Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Tattoo "debunking" debunked (1/3) 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,Dachau,Koch Lines: 83 Given Dan Gannon's recent "debunking" of the Nuremberg testimony regarding the tanning and use of tattooed human skin, I thought it might profit us to take a closer look that the issue. Gannon's article began with predictable charges: Holocaust propagandists (including Barry Shein and Danny Keren in thenewsgroup) are STILL claiming that Nazis made "lamp shades out of human skin." I have debunked this untrue story several times before. Now I debunk it again. Gannon, of course, had yet to debunk anything, let alone the Nuremberg testimony regarding the tanning of human skin, but he's never been strong on telling the truth, so the above isn't surprising. He then goes on to cite Mark Weber, the North American pipeline to German Nazi groups - clearly a man with an axe to grind, and a vested interest in cleansing the memory of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi thugs: From "Buchendwald: Legend and Reality", by Mark Weber, printed in _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter 1986-87): General Lucius D. Clay, Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe and Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone of Germany, 1947-49, carefully reviewed the Ilsa Koch case in 1948 and found that [...] the lampshade charge was baseless. He [...] informed the Army Department in Washington: "There is no convincing evidence that she [Ilse Koch] selected inmates for extermination in order to secure tatooed skins or that she possessed any articles made of human skin."*1 During a 1976 interview Clay recalled the case: We tried Ilse Koch. ...She was sentenced to life imprisonment, and I commuted it to three [four] years. And our press really didn't like that. She had been destroyed by the fact that an enterprising reporter who first went into her house had given her the beautiful name, the "Bitch of Buchenwald," and he had found some white lampshades in there which he wrote up as being made out of human flesh. Well, it turned out actually that it was goat flesh. But at the trial it was still human flesh. It was almost impossible for her to have gotten a fair trial. [...] There are several problems with this approach to reality, as others pointed out when Gannon first published Weber's nonsense. These are primarily that the article itself debunks nothing - it simply asserts that because Mrs. Koch's sentence was reduced on the opinion of one man, that the entire testimony at Nuremberg relating to the matter should be discounted and disbelieved. It follows, therefore, that one should examine the testimonies themselves, as Conot has done in the following citations. It is important to note here that these citations include activity not only at Buchenwald, where Koch was Commandant, but Dachau as well - something neither Mr. Gannon nor Mr. Weber, a "historian," want us to understand: "A ninety-second amateur movie taken by an SS many of a ghetto clearing depicted naked girls dragged by the hair and chased through streets littered with bodies. Placed on exhibit was a piece of tattooed human skin, tanned at Buchenwald concentration camp, together with the affidavit of a former guard, Adreas Pfaffenberger: 'After the tattooed prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary and killed by injection. ... The finished products were then turned over to SS Standartenfu"hrer [Colonel] Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and other household articles.' (IMT, vol. 3, p. 453.)" (Conot, 199) Work Cited Conot, Robert E. Justice at Nuremberg. New York: Harper & Row, 1983 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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