Nazi shrunken heads, human skin lampshades, human soap, textiles from human hair? Sorting out the truth from the legends.

[Last updated on 05.10.2024]

In this article several claims about the use of the bodies of the Nazi victims will be examined. An attempt will be made to separate the facts from the rumors and legends that inevitably arose during and after the war and still live in the public consciousness.

1. Shrunken heads.
2. Human skin lampshades.
3. Human soap.
4. Human hair.
5. Summary.

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Lying about Elie Wiesel

[Updated on 08.09.2019]

A whole cottage industry has sprung up in recent years devoted to "proving" that the late Elie Wiesel was a total fraud: an impostor who stole an actual Auschwitz survivor's identity. Most of the crazies are of course Holocaust deniers. One notable exception is an actual Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, Nikolaus Grüner, whose book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 serves as a springboard for the deniers.

To remind our readers: according to Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) in Auschwitz he had the number (and a corresponding tattoo) A-7713, his father Shlomo Wiesel had the number A-7712.

The basic denial claims look like this:

1. Elie Wiesel allegedly had no visible Auschwitz tattoo.

2. Camp documents allegedly show that Lazar Wiesel A-7713 from Auschwitz was born in 1913 (not 1928 as Elie Wiesel; note: both "Elie" and "Lazar" are variants of the name "Eliezer") and that A-7712, who Elie Wiesel said was his father Shlomo, was actually someone named Abram Viezel.

3. Grüner claimed that he knew the "actual" Lazar Wiesel A-7713 in Auschwitz (Monowitz) and Buchenwald and that he wasn't the same person as Elie Wiesel. Moreover, Grüner claimed to have also known the prisoner A-7712, Lazar's brother Abram.

The tree-hanging photo was not a fake after all...

For years I thought that the famous tree-hanging photo from Buchenwald was a fake. That is, a propaganda photo (or a montage) that was specifically made in order to deceive.

I based this on an article by Wolfgang Ayaß and Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar "Mit Argumenten gegen die Holocaust-Leugnung" in Polis №19, the relevant part of which was based on Herbert Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen - ein Bild geht um die Welt", in Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief, №68.

According to these authors the photo was staged by DEFA. But as someone has pointed out, there is now a newer piece of research that establishes the actual origin of the photo. It's Holm Kirsten, "Das Fotoarchiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald", Archive in Thüringen, Tagungsband 2010, S.22ff. Kirsten writes that it has recently become possible to find out the name of the photographer - it was the former inmate Willem Hoogwerf from the Netherlands who made the photos with a camera that was a present from an American solider. This and a couple of other similar photos were made between 15 and 26 April 1945. The original description of the photo was found:

Reconstruction of one of the "light punishments". The SS man was forced by the Americans to cooperate. Later the SS personnel were shot, exactly like in Dachau, Neuengamme, etc.

The photo thus was not intended to deceive and was clearly marked as a reconstruction (which represented something that actually had happened). That later propagandists misused it, ignoring the original intent, does not make the original photo a fake, nor does the fact that it does not depict an authentic scene - it's no more fake than Schindler's List or Katyń.

Some will say: well, what's the difference? The difference is intent.

Obviously, deniers have been using it as an example of Allied fakery - and I can't blame them - but if they want to be honest, they should stop doing it now.

Oh, who am I kidding.

The denier logic at its finest: the famous Buchenwald photo.

Deniers wouldn't be deniers if they had a modicum of common sense. Case in point, a guy who goes under the nickname "The Black Rabbit of Inlé".