Monday, October 23, 2006

IPN and Spanner's soap: a critical perspective

by Joachim Neander

[Today our guest blogger is Dr. Joachim Neander from Cracow, Poland. Dr. Neander has degrees in mathematics (Saarbrücken University, 1962) and history (Göttingen and Bremen Universities, 1997). He is the author of Mathematik und Ideologie, München 1974, Das Konzentrationslager Mittelbau in der Endphase der NS-Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1997, 4th ed. 2001, Gardelegen 1945, Magdeburg 1998, “Hat in Europa kein annäherndes Beispiel” ... Mittelbau-Dora, ein KZ für Hitlers Krieg, Berlin 2000. His articles about the human soap issue:
"Seife aus Judenfett – Zur Wirkungsgeschichte einer zeitgenössischen Sage" in: FABULA – Journal of Folktale Studies – 46 (2005), Heft 3/4
"The Danzig Soap Case – Facts and Legends around “Professor Spanner” and the Danzig Anatomic Institute 1944-1945" in German Studies Review, Vol. 29, No. 1 (February 2006).

He is a regular contributor to PRO MEMORIA (Oświęcim, Poland), Informationen des Studienkreises Deutscher Widerstand (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), German Studies Review (Carleton College, USA), Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem, Israel), Newsletter des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany).

Guest bloggers' opinions are not necessarily shared by the HC team.

This item is placed here solely to facilitate further discussion.]


Having done research in the soap legend and its role in Holocaust denial, anti-Revisonism, and history politics, I am not surprised neither with the view presented by the IPN at the October 6, 2006, press conference at Gdansk, nor with its spokeswoman’s statement given to western press agencies. The IPN is neither an independent entity, nor is it a scholarly institution. It is a government agency and bound to directives given from above. Its President is chosen and sworn in by the Sejm, Poland’s parliament. One of IPN’s three departments is the Committee for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish People. Its members are state prosecutors, not historians. It is the immediate successor of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes Against the Polish People (founded already in 1944) that made the investigations in the Danzig soap case in the beginning of May, 1945, and it conducted the investigations also this time.

Read more!

After last year’s political landslide which brought a firmly nationalistic coalition to power and made the Prime Minister’s twin brother President, Leon Kieres, head of the IPN from 1999 and a man known for impartiality - he was responsible for the Jedwabne investigations that deeply hurt Poland's nationalist feelings – was fired and replaced by a personality who was better acceptable to the majority in the Sejm. In addition, the IPN obtained from the parliament, as principal task, "To document and to evaluate Poland's human and economic losses due to the German attack and occupation in World War II." IPN had not only been attacked because of the Jedwabne case. (It proved that the perpetrators had been local Poles and not “unidentified Germans”). When it, in September 2005, publicly declared that the Danzig Anatomic Institute was not involved in the Nazi genocidal enterprise, a wave of furious and slanderous attacks swept through the Polish media. IPN was accused of national treachery and “toadying the Germans.” In the anti-German political climate of today’s Poland, IPN had no way out: it must sound the retreat.

As all information was only given orally by the IPN spokespersons and media reports differ widely, I will only comment on the intersection of the statements published in the media. First and foremost, IPN confirmed its stance that the activities of the Danzig Anatomic Institute, in no way, did qualify as genocide. IPN further stated that soap was made there from human remains – a fact already admitted at the end of 1945 by Spanner himself – and that there was no “soap factory,” but only a small-scale production for strictly internal use. All this tallies with my own research results. IPN also remarked that the famous “RIF” soap had nothing to do with Danzig and was not made from human fat, an also well-known fact, but it is good to remember the public from time to time of it.

