One of the interesting – and apparently largely unknown – facts about the German concentration camp at Buchenwald that operated between 1937 and 1945 is that a lot of the claimed atrocity propaganda exhibits (aka the actual ‘physical evidence’ that these events actually occurred or at least should be subject to serious consideration by historians) come from just one man: Karl Straub.
Now as I have previous pointed out:
‘Straub isn’t some innocent figure 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’.’ (1)
He is the source of at least one known Buchenwald hoax – 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 – (2) as well as a similar situation with three ‘human-skin tattoo paintings’ that I will address in a separate article. (3)
Another instance where this holds true is what is called the ‘Bulleted Heart’ which I will let the Buchenwald Memorial Museum explain to you:
‘The dissected heart is also one of the specimens found in the Buchenwald concentration camp’s pathology department after its liberation. According to the report of a former German inmate who published his memoirs at the end of 1945, the dissected organ was the heart of the Czech political prisoner Jiří Hořejší (1920-1942).
Jiří Hořejší had been “shot while fleeing” in June 1942 and had been shot through the heart. His heart was then dissected and stored in the pathology department. After the liberation, the German political prisoner Karl Straub took the specimen. From December 1945 to 1953, he worked as head of the Victims of Fascism Department at the Thuringian State Office for Labour and Social Welfare in Weimar. According to one report, the specimen of the bullet-riddled heart was in his study.
Presumably at the end of the 1940s, Karl Straub was asked by the General Secretariat of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN) to hand over the object to them. Around 1953, it was handed over from there to the Museum of German History.
The specimen of the bullet-riddled heart was intended for “Desk 50” for the “Resistance Museum” exhibition that opened in the former prisoners’ canteen on 18 August 1954. However, this could only be realised around a year later, as the exhibit was only brought to Buchenwald from the Museum of German History after 18 August 1955.
In the “Camp Museum” exhibition that opened in the former disinfection building on 1 February 1964, the specimen was also shown in a display case together with the lampshade, the three tattooed pieces of skin and other objects under the heading “’Home ornaments’ of the SS”.’ (4)
In summary then the ‘Bulleted Heart’ is supposedly the dissected heart of a Czech political prisoner named Jiri Horejsi who was ‘shot while trying to escape’ sometime in 1942 and because the shot that killed him was through his heart: it was then dissected and preserved as a medical specimen by the Germans.
This in and of itself isn’t even a ‘medical atrocity’ let alone a ‘war crime’ since the practice of dissecting prisoners and storing/displaying organs of significant medical interest has been widely practised since the 1700s (and in some places even centuries earlier).
What gives this tale credence in the context of Buchenwald is that several examples of standardly displayed versions of – ostensibly – human organs for medical/study purposes were present on the ‘Table of Horrors’ arranged by the US Army at Buchenwald and which were captured by George Stevens’ 1945 propaganda film ‘Nazi Concentration Camps’ as we can see in this photographic still: (5)
The problem however comes is that the Straub’s ‘Bulleted Heart’ is not on the table since this is the ‘Bulleted Heart’ on display at Straub’s ‘Resistance Museum’ at Buchenwald in 1964: (6)
Now unless the ‘Bulleted Heart’ has had its container changed between 1945 and 1964 – this is extremely unlikely given this rarely happens with such specimens – then the possible medical heart specimen on display on the ‘Table of Horrors’ (second from left) is not the same as Straub’s ‘Bulleted Heart’. Since they are in completely different containers and look to be different sized hearts (the one on the ‘Table of Horrors’ is more elongated while the one in the ‘Resistance Museum’ is less elongated and more compact).
We can thus see Straub’s ‘Bulleted Heart’ doesn’t appear to have been present at Buchenwald in mid-April 1945 and like the second ‘human-skin lampshade’ suddenly appears in Straub’s collection in the late 1940s, so it isn’t likely be genuine.
It gets worse however as the Buchenwald Memorial Museum reluctantly explains:
‘When the object was renovated in the Phyletic Museum in Jena in September 1979 for conservation reasons, it was stated that the specimen was “not suitable as illustrative material for visitors”. An additional expert report commissioned by the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena came to similar conclusions. The expert found “a massive amount of fat”, “as is typical for obese, overweight people with a strong increase in body fat.” The heart was therefore by no means characteristic of a prisoner’s prolonged stay in a concentration camp. The expert also pointed out that the so-called bullet hole “rather had the appearance of a punch wound made after death”. An employee of the Buchenwald Memorial concluded that it was therefore “impossible that it could be the heart of a prisoner.” Based on these expert statements, the specimen was removed from the exhibition at the end of 1979 and has been kept in the memorial’s collection ever since. A forensic expert report commissioned in 2023 found that the specimen no longer contained any detectable DNA and that it was therefore possible “that it could be both a human and a pig’s heart”. A final investigation is still in progress.’ (7)
So, in summary then in 1979 the German Democratic Republic’s (hereafter GDR) own forensic experts concluded that the ‘Bulleted Heart’ was from a morbidly obese man not a long-time concentration camp prisoner and that the ‘bullet hole’ in the heart was a punch wound – presumably with a knife or similar such tool – suggesting that the origin of the ‘Bulleted Heart’ either preceded Buchenwald (i.e., it was brought there as an already extant medical specimen or it was created after Buchenwald by someone like Straub as ‘anti-Nazi propaganda’).
However, then 2023 the ‘Bulleted Heart’ was found to have ‘no detectable DNA left’ which then suggests – as the Buchenwald Memorial Museum rightly point out – it could be either a pig’s heart – which would explain the high amount of fatty tissue around said heart – or a human heart.
This means that not only is the ‘Bulleted Heart’ almost certainly a fraud conducted – in whole or in part – by Karl Straub and his GDR superiors for the purposes of ‘anti-Nazi propaganda’ and then claimed as ‘absolutely true’ for over two decades till the transparent hoax was highlighted by the GDR’s own experts at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and then has been further called into doubt by more recent forensic analysis that suggests that the ‘Bulleted Heart’ may have in fact never been a human heart at all but rather a pig’s.
Thus, we cannot but conclude that the ‘Bulleted Heart’ is just another piece of ‘Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense’.
References
(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-76
(2) On this see Ibid.
(3) On the ‘human-skin tattoo paintings’ there were actually exhibited by the US Army in April 1945 see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/remarkable-holocaust-nonsense-74
(4) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/praepariertes-herz
(5) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/tisch-mit-praeparaten
(6) https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/themen/dossiers/menschliche-ueberreste/praepariertes-herz
(7) Idem.
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