2024-03-22 13:07:54
Historical revisionists doubt that the SS had objects made from human skin in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The memorial foundation has therefore had some of these exhibits examined.
According to the latest research results, one of the most notorious exhibits in the collection of the Buchenwald Memorial testifies to the extent of the National Socialist perpetrators’ contempt for humanity: the so-called Small Lampshade was clearly made from human skin, said criminal biologist Mark Benecke in Weimar.
The material of the lampshade shows, among other things, patterns that “can only be human”. How a report from 1992 came to the conclusion that this lampshade was made of plastic is “not at all clear”. There are patterns in this fabric that do not exist in plastic. Benecke had examined the umbrella on behalf of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.
“Obviously a Buchenwald specific”
The lampshade is one of the most famous objects in the memorial’s holdings – but it is no longer shown to the public. He could already be seen in the first permanent exhibition in the memorial, which opened in 1954. After 1990 it was removed from the permanent exhibition for ethical reasons, among other things. A short time later, a report questioned whether it had been made from human skin.
According to the foundation’s director, Jens-Christian Wagner, visitors to the memorial still ask about this object today. The fact that lampshades and other so-called “gift items” were made from people’s skin in the Buchenwald concentration camp shows “that the SS was completely dehumanized,” said Wagner. Such items were not produced in any other German concentration camp. “This is obviously a Buchenwald specific feature.”
New studies with more modern methods
Exactly which objects were made from human remains in Buchenwald, when and under what circumstances has not yet been clarified in each individual case. These ambiguities are a constant reason for historical revisionists, especially on social networks, to claim that such National Socialist crimes did not take place in the concentration camp in which around 56,000 people were murdered between 1937 and 1945, said Wagner. The foundation has therefore decided to have several of the objects that are actually or presumably referred to as “human remains” examined again by Benecke.
Benecke said that in his investigations he also worked with laboratories abroad that did not know where the samples they examined came from. The fact that the results of past reports are revised by new research has primarily to do with more modern methods.
Exhibit from Great Britain part of an inhumane relic?
According to Wagner, last year the foundation received another exhibit from Great Britain that could also belong to a particularly notorious part of the concentration camp’s history: a possibly human piece of skin that, based on its shape, could belong to the so-called Great Lampshade of Buchenwald. The foundation only has a few photographs of this lampshade, which is said to be made entirely of human skin. One of them shows this lampshade on a desk in the office of the then concentration camp commander Hermann Pister.
“Clearly this lampshade has been shattered,” Wagner said. There is a high probability that individual parts of this umbrella will be distributed around the globe after the end of the Second World War.
Benecke should now clarify whether the suspected piece of skin recently handed over to the memorial is really human remains. He is also still working on reports on other “human remains” from the memorial’s holdings.