There are, however, several points to which I cannot agree. IPN could not present new sources from eyewitnesses. Presenting to a TV audience the soap samples and the professor from the Warsaw Agricultural Academy who had analyzed them, was a good PR gag but did not bring new information. All alleged “new” witnesses were either witnesses from hearsay or had visited the institute months after it had been abandoned by the German scientists at the end of January 1945 and after its devastation, two months later, in the chaotic days of the Battle of Danzig and its immediate aftermath. IPN sweepingly discredited all evidence from the German side as “not trustworthy,” but accepted all incriminating evidence presented already in 1945, as “trustworthy,” without the slightest source criticism. As an historian, I am used to gauge sources critically: to treat every source seriously, but never to take it, from the outset, at face value. And sometimes it is also helpful to use common sense.

A second point of my criticism is the heavily biased way the “victims” of the soap-making were presented, particularly in the statement given to the western press: “Human remains have been brought ... from Kaliningrad, Bydgoszcz, and the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp.” As 99.99 per cent of the readers/listeners of this information are not specialized in Holocaust history, they will conclude: Bydgoszcz – Poles, Stutthof – Jews (in Poland: also Poles), Kaliningrad – Russians were boiled to soap. And so it arrived at the public, which can easily be seen by crawling the Web. And that is against the facts which IPN certainly knows. In the period to be considered for the soap-making, i.e. February 1944 to January 1945, for legal and practical reasons, neither corpses from Jews, nor from executed Poles or Russians could have been delivered to the institute. There may have been a few exceptions – even Nazi Germans were not always law-abiding. But all eyewitnesses who testified in 1945/46 confirmed that toward the end of the war, the “material” came from the Conradstein/Kocborowo insane asylum and from the prisons of Danzig/Gdansk, Elbing/Elblag, and Königsberg/Kaliningrad. That means, however, that the dead resp. executed must have been, in their great majority, non-Jewish German citizens. But “Germans” are never mentioned. By the way, I would like to know how the emaciated Stutthof prisoners would have been a suitable “raw material” for soap production. But such contradictions are characteristic for folktales and legends. They never bother neither the narrator, nor the listener.

My last remark will be about the statement of the chairman of the IPN committee, reported in all Polish media, that “the activities of Prof. Spanner [wartime head of the Anatomic Institute] belong to the most sinister chapters of World War II.” Well, it is in line with the commonly held opinion in Poland: that Spanner was “a monster,” an “arch-criminal,” “the prime example of the degeneration of scientists in Nazi Germany” (all quotes from teaching aids). It fits into the principal task traditionally assigned to Polish historiography by the national elites: to warm the people’s hearts and to foster national beliefs. But it is bad history. Spanner was neither a super-Mengele, nor an über-Clauberg. Just “a looter of corpses.”

14 comments:

  1. MONUMENTS OF SOAP
    a film by velvel Gutman

    "Monuments of Soap is an eyewitness documentary filmed in Romania that details one of the Nazi's most horrific atrocities: The manufacture and distribution of soap made from the bodies of innocents-murdered Jews.

    A moving chronicle written and narrated by survivor Velvel Gutman, this account effectively refutes claims that there was no Holocaust in Romania."

    Mr. Gutman's film was distributed throughout the Southern California library system. If you have a Los Angeles library card you can check it out. You may even be able to still write or call Velvel Gutman at his home in Hollywood and order your own copy.

    -whodareswings

    ReplyDelete
  2. 2001-12-28

    Lupu’s Lens


    The 75-year-old filmmaker educates teens about anti-Semetism.

    By Gaby Wening


    His leather jacket underscoring a full-growth white beard and tzitzit, 75-year-old Lupu Gutman is much like his films, where tradition is refracted through the modernity of the camera lens.

    Gutman is now distributing copies of his haunting documentary, "Monuments of Soap," to all the branches of the Los Angeles Public Library. The film is a tour through the remnants of post-Holocaust European graveyards, examining the monuments that were erected to mark the burial of the soap that was made of Jewish flesh.

    Gutman has been making films for almost 50 years, and today, he edits his documentaries in a corner of his one-room Pico-Robertson apartment. Though a veteran filmmaker, documentary cinema is a relatively new venture for him, having begun work in this genre only after he moved to America in 1986.

