Lampshades

[David Thompson]

Everyone - Back to the topic, please.

[Karl]

Well that Borman story was credible. Great input.

Lampshades were one off's.

what was legal and illegal anyway but I understand the subject gets some salivating going.

[bf109 emil]

what was legal and illegal anyway but I understand the subject gets some salivating going.

unsure if legality is the issue in this thread as more so morally. IMHO the whole legality was settled by interning the jews, and extermination process. Whether the whole lampshade thing is ever proven true or a hoax make of little matter to myself. In the terms of History it might paint another coat upon the whole NSDAP and the German nation during that time frame, which i am sure i will get a rebuttal as to the people of Germany knowing nothing, which i happen to also believe true, yet the fact remains in the minds of many when the name Germany is first said...what come to one thought or mind as for lampshades, i am sure that the readers here know that this is so far off the norm that if/nor this happened it did so for a perverse individual and not as the whole but rather a curiosity.

[paolosilv]

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwal ... ities.html

This site, which is sometimes accurate, has images of the exhibit, and it states that the lampshades exist :
"The Jewish newspaper Forward reported on April 4, 1997 that the National Archives in College Park, Maryland has identified "a human skin lampshade, or part of one," taken from the Buchenwald concentration camp and kept with government documents, and that the National Museum of Health and Medicine holds three pieces of tattooed human skin also taken from Buchenwald."

Gusen:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... enmed.html

In some cases, inmates were only killed by heart-injections because of their anatomical "anomalies" . The Museum also had an album showing the tatooed skin of some of the inmates. Other "artwork" (lamp-shades and even furniture) was also produced in the Gusen camp. In 1944, three big crates with anatomical preparations were transferred to the SS Medical Agency at Graz.

[Karl]

awesome job pao.

[michael mills]

No, there is no evidence for the existence of lampshades made of human skin.

Pieces of tattooed human skin do exist, and were found in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Those specimens had been taken from deceased prisoners, pursuant to an order from Himmler to collect such specimens for display at a planned Museum of Criminality (that order actually exists).

Himmler considered tattooing to be primarily a practice of the criminal classes, and the presence of tattoos on a person's body as a sign of the criminal nature of that person. The incidence of persons with tattoos among the concentration camp population was regarded by Himmler as a confirmation of the criminality of the persons he had imprisoned.

So yes, there were collections of specimens of tattooed human skin taken from concentration camp prisoners. But, no, those pieces of skin were not used in the manufacture of lampshades, gloves, bookcovers, or any other article. And further, it is not known for certain whether concentration camp prisoners were selected and killed specifically to take tattoooed skin from them, or whether the extant specimens originated from prisoners who had died as part of the normal high mortality rate at the concentration camps.

In the 1920s, there were stories circulating that the Bolsheviks in Russia made gloves from human skin; the book "Red Terror in Russia", by the exiled Socialist Sergei Melgunov, even contained photographs of articles alleged to have been made from human skin. I think it possible that it was those stories, originally told about the Bolsheviks, that formed the basis for the stories about lampshades made of human skin allegedly found in German concentration camps.

The most plausible explanation is that various articles such a lampshades, gloves, bookcovers etc, did exist in both Soviet Russia and National Socialist Germany, but they were not made of human skin.

[michael mills]

It seems Polosilv does not read his own sources of information properly.

Here is another extract from the source on Buchenwald quoted by him:

In April 1947, Ilse Koch was brought before an American military tribunal in Dachau, where she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She was not convicted of ordering lamp shades to be made, but rather she was found guilty on a charge of participating in a "common plan" to violate the Laws and Usages of War under the Geneva Convention. During the review process, her sentence was reduced to time served, or four years, and she was released in 1949 by General Lucius D. Clay who said that the lamp shades in her home had been made from goat skin.

Ilse Koch was then retried in a German court on charges of cruelty to the prisoners and ordering prisoners to be murdered. She was convicted again and sentenced again to life imprisonment; she committed suicide in prison in 1967. The German court did not charge her with making lamp shades, but the judges did take judicial notice that lamp shades, made from human skin, had been found in her home, although this had not been proved during the proceedings of the American Military Tribunal at Dachau.

