Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Tattoo "debunking" debunked (3/3)
Summary: Gannon's "case" "debunking" the evidence of tanned human
         skin fails to survive on its merits, as the testimony at
         Nuremberg clearly demonstrates.
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: tattoo,Buchenwald,Dupont,Balachowsky,Dachau,Koch
Lines: 94



Archive/File: holocaust/germany/nuremberg tattoo.002
Last-Modified: 1994/03/09

   "Two French physicians, Victor Dupont and Alfred Balachowsky,
   described their experiences at Buchenwald, paralleling those of
   Blaha at Dachau. Balachowsky closed the book on a controversy that
   had had its inception during the American introduction of the
   shrunken head and tattooed piece of skin from Buchenwald on
   December 13. At the time, both Kaltenbrunner's attorney, Kurt
   Kauffmann, and Bormann's attorney, Friedrich Bergold, had
   complained that the prosceution was not being entirely above board.
   Bergold protested 'the prosecution's failure to mention a very
   important point, namely, that the German authorities indicted this
   inhuman SS leader [the Buchenwald commandant, Karl Koch] and his
   wife and condemned them to death. It is highly probable that the
   prosecution knew of this and that those horrible exhibits of
   perverted human nature, which were presented to us, were found in
   the files of the German court. If the prosecution had stated that
   this man was condemned to death, then, in the first place, the
   evidence against the defendent Kaltenbrunner would not have
   appeared so weighty, and second, public opinion would on the whole
   have been left with a different impression.' (IMT, vol. 3, p. 594)

   On January 14, Thomas Dodd had replied for the American
   prosecution: 'I wish to say that we had no knowledge at all about
   this man Kock at the time that we offered the proof; we didn't know
   anything about him except that he had been the commandant. But,
   subsequently to this objection we had an investigation made, and we
   have found that he was tried in 1944, indeed, by an SS court, but
   not for having tanned human skin nor having a preserved human head,
   but for having embezzled some money, for what -- as the judge who
   tired him tells us -- was a charge of general corruption, and for
   having murdered someone with whom he had some personal
   difficulties. Indeed, the judge, a Dr. Morgen, tells us that he saw
   the tattooed human skin and he saw a human head in Commandant
   Koch's office, and that he saw a lampshade there made out of human
   skin. But there were no charges at the time that he was tried for
   having done these things.'(IMT, vol. 5, pp. 200-201)

   Koch, in fact, had become so corrupt and paranoid that it had been
   impossible for the SS administration to ignore his failings. He had
   extorted hundreds of thousands of marks from weathy Jews who had
   been sent to Buchenwald after the Kristallnacht, he had operated a
   number of rackets in conjunction with the Nazi Party leader of
   Weimar, and he had had every prisoner who learned too much or might
   have become an embarrassment to him because of his activities
   killed. His guilty conscience had caused him to believe that one of
   the prisoners, a diminutive Jew with marked physical peculiarities,
   was spying on him not only within the camp but slipping out and
   following him all over Germany (and then voluntarily returning). To
   rid himself of this phantom, Koch had the man murdered. (Ho"hne,
   pp. 384-386)

   'Do you know anything about the fate of tattooed men?' Charles
   Dubost, a deputy French prosecutor, inquired of Dr. Balachowsky on
   January 29.

   'Tattooed human skins were stored in Block 2, which was called at
   Buchenwald the Pathological Block,' Balachowsky replied.

   'Did they skin people?'

   'They removed the skin and then tanned it.'

   'We were told that Koch, who was the head at the time, was
   sentenced for this practice.'

   'I was not a witness of the Koch affair, which happened before I
   came to the camp.'

   'So even after he left there were still tanned and tattooed skins?'

   'Yes, there were constantly tanned and tattooed skins, and when the
   camp was liberated by the Americans, they found in the camp, in
   Block 2, tattooed and tanned skins on 11 April 1945.'" (IMT, vol.
   6, pp.  311-312) (Conot, 297-298)

                           Work Cited

   Conot, Robert E.  Justice at Nuremberg.  New York: Harper & Row,
   1983

   Ho"hne, Heinz. The Order of the Death's Head. New York: Coward,
   McCann & Geoghegan, 1970, as cited in Conot

                         Abbreviations

   IMT. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals;
   the published transcipts of the trial. 

   NCA. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggession, the 10-volume compendium of the
   prosecution's agruments.

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