Soap

[Cat_Bones]

As a slight digression, http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... 2011-04-15 I found this earlier reference to soap being made from bodies and aside from the question of whether concentration camp victims ended up as soap, I wonder if such stories are common in history as a form of propaganda... in the case of the linked article, traditional English France-bashing.

[wm]

I'm not sure if this is true. This blog is dedicated to intriguing finds from Scientific American's past and not necessarily endorsing the finds as true. There is for example an article "Suicide by gazelle, grief to be the culprit of the male gazelle’s suicide after her mate suddenly died from something it had eaten."

According to this page http://www.paris-promenades.com/en/site_text/III.htm decomposed flesh was burned:
Certain parts of the cemetery were left untouched because some mass graves were too recent for their bodies to be exhumed. The work there must have been horrible; any partly decomposed bodies had to be burned to eliminate their flesh residues before could be transported to the underground ossuary.

It is true that fat deposits (adipocere or grave wax) is formed in the absence of oxygen in a cold and humid environment and adipocere can be turned into candles and soap. In 1825 Augustus Granville unwittingly made candles from the adipocere of a mummy (for dramatic effect during a scientific lecture) thinking it was wax that had preserved her. But this Scientific American article I find hard to believe.

I found something interesting, candles and soap made from tallow (animal fat) give off unpleasant smell (commercial soap is made from sodium tallowate or vegetable oils so the smell is not a problem) and that smell can be downright nasty if dirty tallow is used or is rendered improperly.
Zygmunt Mazur said during interrogation that the Spanner's crude soap had a very unpleasant smell and Spanner tried to suppress the smell using aromatic oils...

[murx]

I think it is more a piece of brown propagaganda (lying with some facts in the background) as total black propagenda (lying only): During decay of dead bodies the subcutaneous tissue after 4-6 weeks is converted into a wax-like layer. The chemical process in German is called: "Verseifung" (soapification"), in latin: saponification, the substance is: "Fett-Seife" (fatty soap) in latin: adipocire.

That is a possible reason why it was claimed to have been "produced" in the Danzig institute of pathology. Pathologists use the amount of conversion of the tissue for the determination of the death hour, for nothing else. The "soap" is produced by nature in all of us after death.

[bluespaceoddity]

... During decay of dead bodies the subcutaneous tissue after 4-6 weeks is converted into a wax-like layer. The chemical process in German is called: "Verseifung" (soapification"), in latin: saponification, the substance is: "Fett-Seife" (fatty soap) in latin: adipocire. ...

In Polish it is called : "Przeobrażenie tłuszczowo-woskowe" (which apparently literally translates to the conversion of fat and wax) or "saponifikacja".

The Polish archeologist Andrzej Kola used the first term frequently to describe his findings in the mass graves he investigated. Some examples:

Grób nr 3.
… Głębokość grobu dochodzi do 5,80 m. W dolnych partiach jest szkieletowy, ze szczątkami zwłok w przemianie tłuszczowo-woskowej, w patiach wyższych zaś ciałopalny, z przewarstwieniami wapna, piasku i węgli drzewnych.

From: Dokumenty I Materiały, I Badania archeologiczne terenu byłego obozu zagłady Żydów w Sobiborze w 2001 r. by Prof. Andrzej Kola.

"Dól Śmierci nr 1 (ryc.18)
Dól śmierci nr 1 zlokalizowano w północno-zachodniej części ha XXII na podstawie 13 głębokich odwiertów (nr 2,3,11,18,19,23,24,37,38,44,56,65,66). Najprawdopodobniej w rzucie poziomym posiadał on kształt nieregularnego prostokąta o rozmiarach około 40,00 x 12,00 m i głębokości dochodzącej do 4,80 m. Dól wypełniony jest w dolnych partiach ciałami w przemianie woskowo-tłuszczowej; od głębokości około 2,00 m występują przepalone kości ludzkie i węglę drzewne. Taką zawartość zarejestrowano już głębokości około 20-30 cm od powierzchni gruntu."

From: Hitlerowski obóz zagłady Żydów w Bełżcu w świetle źródeł archeologicznych: badania 1997-1999 by Prof. Andrzej Kola.

With apologies to the moderator and begging the indulgence of the participants in this thread, I hope they didn't mind too much that I expanded -a little- on the related but tangential.