So there were accusations of the manufacture of lampshades from human skin, but none of those accusations was proved in a court of law. Lampshades were indeed found in the home formerly lived in by Ilse Koch, but they were found to have been made of goatskin. The statement by Lucius Clay, the post-war US administrator of Germany, should be taken as defintive; he was obviously no nazi stooge.

[michael mills]

(5) Five pieces of tattooed skin are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) and one at the National Archives (NA), both federal facilities in the D.C. area. All six items are from Buchenwald; three have been positively identified as human, and another is now being tested. The NA item was once labeled "human skin lampshade," but an archivist there says it has no perforations or other indications of such use. Two of the NMHM items have holes on the left side as though from a hole punch. A third, which is large and irregularly shaped, has pinholes around the perimeter at one- to three-centimeter intervals. How the holes got there is unknown, but a photo shows the skins stuck up on an exhibit board at Ilse Koch's 1947 trial. The NMHM curator reserves judgment, but to me nothing suggests these items were part of a lampshade. The lamp from the movie still has vanished; however, as photographed it doesn't match the lamp described by witnesses at the trial — it has no visible markings at all.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... human-skin

[bf109 emil]

(5) Five pieces of tattooed skin are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) and one at the National Archives (NA), both federal facilities in the D.C. area. All six items are from Buchenwald; three have been positively identified as human, and another is now being tested. The NA item was once labeled "human skin lampshade," but an archivist there says it has no perforations or other indications of such use. Two of the NMHM items have holes on the left side as though from a hole punch. A third, which is large and irregularly shaped, has pinholes around the perimeter at one- to three-centimeter intervals. How the holes got there is unknown, but a photo shows the skins stuck up on an exhibit board at Ilse Koch's 1947 trial. The NMHM curator reserves judgment, but to me nothing suggests these items were part of a lampshade. The lamp from the movie still has vanished; however, as photographed it doesn't match the lamp described by witnesses at the trial — it has no visible markings at all.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... human-skin

unsure as to the legality of this claim written on a blog with no sources listed as to were Cecil Adams the author retained his facts from...
-nor an earlier article proclaiming it to be true by paosilv...
Michael maybe the ruling by "General Lucius D. Clay who said that the lamp shades in her home had been made from goat skin." can be authenticated as to how he made this claim or fact..I understand he handed this verdict down but on what grounds...were the supposed lampshades sent to a pathologist, barring DNA at the time, and unsure as to what determines skin, and I have to doubt General Clay was an expert on this, it seems someone, or a lab., or professional did this evidence as was presented by Clay...any idea as to whom or what determined this?

Either/Or makes no matter, but would be interesting, as IMHO a rabid dog has to be put down regardless of the severity, whether it is a minor case or major make little difference

[michael mills]

On the table, among the human organs experimented on and preserved, are two shrunken heads and 14 tattooed skins - including the naked butterfly woman Kipperman had recently held.

Also on the table was a lamp, though there are no visible tattoos on its shade. Despite persistent rumors and allegations that some skins were used for a lampshade, there has still been no proof.

And next to the lamp was a report of some kind. Using his engraver's magnifying glass, Kipperman made out the German printing on the cover, tracked down its origin and had the report, a doctoral dissertation on the sociology of tattooing, translated. The dissertation, "A Contribution to the Tattooing Question," was written by Dr. Erich Wagner of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Scientific Criminology at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. A translated copy is now in the Washington Holocaust Museum's library.

Wagner studied the non-numerical tattoos of inmates at Buchenwald and found 3 percent of Jews in the camp were tattooed.

While Jewish law forbids tattooing as a desecration of one's body, Wagner's dissertation on prisoners at Buchenwald found 3 percent had tattoos. "Tattooing was only done because the Jew had the desire to adapt to his environment and not to deviate from his role among his comrades of another race although he dismissed tattooing as nonsense and anathema to his religion even before the procedure."