    After surviving the Holocaust, Gutman became a star of the Romanian film industry, writing and directing features for the communist government. However, he grew "sick and tired of the stupid and false propaganda" that he was required to create, he told The Journal, and knew that if he remained in Romania, he would not survive. So he came to America, and took advantage of the freedom offered to make cinema véritas, and to use his films to educate and inspire others about Jewish history and traditions.

    "My target [audience] is teenagers" Gutman says. "I can’t convince anti-Semites not to be anti-Semites — that is stupid. But the kids who go to libraries — they should know."

    Gutman’s creative efforts are aimed at saving the memory of lost communities. He recently returned from Romania, where he began a project filming the last 74 synagogues remaining in the country. He is looking to raise funds that will enable him to travel to Romania to complete the project, so that the treasures of this once proud and vibrant community will not be lost in the decaying urban sprawl.

    "In Romania, before the war, there were over 400 synagogues," he explains. "Now there are no more Jews in these places, and they are turning the synagogues into garages. I know how beautiful the synagogues are — and I thought that I needed to capture their image professionally, so that, in a manner of speaking, they can be saved."

    Gutman, whose apartment holds his small collection of European relics, such as a yellow star, and a piece of Torah scroll parchment that he salvaged after it had been made into a lampshade, is primarily focused on the preservation of the past.

    "I am not interested in business" he says. "What I have is enough for me."

    For more information on Lupu Gutman and his films, call (310) 271-6887. To see "Monuments of Soap," contact the history department at your local branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

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  3. You never actually see a bar of soap buried in Gutman's survivor schmaltz-o-rama. What you see is a Romanian Jewish funeral. Look closely. Who or what they're lowering into the ground is off camera.
    Gutman visits some cemeteries and reads a couple of gravestone inscriptions that describe the German RIF soap purportedly buried beneath them. He proffers has mistranslation of RIF as proof of Amalek's eternal evil. Amalek is equated with Nazis here.

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  4. Dear Mr. Olbrychowski,

    in the time after our meeting in Warsaw I have studied the Danzig
    soap in more detail. There is no doubt that soap was made there from
    human fat, but - that in my opinion is the most important fact - it
    was a by-product of the making of anatomic preparations, and never a
    product of its own . The maceration grease that originates in the
    process of making anatomic preparations by maceration with alkali
    hydroxides - a process still today in use - could be used for
    cleaning purposes (Counsellor Smirnow's "unfinished soap" at
    Nuremberg) and it could easily be refined to obtain Smirnow's
    "finished soap." Spanner himself admitted that he had soap made.
    There was enough maceration grease from normal making of anatomic
    preparations. Nobody had to be killed especially for that purpose.
    The second most important thing is that, according to all witnesses,
    the soap was made not before early spring 1944, and that it was used
    only within the institute. So all rumors that started already in 1940
    - and the "human soap" that Solomon Mikhoels presented in summer 1943
    during his goodwill tour thru the US - had absolutely nothing to do
    with the Danzig soap.
    Third, the corpses that were delivered to the Danzig institute during
    the period of time when the soap was made (!) were corpses of
    individuals executed by guillotining, who could not have been Poles,
    Russians, or Jews, since these people, since the end of 1942, were
    handed over to the SS who did not have guillotines for killing
    people. The people whose corpses were delivered to the institute, in
    their great majority, must have had German citizenship. Among them
    could have been also Polish nationals who had listed in the Deutsche
    Volksliste. No Stutthof prisoners at that time, that is important. So
    the Danzig soap was made mostly from German corpses. No Jew was
    boiled to soap, neither at Auschwitz nor at Danzig. Even the IPN
    agrees to that in its internal report (which, btw, is flawed in many
    details, and regretfully was presented to the media in a distorted
    manner).
    Thanks for keeping me informed, and best regards
    Joachim Neander.

