Soap

[Dan]

I suspect that there is enough evidence, or lack thereof, to clarify whether the Germans made people into soap or not. I had assumed it to be a fiction, but as there are people here who believe that the Nazis made occasional attempts, or made occasional feasibility studies regarding the industrial production of soap I would be interested in the proof for it.

[Ebusitanus]

I had thought that to be some acusations done by the Russians but which were eventually dropped due to their unsubstanciated nature, much like the shruken heads, etc...Now it seems to find a revival and I would be also interested to know in what are those claims based now.

[Luca]

If i remember well i ve read about this topic in several emails in this forum.
You know where i can read these emails again?
Sorry for my bad memory
Luca

[Dan]

I had thought that to be some acusations done by the Russians but which were eventually dropped due to their unsubstanciated nature, much like the shruken heads, etc...Now it seems to find a revival and I would be also interested to know in what are those claims based now.

They seem to be based on three afidavits from two British prisoners and one German instructor, and a general recipe for making soap which you will find in every college or technical institute in the world which teaches chemistry and related topics. This is the recipe:

eine Hand voll Soda im Topf 3 Std. kochen. Dazu eine reichliche
Hand Voll Kochsalz, etwas kochen und erstarren lassen. Die
erstarrte Oberflaeche wird abgenommen, zerschitten und mit
1 - 2 Ltr Wasser nochmal 1 1/2 - 2 Std gekocht. Ausgiessen in
flache Schalen und erstarren lassen, in Stuecke schneiden zum
Gebrauch.

You can see it is general in nature, rather than an experiment. Later the recipe morphed into this:

To this:

5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500
or 1,000 grams of caustic soda. All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours
and then cooled

Although I am not sure how this happened.

There was also a Soviet example of this soap, although it seems to have been misplaced, for none now living can produce such a sample.

Regards

[Dan]

If i remember well i ve read about this topic in several emails in this forum.
You know where i can read these emails again?
Sorry for my bad memory
Luca

Luca, there is no need for a good memory on a sophisticated site like this. Simply go to the powerful search engine who's link is directly above the forum title, and type in the words you are interested in.

Regards

[Ebusitanus]

I can´t even remember where but wasn´t there some story about some existing "soap" samples being given burial somewhere?
Has any of these samples been analitzed? All this gives me flashbacks to this Brad Pitt movie of "Fight Club"

[Roberto]

I had thought that to be some acusations done by the Russians but which were eventually dropped due to their unsubstanciated nature, much like the shruken heads, etc...Now it seems to find a revival and I would be also interested to know in what are those claims based now.

They seem to be based on three afidavits from two British prisoners and one German instructor, and a general recipe for making soap which you will find in every college or technical institute in the world which teaches chemistry and related topics. This is the recipe:

eine Hand voll Soda im Topf 3 Std. kochen. Dazu eine reichliche
Hand Voll Kochsalz, etwas kochen und erstarren lassen. Die
erstarrte Oberflaeche wird abgenommen, zerschitten und mit
1 - 2 Ltr Wasser nochmal 1 1/2 - 2 Std gekocht. Ausgiessen in
flache Schalen und erstarren lassen, in Stuecke schneiden zum
Gebrauch.

You can see it is general in nature, rather than an experiment. Later the recipe morphed into this:

To this:

5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500
or 1,000 grams of caustic soda. All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours
and then cooled

Although I am not sure how this happened.

There was also a Soviet example of this soap, although it seems to have been misplaced, for none now living can produce such a sample.

Regards

I know where the second recipe comes from:

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Mazur's Soap Machine
Reply-To: [email protected]
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Mazur,soap

Since Mr. Raven, although still apparently suffering from May 4
Myopia, has addressed the soap issue at great length (thank you,
Greg), I thought it might be appropriate to republish the following,
as the author of the cited text is mentioned in Mr. Raven's article.

Archive/File: holocaust soap.1
Last-Modified: 1994/08/15

The issue of whether or not the Nazis produced soap from human fat is
addressed by Konnilyn Feig, in the book "Hitler's Death Camps." It is a
contentious issue, and may be completely untrue.

If evidence exists that Mazur has been discredited, I would welcome the
opportunity to examine it. Until then, I will accept the evidence offered:

It seems that Stutthof manufactured soap. Some historians claim that
the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor.
However, cakes are on display; and witnesses have testified that soap was
made at Stutthof from the fat of dead Jews.

At the War Crime Trials Sigmund Mazur, laboratory assistant at the
Danzig Anatomic Institute, testified that the institute conducted
experiments in producing soap from human bodies. The professors collected
bodies, bones, and human fat in a building called "a laboratory for the
fabrication of skeletons, the burning of meat and unnecessary bones." the
chief, Professor Spanner, gave Mazur the soap recipe:

5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500
or 1,000 grams of caustic soda. All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours
and then cooled. The soap floats to the surface while the water
and other sediment remain at the bottom. A bit of salt and soda
is added to this mixture. Then fresh water is added, and the
mixture again boiled 2 or 3 hours. After having cooled the soap
is poured into molds.

