Did Nazis Make Lampshades From Jewish Prisoners' "Skin"?

AT first glance it looks like any tatty old lampshade - the sort that are gathering dust in houses all over the world.

Then you notice the weird, parchment-like fabric stretched over eight panels, so thin it is almost translucent.

On closer inspection the yellowy material is marked with strange pores, filaments and patterns which look disturbingly like one thing only - HUMAN SKIN.
Surely it can't be?

The lamp's owner Mark Jacobson said: "It weighs about a pound. But the more time you spend with it the more it begins to weigh heavy on your mind. It really does look strange.

"We've all heard the stories of the Nazi human lampshades."

There have been many fakes over the years but no proven examples of a real Nazi lamp made from the skin of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps during the Second World War.

However, one crucial early scientific test set this lamp apart.

When Mark, an American, sent a small piece away for DNA testing at Bode Technology near Washington DC it came back as "100 per cent human".

Antique experts have also confirmed the frame is a European design between 60 and 80 years old.

Mark said: "I got it tested and it turned out to be real. That was quite a shock.

"You can't tell from the DNA testing exactly what happened.

"You can't tell what sort of person it is or whether it's from a concentration camp. But we know it is human.

"It is a person. There is no doubt that it is human.

"And the lampshade is definitely a European model. I've had curators look at it from famous auction houses who all put it as a central European design from the correct time period.

"It becomes a horrifying thing - the idea that you could take somebody's skin and make a household object out of it is just so appalling.


Sick stash ... gruesome body part collection discovered at Buchenwald concentration camp
Roger-Viollet
"The process is actually not that difficult. It's not difficult to make one.

"But at a certain point this person - he or she - became a thing. Whoever did it made the person into an object, the human skin lampshade."

The gruesome relic was given to Mark by an old collector friend, Skip Henderson, who bought it in a New Orleans car boot sale following Hurricane Katrina.

For the next three years Mark, who wrote the story Ridley Scott's film American Gangster was based on, embarked on a personal, CSI-style investigation to establish the history of the shade.


Vile find ... an American soldier displays horror
haul of tattooed human skin from camp
He has since written the story up in his new book, The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story From Buchenwald To New Orleans.

The first report of a Nazi skin lampshade was published on April 16, 1945, by Ann Stringer, a United Press International correspondent, after the fall of German leader Adolf Hitler, and the liberation of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, on April 11.

Prisoners had set up a table to display twisted items which were allegedly made in the camp - including pieces of tattooed human skin, shrunken heads, an ashtray made from a human pelvis ... and a lampshade made from human skin.

Ann wrote about the lampshade: "Two feet in diameter, 18in high and consisting of five panels made from the skin of a man's chest... I could see the pores and the unquestionably human skin lines."

The camp became famous for the Bitch Of Buchenwald, Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant Karl Koch.

Ilse was put on trial after the war for her sadistic abuse of prisoners. She was accused of skinning those with interesting tattoos and ordering others to rape one another in front of her.

Her husband was executed by firing squad in 1945 and Ilse hanged herself in prison in 1967.

As part of his investigations Mark researched the history of the lamp mythology, visited Buchenwald and also met 92-year-old former US commander Albert G Rosenberg, one of the first to arrive at the camp in 1945. Mark said: "He recalled that there were many such objects at Buchenwald. The pathology block was a factory of human skin products."


Probe ... author Mark Jacobson
The US commander who took over the camp is said to have taken the shade home. It has not been seen since.
Mark's contact Skip bought Mark's lamp in 2006 from Dave Dominici, a convicted cemetery bandit, who looted houses after Hurricane Katrina.

Asked what it was, Dave told Skip: "That's made from the skin of Jews. Collector's item, $35."

Amazed Skip couldn't resist buying it. But living with it made him feel so creepy that he decided to offload it on Mark, a respected US journalist, to investigate. Mark explained: "When the hurricane happened it was like a death in the family for Skip. He spent months driving around coming to terms with what happened.

"One day he came across a tag sale, as we call them. He saw a drum he wanted to buy that had been stained by flood water.

"But this guy Dave also offered Skip the lamp. Skip is the sort of guy who can't turn down something like that for sale - even if he didn't believe the story.

"But once he brought it back to his house he started to feel the strange vibration of the thing.

"He spoke to a hide tanning expert who concluded that the animal it was made from did not have any fur. The lamp started to make him more and more nervous.


Suicide ... war criminal Ilse Koch
Time & Life Pictures
"Then one day I was talking to him about it and he said, 'It's not my problem any more' because he'd sent it to me."

Although Mark has managed to compile evidence that his lampshade is human, he cannot prove for sure that it is a wartime Nazi relic.

He said: "I have come across lots of strange, partially revealed facts, lots of myths and lots of information which is still classified. Lots of fake lampshades come up all the time. But there has not been one with proven provenance. There are dozens of eyewitnesses who claim to have seen lampshades in the camps.

"But there was a huge propaganda machine at the time so it has been claimed the stories of lamps could have been invented. It was war after all.

"Of, course, this lamp could be some poor hitchhiker who got picked up by the wrong person.

"But there is an overwhelming body of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence."

The new problem Mark is facing is what to do with the lamp.

It freaks him out so much he is storing it in a "safe place" two hours' drive from his home - wrapped in layers of sheeting and buried in a box.

Along the way he tried to hand it to a Holocaust museum - but they didn't want it.

He has considered burying it or putting it on display elsewhere - but every suggestion has its problems. Mark believes it must not become an object of worship for Nazi fanatics.

He said: "There have been three parts - the getting it, the having it and the getting rid of it.

"But the third part is proving the hardest. The more I had to do with it, the more it seemed to turn back into a person for me.

"The horror of the process that made it began to wear off and I felt more sympathy for the human being who had that misfortune.

"I'm hoping that through the book perhaps there will be some advanced testing to get a better idea of the provenance of the thing.

"Or maybe somebody will come along and do the right thing and come forward with information.

"At the moment it is in a safe place. "I don't like having it around me."