Our next piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’ is actually both an appendix to my article on the piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’ to do with the so-called ‘Pornographic Pictures on Human Skin Canvasses’ that were displayed by the US Army as part of the ‘Table of Horrors’ of ‘what they had found’ at Buchenwald concentration camp when they occupied it in mid-April 1945. (1) In addition to being a piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’ all on its own.
The reason for this is there were three pieces of ‘tattooed human skin’ that had alleged been flayed from the skin of ‘murdered inmates’ at Buchenwald by the German camp authorities which featured prominently at the German Democratic Republic’s ‘Resistance Museum’ at Buchenwald – which had ironically just been shut down as a NKVD-run concentration camp called ‘Special Camp No. 2’ housing ‘Nazis’ with a higher mortality rate in peace time than the German camp had during war time and widespread starvation – in February 1950.
We can see them displayed prominently in this photograph – along with the fake ‘human-skin lampshade’, (2) shrunken heads (3) and the ‘bulleted heart’ – (4) taken at the ‘Resistance Museum’ in Buchenwald in 1964: (5)
Now for the record these pieces of ‘Tattooed Human Skin’ are as follows (I am using the Buchenwald Memorial Museum’s designation of the exhibits here for reasons that will become apparent but also for purposes of clarity and consistency). (6)
Specimen I:
Specimen II:
Specimen III:
Now interestingly Specimen III we actually know was probably in Buchenwald due to this photograph of a ‘newly liberated’ Buchenwald prisoner holding it sometime in April 1945: (7)
Now the problem with this is that the source of these pieces of ‘tattooed human skin’ is once again Karl Staub (8) who – as we’ve repeatedly covered in our discussion of Buchenwald and the exhibits of the GDR’s former ‘Resistance Museum’ at the camp – is hardly a neutral civically-minded nobody, but rather:
‘A fanatical communist propagandist who – from December 1945 to 1953 – was the head of the ‘Victims of Fascism Department’ of the ‘Thuringian State Office for Labour and Social Welfare’ in the GDR that was based in the city of Weimar and was responsible for Buchenwald’s ‘Resistance Museum’.’ (9)
Straub is the source of several known Buchenwald hoaxes – the second ‘human-skin lampshade’ that suddenly appears in the late 1940s and was unknown to the US Army who occupied Buchenwald in mid-April 1945 – (10) and the fake ‘Bulleted Heart’ that appears to be either a hugely fat person’s heart that was never punctured by a bullet (so it almost certainly didn’t come from a Czech political dissident in 1942 as Straub claimed) or is a dissected pig’s heart being passed off as a human heart. (11)
This naturally makes any ‘exhibit’ that comes from Straub extremely suspect since he was/is a known forger of ‘anti-Nazi propaganda exhibits’ for the Buchenwald ‘Resistance Museum’. So, we’d have to find independent evidence that the three specimens were at Buchenwald before Straub got hold of them in and around 1945.
Let’s take Specimens I and II first which remember look like this: (12)
Specimen I:
Specimen II:
And compare them to the examples from the ‘Table of Horrors’ that we can see in detail from Reel 5 of George Stevens’ 1945 propaganda film ‘Nazi Concentration Camps’: (13)
And another close up still from the film footage:
And another still showing – rather bizarrely – a sketch of an American cowboy on alleged human skin:
And another showing the ‘obscene drawings’ referred to by the film more clearly:
And another example still from the same film sequence:
And one last one:
We can see that none of Specimens I-III of Buchenwald’s ‘Resistance Museum’ are featured on the ‘Table of Horrors’ which then suggests that without other confirmatory evidence – which we only have in the case of Specimen III – they weren’t there when the US Army occupied Buchenwald in mid-April 1945.
Thus, because Specimen III is the only example of ‘tattooed human skin’ that has evidence giving it provenance to the Buchenwald camp under the Third Reich; it is the only one that deserves further consideration as being potentially a real piece of ‘tattooed human skin’ from German-run Buchenwald.
However, this is itself fraught with additional complications since as the Buchenwald Memorial Museum explains:
‘All three specimens were presented to visitors together with the lampshade and other objects in a display case in the “Camp Museum” exhibition, which opened in the former disinfection centre at the beginning of 1964.
The three specimens were also included in the permanent exhibition “Museum of the Anti-Fascist Resistance Struggle”, which opened on 12 April 1985, in Chapter 5.14 “Medical Experiments. Pathology”.
Like the lampshade, the three pieces of tattooed skin from the memorial’s collection were also handed over to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Erfurt Medical Academy for authentication after the end of the GDR as part of a fundamental revision of the collection and exhibition holdings.
For the two specimens I (skin-like material with the tattoo “Male figure in upright posture with hat and cape”) and II (skin-like material with the tattoo “Male figure in bent posture with hat and cape”) it was determined “as a result of the serological examination and in agreement with the macroscopic findings”, that “specimens I and II are clearly human skin tissue”, in the lower part of which “a nipple can clearly be identified”.
Specimen III (skin-like material with the tattoo “lighthouse”), which was also examined, was found to be “probably not human tissue, possibly an old split preparation of pig skin”.’ (14)
In other words, the GDR’s own Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt stated that Specimen III was pig’s skin not human skin when it was tested and while you might have expected the Buchenwald Memorial Museum to accept this as relatively definitive. They have not and instead argue against the expert report that they themselves commissioned writing as follows:
‘This statement is contrasted with two historical photos taken a few days after the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp, in which exactly this piece of skin is presented as coming from the pathology department.