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  5. Dear Prof.Neander
    I am so pleased that we agree on one fact, that Spanner had produced soap from the fat obtained from human corpses.
    For me it is not important what purpose it was made for in what quantity or who the victims were Jews, Pols or Germans or even if the human soap was used,
    The fact of that such an idea accorded to anyone was for me the most important one.
    Looking at human being as natural recourse is inexcusable.
    I wold be so much happier if my investigation would have shown that processing human fat in to a soap was a rumor so that man had not sunk to such a abysmal lows to witch Spanner had sunk.
    But after obtaining documents from Hamburg with Spanner's own admission to the fact, I did not have doubts any more.
    The record on soap making from humans by Nazi Doctor must be set strait once and for all.
    I will do all I can to make that fact known, and I hope that you will do the same.

    Sincerely Mariusz Olbrychowski

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  6. Dear Prof. Neander.

    A well known American proverb says: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck.
    To a simple question: Did Spanner make and then use soap from humans?
    The answer is: YES
    Did any other scientist in anatomical laboratories world over during the known history produce such a soap and use it for cleaning?
    The answer is; NO
    Any long winded explanations or comparisons of Spanner to other German or Austrian Nazi doctors does not make sense to me as much as the comparison of apples to oranges would do.. There is not a quantitive scale that can be applied to such a crime.
    We can no t compare Spanner to Mengele as much as we can not compere Spanner to Hitler.
    As far as I know, neither Spanner nor Hitler killed any body by their own hands.
    I am working on a new film and do not have the luxury of time to study further Spanner's case,
    although I am not so sure if Spanner's urgent correspondence asking for more corpses from Kocborowo did not cause some patients' premature deaths.
    I would suggest to you to look into it and find the answer to this question, as I respect your scholarly integrity.
    But, it is somewhat strange that if not for my crew and I first finding and then publishing the Hamburg admissions in 1947 by Spanner to the fact of human soap making , not one scholar had look ed at the papers, but for many years had dismissed the human soap story as a fairy tale.
    If not the fact that I am in America and theWiesenthal Center got involved in the story and my film, most likely to this day the fact of the human soap would still be considered a WWII hoax.
    I think that the story of Jews made in to soap in Auschwitz needs to be corrected as much as the story of Spanner's experiments to make and use the soap from human fat..


    Perheps I am willing to understand your position as a German, because if Polish doctor would do such a thing as human soap, I might have to try to find all the reasons for excusing him.
    Sincerely, Mariusz Olbrychowski

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  7. I was surprised to find part of my private correspondence with Mr. Olbrychowski published by him on the Web without my prior consent. Maybe that's a matter of taste. I don’t know. But it makes me reply to put the record straight.

    To come back to the Spanner case: IPN in its concluding report clearly stated (BTW, in agreement with the 1946/47 British investigations) that the soap-making at the Danzig Institute was _not_ a crime. What is more, IPN clearly stated that Spanner was not involved in the Nazi genocidal project.

    If somebody is accused of a crime, and a legal authority that, by no means, can be suspected of being biased in favor of the accused, finds out that no crime was perpetrated, then the accused is not guilty of this crime. Period. Such are the legal and moral standards in western democracies. That distinguishes democratic from totalitarian societies, such as Nazi Germany or Communist Poland, where being accused meant being already guilty. If Mr. Olbrychowski adheres to other standards - as he seemingly does - it is _his_ problem. Let us remind that not everything that somebody considers to be morally reprehensible, is a crime. If it were so, more than half of Poland would sit behind bars.

    The problem with the Danzig soap story is that, in Poland and in Polish emigrant circles, it is deeply rooted in the collective memory by decade-long indoctrination. Together with other historical myths (of which the Polish master narrative of history is redolent), it has become an article of faith. I’ve been for many years with the German skeptics’ society. The discussions I have today with “soap believers” remind me vividly of previous experiences with creationists and of recent ones with Holocaust deniers. Or taking an example from the history of science: of the struggle between geocentrists and heliocentrists.