Wagner doesn't mention anyone being killed for the tattoos, though numerous claims from Buchenwald survivors insist they were. The Allied Forces' Psychological Warfare Division, in collaboration with Buchenwald prisoners, wrote "The Buchenwald Report" in April and May 1945. It detailed the rule of Ilse Koch, whose "collection of human skin and tattoos received extensive publicity" at her trial. (Her life sentence at Nuremberg was later reduced to four years, since the main hearsay evidence, a lamp with a tattooed skin lamp shade, was never found. A German court then found her guilty and sentenced her to life in prison. She hanged herself in 1967.)

Buchenwald prisoner Eugen Kogon, in his book The Theory and Practice of Hell, wrote that prisoners were routinely "selected according to the magnificence of their tattoo markings, and sent to the hospital. Soon afterward the finest skin specimens would appear in the Pathology Section, where they were prepared and for years exhibited to SS visitors as particular treasures... Hundreds of human skins, prepared in different ways, were sent to Berlin."

This was corroborated by Dr. Kurt Sitte, a physicist and Czech political prisoner forced to work in the Pathology Section. He testified at Ilse Koch's two trials and a US Senate hearing into why her original sentence was reduced. "I have seen hundreds of skins," Sitte told a hearing on December 8, 1948. "We had to prepare the tattooings, and then had to deliver them to the SS."

Sitte said Wagner's research lacked "scientific value," but merely recorded those tattooed. "They were killed because they had picturesque tattoos."

He also explained the orders for shrinking a decapitated head, which were done according to the traditions of the Jivaro Indians. (Sitte worked in universities in England and the US before moving to Israel. In 1961 he was convicted as a spy "to a state friendly to the United Arab Republic," according to an April 3, 1963 article in The New York Times. Sitte spent two years in prison before president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi pardoned him.)

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? ... %2FPrinter

[paolosilv]

Well, I'm no authority on the matter; I merely stumbled on this sites. As they say I just report the news, I don't make it. Anyway, the only real thing I'm interested in finding out accurate info on, is Hans Kammler. Some of the information in books or posts by "greyfalcon" were faulted for copyright. The info. on "Die Glocke" or the Bell, a supposed Nazi UFO, is science fiction. So I have edited as best I could what I found and put it here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5&start=15

[paolosilv]

More information that I've found:

"A lampshade of human skin, made at the request of an SS officer's wife" (Ilse Koch). Voiceover, film of Buchenwald's liberation and aftermath.

Prosecutor: "You knew that lampshades of human skin were made at Buchenwald?"
Hermann Pister, ex-Commandant of Buchenwald: "I never saw a lampshade made of human skin."
"Did you have a shrunken head sitting on your desk?"
Pister: "No. There was one from my predecessor (Koch) in a cabinet by the wall, standing there with other utensils gathering dust."
"No further questions".
Page, 294, Justice at Dachau, Joshua Greene, Broadway Books, 2003.

Dr. Sitte, a prisoner, also swore under oath about objects in the office of the Commandant. "And therefore, when I say for instance, I know from hearsay that people have that lampshade - I am as sure as if I had seen it myself that it did exist". Furthermore he states that "This is a point I feel very strongly about. So much of our evidence is called hearsay and is then dismissed lightly. We hear it called 'camp gossip'. We could not listen to gossip. That would have been disastrous. We had to know exactly how the situation was, what the other side, the enemies, the SS , were doing". (p. 273, ibid).

[Karlaise jules]

the mysteri of the skin lamp in spanish documental, i'ts not human.


WTF?
i'ts a exact replic of the original?

[David Thompson]

Karlaise jules -- Do you have a link (or even a name) for the Spanish documentary? The photo didn't quite make it through the posting process.

[Karlaise jules]

Karlaise jules -- Do you have a link (or even a name) for the Spanish documentary? The photo didn't quite make it through the posting process.

the name of this video in La lampara de piel humana. documental.

i'ts in youtube but in spanish