[wm]

I think it is more a piece of brown propagaganda (lying with some facts in the background) as total black propagenda (lying only)

I know this is a military website and we should be on alert all the time be maybe we could settle for more peaceful "brown journalism"
I found a really fine piece of brown or maybe even black propaganda:

LONDON, 20th April, 1917
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
HUNS AND THEIR' DEAD, GREAT CORPSE FACTORY, LAST WORD IN BARBARISM
We pass through Evergnicourt. There is a dull smell in the air, as if lime were being burnt. We are passing the great corpse exploitation establishment (Kadaververwertungsanstalt) of this army group. The fat that is won here is turned into, lubricating oils, and everything else is ground down iv the bones mill into a powder, which is used for' mixing with pigs' food.
This description of the German Corpse Exploitation Establishment behind their lines north of Reims is furnished by Herr Karl Rosner, special correspondent of the Berlin Lokalanzeiger on the Western front. The statement corroborates an account of this new and horrible German industry which appeared in the Independence. Beige for 10th April, taken from La Belgique, of Leyden, in Holland. Moreover, it will be recalled that one of the' American Consuls, on leaving Germany in February, stated in Switzerland that the Germans were distilling glycerine for nitroglycerine from the bodies of their dead, and this were obtaining some of their explosives. - ' '
The Belgian account referred to (omitting the most repulsive details) states: "We have known for long that the Germans stripped their dead behind the firing-line, fastened them into bundles of three or four bodies with iron wire, and then dispatched these grisly bundles to the rear. Until recently the trains laden with the. dead were sent to Leraing, near Liege, and a point north of Brussels, where there were refuse consumers. Much surprise was caused by the fact that of "late this traffic has proceeded in the direction of Gerolstein,'and it was noted that on each wagon was written 'D.A.V.G.'
"German science is responsible for the ghoulish idea of the formation of the German Offal Utilisation Company (Ltd.) ('D.A.V.G.' or. 'Deutsche Abfall-Verwertungs Gesellschaft'), a dividend-earning company with a capital of £250,000, the chief factory of which has been constructed 1000 yards from the railway connecting St. Vith, near the Belgian frontier, with Gerolstein, in. the lonely, little-frequented Eifel district, southwest of Coblentz: This factory deals specially with the dead from the West front. If the results are as good as the company hopes, another will be established to deal with corpses on the East front.
"The factory is invisible from the railway. It is placed deep in forest country, with a- specially thick growth of trees about it. Live wires surround it. A special double track leads to it. The works are about 700 ft long and 110 ft broad, and the railway runs completely round them. In the north-west corner of the works the discharge of the trains takes place. The trains arrive full of bare bodies, which are unloaded by the workers who live at the works. The men wear oilskin overalls and masks with mica eyepieces. They are equipped with long, hooked poles, and push the bundles of bodies to an endless chain, which picks them with big hooks, attached at intervals of _2ft. The bodies are transported on this eudless chain into a long, narrow compartment, where they pass through a bath which disinfects them. They then go through a drying chamber and finally are automatically carried into a digester or great cauldron, in which they are dropped by an apparatus which detaches them from the chain. In the digester they remain from six to eight hours, and are treated by steam, which breaks them up while they are slowly stirred by Tnnchinery. "From this treatment result several products. . The fats are broken up into stearine, a form of tallow, and oils, which require to be re-distilled before they can be used. The process of distillation is carried out by boiling the oil with carbonate of soda, and some part of the by-products resulting from this is used by German soap-makers. The oil distillery and refinery lie in the south-eastern corner of the works. The refined oil is sent out-in fine casks, like those used for petroleum, and is of a yellowish-brown colour. The fumes are exhausted from the buildings by electric fans, and are sucked through a great pipe to the north-eastern corner, where they are condensed, and the refuse resulting js discharged into a sewer. There is no high chimney, as the boiler furnaces are supplied with air by electric fans. "There is a laboratory, and in charge of the works is a chief chemist, with two assistants and seventy-eight men. All the employees are soldiers,' and are attached to the 8th Army Corps. There is a sanatorium by the works, and under no pretext is any man permitted to leave them. They are guarded as prisoners at their appalling work."
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bi ... anstalt+--
It was mentioned on this forum before: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13745

That is a possible reason why it was claimed to have been "produced" in the Danzig institute of pathology. Pathologists use the amount of conversion of the tissue for the determination of the death hour, for nothing else. The "soap" is produced by nature in all of us after death.

