Lampshades

[Marcus]

Two off-topic posts from Karlaise jules were removed. This thread is about the allegations regarding lampshades, not general stories about persons mentioned in the thread.

/Marcus

[Sergey Romanov]

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.

Nothing was found to be made out of goat skin. No lampshades were introduced during the trial in the first place. Clay's claim is completely spurious. Its possible origin is explained here:
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... -skin.html

The tattooed pieces of skin that were collected in the camp for ostensibly scientific research on criminality are documented, as you have already mentioned, and there is testimonial evidence that these pieces were (further) misused to create various trinkets, including 1 or 2 lampshades. There's indeed no credible testimony that incriminates Ilse Koch as to the manufacture of lampshades.

[wooley12]

I'm glad I found this thread. My father was with a US medical unit that went into Buchenwald on the day after it was liberated. I'd heard about the lampshades as a child. The denial of knowledge by the townspeople. There was a line in the 1945 movie G. I. Joe said by a soldier that as his unit trudged down a muddy road. "I can't wait until this war is over so I can read about where I've been and what I've done." The links here have given some clarity the what actually occurred.

[Hans1906]

Good evening,

what happened to these horrible objects after 1945, that would be my question?

Hans1906

[wooley12]

My guess is some items were taken as war souvenirs. Years of seeing death all around, one would have to become numb to the horror to stay sane. Seeing death was normalized. As an example, my father was a truck driver with the 474th Infantry Regiment. in 1945. The 474th was formed with the remnants of 3 commando battalions to follow the main US Army forces as it swept through France and Germany to capture any German fighters that were bypassed. It was the 474th that was tasked with moving the Nazi gold and art discovered in the Merkers mine. When the 474th was sent to Norway my dad fell in love with a woman in Oslo and had an engagement ring made from the gold dentures that were "lost" in the move.

[Hans1906]

Quote:
"My guess is some items were taken as war souvenirs. Years of seeing death all around, one would have to become numb to the horror to stay sane."

wooley12,

I consider your above "guess" to be pure speculation, without any background, or even evidence at all, sorry.

Hans1906

[wooley12]

Well, my guess is based on my dad's story and the stories of many other front line fighters. What is your guess? Some research might give an answer but I'll be ok not knowing for sure.

[Hans1906]

wooley12,

"guessing" is almost always not a good answer, very sure also not to this topic...

My "guess" is, I have no idea, hopefully the human remains have been given a decent burial, in whatever form.


Hans1906

[wooley12]

Try Google if you need to know. I like the line from the movie Rudy.

"I only KNOW two things for certain. There is a God....and I'm not him."

Cheers
Steve

[Hans1906]

This is not about any "movie" at all, this horrible terror happened just around the corner, almost everywhere
here in Germany, before 1945.

But it is certainly not my job, much less my intention, to explain all this to someone like you.
You should have grown up with all this, developed the sense of the deeds and places, over the course of many decades.

Nobody can convey all this in an Internet forum, impossible.
The sense of all this is unfortunately not communicable, probably never.

It's probably better that way.


Hans1906

[wooley12]

Yep.

One of the reasons I'm in this forum is because my father in law left Germany in 1929 and returned as a US soldier at the Battle of the Bulge. When he went AWOL to visit his home in Timmerlah , he found his nieces were Hitlers Maidens and his nephew had joined the SS after hearing Hitler speak in Braunschweig. So some family history to explore.

[Sergey Romanov]

I'm glad I found this thread. My father was with a US medical unit that went into Buchenwald on the day after it was liberated. I'd heard about the lampshades as a child. The denial of knowledge by the townspeople. There was a line in the 1945 movie G. I. Joe said by a soldier that as his unit trudged down a muddy road. "I can't wait until this war is over so I can read about where I've been and what I've done." The links here have given some clarity the what actually occurred.

Mass-making of lampshades is a legend, but there's a core of truth to it:

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... lampshades

[Hans1906]

@ Sergey Romanov,

the above posted blog/website is not a reliable source, why is this link accepted here in the forum?

Do we need to elaborate further on this...?


Hans1906

[michael mills]

From the testimony of the SS judicial investigator Heinrich Nett, in the source linked by Sergei Romanov:

We found prepared human skin in the concentration camp of Buchenwald and took it with us for the Criminal Museum in Berlin.

That is confirmation that there was a plan to establish a Museum of Criminality in Berlin, and that tattooed skin taken from deceased criminals was to be exhibited there. The order by Lolling to send tattooed skin from Buchenwald to Berlin should also be seen in the context of that plan, the specimens of tattooed skin being destined for exhibition in the museum.

The claim that pieces of tattooed skin and other objects rests solely on the post-war testimony of former political prisoners held at Buchenwald. Those former prisoners were ideological opponents of the National Socialist Government of Germany, and therefore had every motivation to give false evidence about the use of the tattooed skin, in order to make political propaganda.

There is a very good reason for those politically motivated former prisoners to have fabricated a story about the preparation of various articles from the tattooed skin that really was harvested from prisoners at Buchenwald. In the 1920s, a book had been published in Germany by an anti-Bolshevik exile from Russia, Sergei Melgunov, about the alleged atrocities committed by the Bolshevik regime; the title of the English-language translation of that book is "Red Terror in Russia", published in 1926. One of those alleged atrocities in that book, which I have read, was that the Bolsheviks had produced items made from human skin taken from executed prisoners. The book even contained photos, which I have seen, of gloves allegedly made from human skin.

It is quite likely that the political prisoners held at Buchenwald had heard about the allegations of their political allies, the Russian Bolsheviks, having made articles from human skin, and decided to turn the tables by making the same allegation against their political enemies, the German National Socialists, namely that those enemies had made made articles from the tattooed skin which they had seen being preserved in the pathology department at Buchenwald.

The most probable truth is that both sets of allegations about the making of articles from human skin, those against the Russian Bolsheviks and those against the German National Socialists, were falsehoods fabricated for the purposes of political propaganda.

[wm]

From the book:

gloves1.png

gloves2.png

But that German communists read the book is highly unlikely. The "gloves" were a tiny and insignificant part of the book anyway.