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
     the  newsgroup) 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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