    Geocentrists, indeed, were able to explain the movements of the planets on the sky, but they needed an ever more complex system of assumptions and calculations. Even resorting to strong arguments ad hominem, such as burning Giordano Bruno alive and forcing Galileo Galilei to public revocation, didn’t help them in the end. The “heretic” M. Kopernik’s heliocentric model won through, because it gave a far more simpler explanation of the observed facts, although it, admittedly, hurt deeply held moral and religious feelings of the majority.

    If, in the Danzig soap case, we separate the wheat from the chaff in the reports of those who were eyewitnesses (including Spanner himself) and apply a little bit of knowledge of chemistry and the way how an anatomic institute works, there doesn’t remain much. Spanner never made “experiments to produce soap from corpses,” as Wikipedia, for example, suggests in its latest issue. From spring 1944, he has made experiments with the chemical maceration of body parts by alkali hydroxides in an aqueous solution, a method that was quite new at that time and by far not tried and tested, but had the important advantage not to destroy cartilage. Everywhere where this method of maceration is applied, the fat content of the body parts react with the alkali hydroxides, yielding soap. Under normal circumstances, it is thrown away together with other preparation waste. In Spanner’s institute, due to the scarcity of detergents at that time, it was collected and used for cleaning purposes within the institute, most probably after some refining. Tasteless, admittedly. But never a crime. Had he thrown it away, nobody would ever have accused him of soap-making from corpses.

    The fact that the “soap believers” need more and more vague conjectures and dubious insinuations and even must resort to arguments ad hominem to bolster their “crime” hypothesis only shows that they got stuck. I’m sure I won’t convince them with the simple explanation. The “Occam’s Razor” principle is alien to believers. Alas, I also never succeeded in convincing other faithful people: creationists, anti-Semites, or Holocaust deniers.

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  8. Prof.Neander, I published your answers to my inquiry on your blog, not anyone else's. Also, I feel that we talked about a public matter, not a private one, and I want to belive than neither you nor I said anything that we would not stand by. I also did not publish material from your correspondence regarding Spanner's soap that I felt was more of a personal matter.If you feel that you said something in this correspondence that you do not want publicly known, please recieve my apologies.

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  9. Let me come back to one of the topics at the beginning of our discussions. I wondered why IPN, after the victory of PiS in the elections for Parliament and President, changed its mind in the Danzig soap case - comparing what its spokesperson had said before the elections with that what another spokesperson said a year later at TV and what IPN said in its official press release, especially that which was meant for Western media.

    I felt that, the IPN being all but an independent research institution only bound by scholarly ethos, the reason was that the political climate had changed. I see that I'm not alone with my evaluation. Let me quote from a press release by Senator Stefan Niesolowski (an old fighter against communism, elected in 2005 for PO, a center-right party, comparable to Germany's Christian Democrats), published by PAP on Saturday, May 12, 2007 (my translation):
    "Asked by 'Trybuna,' how he thinks about IPN, professor Stefan Niesolowski answered that the Institute, during the last year, underwent a process of fundamental degeneration ... According to Niesolowski, IPN was captured by people that are at the politicians' disposition and that use this institution for fighting political opponents of PiS. And it should have been an impartial group of honest historians and public prosecutors. They should have done historical research, but they do it only on a small scale ... In the present form, IPN is an unnessecary and harmful institution, Niesolowski states."
    Source: http://fakty.interia.pl/szukaj/news/niesolowski-trzeba-zlikwidowac-ipn,909040?sa=1

    Though referring first and foremost to the _lustracja_ ("cleansing") process directed at former communists and their fellow-travellers, Niesolowskis remarks mirror very well the changes that took place in the focus and methods of work at IPN since PiS came to power. And don't let us forget that PiS and its coalition partner LPR never have missed a chance to instrumentalize anti-German (and anti-Russian)

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  10. Sorry, something happened to the text of my last comment. A few characters were lost:
    1) The URL of the source continues with
    zlikwidowac-ipn,909040?sa=1
    2) At the end, add:
    sentiments for their political aims.

    ReplyDelete

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