michael mills wrote: ↑14 Dec 2020 23:51
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.
