Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Mazur's Soap Machine
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Mazur,soap

Since Mr. Raven, although still apparently suffering from May 4
Myopia, has addressed the soap issue at great length (thank you,
Greg), I thought it might be appropriate to republish the following,
as the author of the cited text is mentioned in Mr. Raven's article.

Archive/File: holocaust soap.1
Last-Modified: 1994/08/15

The issue of whether or not the Nazis produced soap from human fat is
addressed by Konnilyn Feig, in the book "Hitler's Death Camps." It is a
contentious issue, and may be completely untrue.
 
If evidence exists that Mazur has been discredited, I would welcome the 
opportunity to examine it. Until then, I will accept the evidence offered:

  It seems that Stutthof manufactured soap.  Some historians claim that
the Nazi manufacture of soap from human fat is just a grim rumor.
However, cakes are on display; and witnesses have testified that soap was
made at Stutthof from the fat of dead prisoners.

  At the War Crime Trials Sigmund Mazur, laboratory assistant at the
Danzig Anatomic Institute, testified that the institute conducted
experiments in producing soap from human bodies.  The professors collected
bodies, bones, and human fat in a building called "a laboratory for the
fabrication of skeletons, the burning of meat and unnecessary bones."  the
chief, Professor Spanner, gave Mazur the soap recipe:

     5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500
     or 1,000 grams of caustic soda.  All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours
     and then cooled.  The soap floats to the surface while the water
     and other sediment remain at the bottom.  A bit of salt and soda
     is added to this mixture.  Then fresh water is added, and the
     mixture again boiled 2 or 3 hours.  After having cooled the soap
     is poured into molds.

  The prosecutor presented Mazur's description of the process:

     I boiled the soap out of the bodies of women and men.  The
     process of boiling alone took several days -- from 3 to 7.
     During two manufacturing processes, in which I directly
     participated, more than 25 kilograms of soap were produced.  The
     amount of human fat necessary for these two processes was 70 to
     80 kilograms collected from some 40 bodies.  The finished soap
     then went to Professor Spanner, who kept it personally.
       The work for the production of soap from human bodies has, as
     far as I know, also interested Hitler's Government.  The
     Anatomic Institute was visited by the Minister of Education,
     Rust; the Reichsgesundheitsfuhrer, Doctor Conti; the Gauleiter
     of Danzig, Albert Forster; as well as professors from other
     medical institutes.
       I used this human soap for my personal needs, for toilet and
     for laundering.  For myself I took 4 kilograms of this soap.

  Two British POWs gave the prosecution staff testimony on the soap
experiments:

     Owing to the preservative mixture in which they were stored,
     this tissue came away from the bones very easily.  The tissue
     was then put into a boiler about the size of a small kithen
     table. . . .  After boiling the liquid it was put into white
     trays about twice the size of a sheet of foolscap and about 3
     centimeters deep. . . .  Approximately 3 to 4 trayfuls per day
     were obtained from the machine.
       A machine for the manufacture of soap was completed some time
     in March or April 1944.  The British prisoners of war had
     constructed the building in which it was housed in June 1942.
     The machine itelf was installed by a civillian from Danzig by
     the name of AJRD.  It consisted, as far as I remember, of an
     electrically heated tank in which bones of the corpses were
     mixed with some acid and melted down.
       This process of melting down took about 24 hours.  The fattey
     portions of the corpses and particularly those of females were
     put into a crude enamel tank, heated by a couple of bunsen
     burners.  Some acid was also used in this process.  I think it
     was caustic soda.  When boiling had been completed, the mixture
     was allowed to cool and then cut into blocks for micrscopic
     examination.

  The prosecutor showed the court soap samples.[19]

[19] The soap stories appear to excite enormous controversy.  Early
  scholars said the stories were untrue, that the Nazis did not make soap
  from human fat, that those bars of soap marked with an "RJF" were not
  made from humans (letter in author's possession from Herbert Rosenkranz
  to Lonny Darwin, September 20, 1979).  Most East European camp scholars,
  however, validate the soap stories, and other kinds of bars made from
  humans are displayed in Eastern Europe -- I have seen many over the
  years.  I accept without further question that the Nazis did use every
  part of the human body, for the evidence now is irrefutable.  The
  Stutthof soap do not have "RJF" stamped on them.  Testimony from IMT
  7:598-601.  See also Shirer, 971.

---------------------------------------------------------------
"Hitler's Death Camps" by Konnilyn G. Feig LOC D810.J4 F36 1981
---------------------------------------------------------------

I appreciate Mr. Raven's article, as it provides further material
for research, but note that he did not fully examine Feig's text
(cited above) - the British POW's, for instance, were not mentioned.

I have always had an open mind about this issue, as the opening
paragraphs indicate (the original article goes back over two years),
and have still not seen either Mazur's testimony, or that of the two
POW's, refuted. I am, however, well aware of the controversy
surrounding this issue, and the comments made by Lipstadt and Bauer.
Alas, neither has provided any research material to examine, so the
question remains open.

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