The prosecutor presented Mazur's description of the process:

I boiled the soap out of the bodies of women and men. The
process of boiling alone took several days -- from 3 to 7.
During two manufacturing processes, in which I directly
participated, more than 25 kilograms of soap were produced. The
amount of human fat necessary for these two processes was 70 to
80 kilograms collected from some 40 bodies. The finished soap
then went to Professor Spanner, who kept it personally.
The work for the production of soap from human bodies has, as
far as I know, also interested Hitler's Government. The
Anatomic Institute was visited by the Minister of Education,
Rust; the Reichsgesundheitsfuhrer, Doctor Conti; the Gauleiter
of Danzig, Albert Forster; as well as professors from other
medical institutes.
I used this human soap for my personal needs, for toilet and
for laundering. For myself I took 4 kilograms of this soap.

Two British POWs gave the prosecution staff testimony on the soap
experiments:

Owing to the preservative mixture in which they were stored,
this tissue came away from the bones very easily. The tissue
was then put into a boiler about the size of a small kithen
table. . . . After boiling the liquid it was put into white
trays about twice the size of a sheet of foolscap and about 3
centimeters deep. . . . Approximately 3 to 4 trayfuls per day
were obtained from the machine.
A machine for the manufacture of soap was completed some time
in March or April 1944. The British prisoners of war had
constructed the building in which it was housed in June 1942.
The machine itelf was installed by a civillian from Danzig by
the name of AJRD. It consisted, as far as I remember, of an
electrically heated tank in which bones of the corpses were
mixed with some acid and melted down.
This process of melting down took about 24 hours. The fattey
portions of the corpses and particularly those of females were
put into a crude enamel tank, heated by a couple of bunsen
burners. Some acid was also used in this process. I think it
was caustic soda. When boiling had been completed, the mixture
was allowed to cool and then cut into blocks for micrscopic
examination.

The prosecutor showed the court soap samples.[19]

[19] The soap stories appear to excite enormous controversy. Early
scholars said the stories were untrue, that the Nazis did not make soap
from human fat, that those bars of soap marked with an "RJF" were not
made from humans (letter in author's possession from Herbert Rosenkranz
to Lonny Darwin, September 20, 1979). Most East European camp scholars,
however, validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from
humans are displayed in Eastern Europe -- I have seen many over the
years. I accept without further question that the Nazis did use every
part of the human body, for the evidence now is irrefutable. The
Stutthof soap do not have "RJF" stamped on them. Testimony from IMT
7:598-601. See also Shirer, 971.

---------------------------------------------------------------
"Hitler's Death Camps" by Konnilyn G. Feig LOC D810.J4 F36 1981
---------------------------------------------------------------

I appreciate Mr. Raven's article, as it provides further material
for research, but note that he did not fully examine Feig's text
(cited above) - the British POW's, for instance, were not mentioned.

I have always had an open mind about this issue, as the opening
paragraphs indicate (the original article goes back over two years),
and have still not seen either Mazur's testimony, or that of the two
POW's, refuted. I am, however, well aware of the controversy
surrounding this issue, and the comments made by Lipstadt and Bauer.
Alas, neither has provided any research material to examine, so the
question remains open.

Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... of/soap.01

But what's the source of the first?

And what's supposed to be wrong with the affidavits?

As long as these cannot be demonstrated to have been fallacious, I see no reason to challenge the IMT's assessment of what the court itself saw as no more than occasional experimental attempts:

After cremation the ashes were used for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilise the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap.

Source of quote:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/p ... ersecution

Emphasis is mine.

What I'll never understand is the excessive preoccupation of some people with what, according to the IMT's findings, was an isolated minor affair.

[Luca]

If i remember well i ve read about this topic in several emails in this forum.
You know where i can read these emails again?
Sorry for my bad memory
Luca

Luca, there is no need for a good memory on a sophisticated site like this. Simply go to the powerful search engine who's link is directly above the forum title, and type in the words you are interested in.

Regards

AH! Ok.
Sorry for the stupid question.
Best Regards
Luca

[Dan]

It seems that Stutthof manufactured soap. Some historians claim that
the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor.
However, cakes are on display; and witnesses have testified that soap was
made at Stutthof from the fat of dead Jews.

So here we have another piece of evidence, namely that there are cakes of soap made from Jews on display.

Does anyone know where these cakes are?

At the War Crime Trials Sigmund Mazur, laboratory assistant at the
Danzig Anatomic Institute, testified that the institute conducted
experiments in producing soap from human bodies. The professors collected
bodies, bones, and human fat in a building called "a laboratory for the
fabrication of skeletons, the burning of meat and unnecessary bones." the
chief, Professor Spanner, gave Mazur the soap recipe:

So the second recipe would seem to have been given oraly by Professor Spanner to one of his underlings.

[Dan]

Roberto, the first recipe for making soap come from Document USSR-196 as provided by the researcher Charles Bunch.

[Roberto]

It seems that Stutthof manufactured soap. Some historians claim that
the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor.
However, cakes are on display; and witnesses have testified that soap was
made at Stutthof from the fat of dead Jews.

Not necessarily Jews. Stutthof was mainly a camp for Polish political prisoners, IIRC.

So here we have another piece of evidence, namely that there are cakes of soap made from Jews on display.

Does anyone know where these cakes are?

The author of the quoted Usenet article, most likely.

[Luca]

Where can i search the declarations of the witness Filip Müller concern the fabrication of soap from human bodyes?
Thank You
Luca

[Roberto]

Where can i search the declarations of the witness Filip Müller concern the fabrication of soap from human bodyes?
Thank You
Luca

Why, did Müller say anything about soap?

[Luca]

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

[Roberto]

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.