Our next piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’ is the famous ‘Shrunken Heads’ of Buchenwald concentration camp, which figured in the Nuremberg Trials as ‘evidence’ of ‘German barbarity’ in document 2340-PS where we read:
‘There are two heads which have been shrunk to one-fifth of their normal size.’ (1)
Firstly, we know that 2340-PS is actually a transcript of a 1945 Allied propaganda film titled ‘Nazi Concentration Camps’ by the American film director George Stevens that featured the so-called ‘Parchment Table’ which also featured the ‘two shrunken heads’ concerned: (2)
As the Buchenwald Memorial explains these ‘shrunken heads’ were actually used as evidence against the German staff of Buchenwald during the main Buchenwald trial in 1948:
‘From 11 April to 14 August 1947, the Buchenwald main trial took place on the grounds of the former Dachau concentration camp against 31 people accused of war crimes in connection with the Buchenwald concentration camp and its subcamps. The evidence presented by the prosecution included the three pieces of tattooed skin already examined and one of the two shrunken heads.’ (3)
The only one of these ‘shrunken heads’ of Buchenwald that has ever been scientifically analysed and tested – doubts had been raised about their authenticity since the 1980s – (4) was proven to be an utter forgery in 2023 when:
‘A forensic expert report commissioned in 2023 was able to clearly rule out the possibility that the shrunken head was a human specimen. When a hair sample was analysed, it was found to be horse hair. The entire object was probably sewn together from different animal parts.’ (5)
The other ‘shrunken heads’ of Buchenwald are almost certainly one of two things either complete forgeries like the one tested in 2023 or real shrunken heads from South America taken from an ethnological collection and/or museum in Germany somewhere – for example in Heidelberg – (6) and then re-purposed as ‘Nazi atrocities’.
It is that simple.
References
(1) Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 – 1 October 1946, Vol. 30, p. 469
(2) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/tisch-mit-praeparaten
(3) Idem.
(4) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/falsifikat
(5) Idem.
(6) For example, see this example from 1951: https://drexel.edu/legacy-center/blog/overview/2014/july/the-mystery-of-the-shrunken-head/
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