As i understand it now the flag product of "Professor Spammer's Soap Factory" were anatomical specimens, to be used as reference material by students. The by-product was maceration grease, essentially a waste product that usually just gets burned. After refiment they used it for conservation of joints of those specimens. At some point of time, when the soap shortages were really disruptive, they crossed the line and used it to clean autopsy rooms. There are allegations that after Spanner had left for less dangerous shores in 1945 someone tried to sell a surplus on a black market.
The rest was just a moral panic of clouless people who didn't uderstand the purpose and inner workings of Anatomical Institute.

But because the maceration grease had to be processed and refined we cannot say it was just an accident or a natural process.

[Ponury]

Where`s lost 2rd director of Institure - SS-mann Fritz Wolmann?

[wm]

According to Monika Tomkiewicz, Piotr Semków "Profesor Rudolf Spanner 1895-1960" in December 1944, shorty after pay rise of 12%, Fritz Kozlik-Wollmann resigned from his post, joined an unidentified SS formation as a physician and disappeared without trace.

[Ponury]

Yes, I know this book.

Wollmann lost in Eastern Germany ?!

[wm]

He probably was killed or perished in Soviet captivity. Joining SS at such late date was a very bad career move.

[waldzee]

Appare that Filip Müller was witness during the burn of bodies for take soap.

Hardly so, given that the only place where soap is reported to have been manufactured from human fat was Stutthof concentration camp and Müller was part of the Sonderkommando at Birkenau.

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/81988318/Dog- ... nter-Grass page 200
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_ ... an_corpses
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... oap06.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I've actually , long ago, made soap with the recipie- using beef tallow.Its pretty generic for homemade soap. Whch means that human fat could have been fed into a larger 'pool' of animal tallow. ( Beef, horse, assorted ruminants, waste cooking oils, etc.

The JVL did not find any evidence of human tallow collection, and concluded that Sotoff was an 'experiment'. A gastly one, but fortunately, a step not yet taken. Yet.

[RustySpur]

The sample was retrieved on January 20, 2006. The number is CCCP-393 not USSR-393. The main Polish expert was prof. Andrzej Stołyhwo. You can find his e-mail here: http://sggw.pl/en/node/2927
...
In 2006 samples from the brown soap and from the Hague soap was tested using gas chromatography, a sample of human fat from 1946 was used for comparison. In both samples C18:1, C20:1, C22:1 trans isomers was found...

The link is broken now. Could you please give actual link to SGGW publication?

[wm]

It's not a publication it's an expert report commissioned by the Institute of National Remembrance. I'm afraid it's not on the web, it's available in their archives in Gdańsk.
A large excerpt is in this book.

[Von Schadewald]

http://jewishnews.co.uk/mystery-nazi-so ... ed-poland/

Several tonnes of soap produced in Germany during the war have been found in Poland by a charity working to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

It was discovered buried earlier this month in the town of Czeremcha close to the border with Belarus following a tip-off by an student who suggested the items may contain fat from Jewish victims, according to British-born Jonny Daniels, who founded From the Depths.

Many experts insist there is no evidence to support rumours circulating during the war or since that victims’ fat was used for such purposes, but samples have now been taken to Israel for chemical testing to rule this out.

“According to the villagers at the end of the war the Nazis escaping tried to hide the soap and threw it all in this forest,” said Daniels, whose organisation is also undertaking a project to preserve Jewish cemeteries.

“When I found it I was sick to my stomach at the thought of what it could be. I pray that it turns out to be industrial fat.”

A spokesperson for Yad Vashem said the Germans “experimented” with making oils and soaps from the bodies of non-Jewish Polish labourers near Stutthof at the end of the war.

She added:  “Despite the rumours, which began even during the Holocaust, there is no evidence that soap was produced from the bodies of Jews.”

[Davey Boy]

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but the soap issue has been covered at Holocaust Controversies.

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... tical.html

[wm]

Several tonnes of soap produced in Germany during the war have been found in Poland by a charity working to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

According to the local press, there were large German warehouses in the forest there (built earlier by the Soviets after their 1939 invasion of Poland).
After the front had collapsed the Germans burnt down the warehouses and fled, the soap stored there was baked to stone by the heat, and because of that survived to this day.
It wasn't discovered suddenly a few years ago, the locals knew about it all the time, and even used, for example for paving.
The locals working in those warehouses were paid sometimes with that soap, and say the quality of it was bad.