It is therefore quite certain that this piece of skin also comes from the pathology department of the Buchenwald concentration camp and is of human origin despite the expert’s findings. The assumption that the latter object was probably not human tissue obviously resulted from the slightly different nature of this exhibit, which is almost certainly due to a different type of preparation or subsequent storage.’ (15)
The problem with the Buchenwald Memorial Museum’s argument on this score is that while we have a photograph of Specimen III in the hands of a former Buchenwald inmate sometime after the ‘liberation’ of the camp in mid-April 1945. This is only evidence that Specimen III probably does come from Buchenwald not that it is ‘tattooed human skin’ and it does not follow that just because it allegedly comes from the ‘pathology department at Buchenwald concentration camp’ (which remember we don’t know) it is therefore ‘human skin’ and not ‘pig skin’.
Also it is worth mentioning that we should notice that suddenly the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt’s findings have become an ‘assumption’ rather than relatively definitive, because they don’t ‘fit the narrative’ that the Buchenwald Memorial Museum wants to promote so they offer a spurious and unevidenced ‘contamination’ rationale rather than an actual argument against the ‘tattooed pig’s skin’ (aka Specimen III) being what the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt said it (probably) was.
The truth is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Specimen III is ‘tattooed human skin’ and my guess is that – as with the other ‘tattooed skin’ samples – it is actually what the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt suggested it (probably) was which is basically an early version of paper called vellum that is made from tanned animal (usually calf) skin. (16)
Further if we compare what Specimen III looks like compared to known vellum manuscripts you can see the physical similarities between them.
Specimen III:
Compared to a vellum Christian manuscript from the 1300s: (17)
And compared again to a vellum Islamic Manuscript from the 600s:
We can quickly see that they look similar and which is in essence the point in that there is every indication that Specimen III is basically tattooed animal skin which functions similarly – and looks similar – to vellum paper because they are both made from animal skin.
So, in summary then we can see that the Buchenwald Memorial Museum has simply discarded their own expert analysis when it conflicts with their chosen narrative and that we have no reason whatsoever to suppose that Specimen III is ‘tattooed human skin’ and every reason to believe it is ‘tattooed animal skin’ functioning as a form of ersatz paper (which remember was subject to a major shortage within the Third Reich).
It is also the only one of the three ‘human tattooed skin’ examples from the Buchenwald Memorial Museum that can be linked via evidence to Buchenwald, but even that – as we have seen – means only that it was at Buchenwald in mid-April 1945 not that it is ipso facto ‘human skin’.
But what of Specimens I and II?
Well, the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt’s analysis suggested that:
‘“As a result of the serological examination and in agreement with the macroscopic findings”, that “specimens I and II are clearly human skin tissue”, in the lower part of which “a nipple can clearly be identified”.’ (18)
The problem here is really two-fold:
Firstly, that the statement that ‘a nipple can clearly be identified in both’ is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting in their analysis (as well as the Buchenwald Memorial Museum’s citation of it) and while – unlike the Buchenwald Memorial Museum’s bad attempt to muddy the waters concerning the same analysis of Specimen III – I am quite prepared to accept them as ‘tattooed human skin’ based on their analysis; I will however sound a note of caution in so far as the presence of a nipple is not evidence that they are ‘human skin’ and several animals have human-like nipples notably pigs. Thus, it is quite possible that the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Erfurt is simply mistaken and Specimens I and II could also very well be ‘tattooed pig skin’ just like Specimen III.
Secondly, there is no provenance linking Specimens I and II to Buchenwald concentration camp under the Third Reich other than Karl Straub’s claims and – as we have seen – his claims aren’t worth much given he knowingly fabricated at least two alleged ‘Nazi war crime exhibits’ at Buchenwald at around the same time these exhibits appear and these same exhibits of ‘tattooed human skin’ do not appear on the ‘Table of Horrors’ in mid-April 1945.
Thus, the likelihood is one of two things is true about each of Specimen I and II.
Either:
A) They are simply ‘tattooed pig skin’ that Karl Straub – or someone else – successfully passed off as ‘tattooed human skin’ knowing that it was untrue.
Or:
B) They are indeed ‘tattooed human skin’ that Karl Straub – or someone else – successfully claimed came from the German concentration camp of Buchenwald, but have no known link to that camp and likely come from another source which may well be the NKVD’s camp at the same location – known as ‘Special Camp No. 2’ – that was closed down in February 1950. So it could well be the ‘tattooed human skin’ of a ‘Nazi prisoner’ – indeed if you look at Specimens I and II you’ll note the figure is wearing something that looks like a German uniform from the Third Reich eta – that was successfully passed off as the ‘work of the Nazis’.
So thus, we can see that once again what is claimed as ‘evidence for Nazi atrocities’ is in fact ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’.
References
(1) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-74
(2) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-76
(3) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-75
(4) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-80
(5) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/praepariertes-herz
(6) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/hautstuecke-mit-taetowierungen
(7) Idem.
(8) Idem.
(9) From my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-76
(10) On this see Ibid.
(11) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-80
(12) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/hautstuecke-mit-taetowierungen
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Concentration_Camps_(film); it starts at 32 minutes: 30 seconds
(14) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/hautstuecke-mit-taetowierungen
(15) Idem.
(16) On this see my article: On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-74; also, for contextual reference on vellum see: https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/making/
(17) Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellum#Manufacture
(18) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/hautstuecke-mit-taetowierungen
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