against
her were cruelty to inmates, including murder, but what she is best-known
for is the making of human-skin ornaments, including the lampshades of
which we've all heard.
It's exceedingly well-documented that such ornaments did exist; there's no
question but that someone made them out of human skin. When one can see a
book whose cover is tanned skin with a decorative tattoo on it, there's
little question that the skin was that of a human being. If one has any
doubt as to the origin of the substance, one should examine the forensic
report conducted on some of the skin. It concludes, based on microscopic
examination and the placement of the nipples and navel, that the skin was
certainly human.
Various Holocaust-deniers, however, have attempted to cast doubt upon the
existence of this skin, and upon the guilt of Ilse Koch in particular.
Arthur Butz writes:
The tattooed skin was undoubtedly due to the medical experiment role
of Buchenwald. As
remarked by [Christopher] Burney [a former inmate], when a Buchenwald
inmate died the camp
doctors looked his body over and if they found something interesting
they saved it. It is fairly
certain that the collection of medical specimens thus gathered was
the source of the tattooed skin
and the human head that turned up at the IMT as "exhibits" relating
to people "murdered" at
Buchenwald.
In 1948 the American military governor, General Lucius Clay,
reviewed her case and determined
that, despite testimony produced at her trial, Frau Koch could not be
related to the lampshades
and other articles which were "discovered" (i.e. planted) in the
Buchenwald commandant's
residence when the camp was captured in 1945. For one thing, she had
not lived there since her
husband's, and her own, arrest in 1943. Also her "family journal,"
said to be bound in human skin,
and which was one of the major accusations against her, was never
located, and obviously never
existed.
Already we have two explanations of the human-skin ornaments. It is
interesting to note that they are mutually exclusive. On the one hand,
according to Butz, the ornaments unquestionably did exist, since tattooed
skin was produced at the IMT, though it is "fairly certain" that the
"medical specimens" were simply cut from the corpses of inmates who died
naturally. On the other hand, the ornaments were "planted" by the Allies.
Butz can't have it both ways. He can claim that Ilse Koch is innocent
because the ornaments came from inmates who died of natural causes and not
murder; or, he can claim that the ornaments were forgeries, planted by the
Allies to incriminate the Nazis. To claim both is ludicrous. Yet this is
exactly what he does.
Butz's book was one of the earlier attempts at Holocaust denial, and later
efforts would refine it to a great degree. Such refinement is clearly
demonstrated by following deniers' claims about Ilse Koch.
In fact, in the same year that Butz's book was published, 1976, General
Lucius Clay gave an interview at the
little-known George C. Marshall Research Foundation, in which he indicated
that he believed that the human-skin ornaments were not in fact made of
human skin, but rather of goat skin. Mark Weber, now the Editor of the
Journal of Historical Review, became aware of this interview some years
later, after Clay had died (in 1978). He obtained a transcript, with the
aid of Robert Wolfe of the National Archives, now retired, who incidentally
is strongly opposed to Holocaust-denial. In 1987, Weber published his
findings in an article in the Journal of
Historical Review. |
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