Lampshades made from human skin

There are two notable reported instances of lampshades made from human skin. After World War II, it was claimed that Nazis had made at least one lampshade from murdered concentration camp inmates: a human skin lampshade was displayed by Buchenwald concentration camp commandant Karl-Otto Koch and his wife, Ilse Koch, said to be with other human skin artifacts. Despite myths to the contrary, there were no systematic efforts by the Nazis to make human skin lampshades. In the 1950s, murderer Ed Gein, possibly influenced by the stories about the Nazis, made a lampshade from the skin of one of his victims.

History of anthropodermia The display of the flayed skin of defeated enemies has a long history. In ancient Assyria, the flaying of defeated enemies and dissidents was common practice. The Assyrians would leave the skin to tan on their city walls. There are many examples of books bound in human skin that date from ancient times through the 20th century. In the 2010s, peptide mass fingerprinting technology provided the opportunity to test books in libraries, archives, and private collections that were purported to be bound using the skin of humans. In the first five years of testing, over half of the books tested with this technology were confirmed to be bound with human skin.

Nazi era and aftermath After the defeat of Nazi Germany, claims circulated that Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp, had possessed lampshades made of human skin and had tattooed prisoners killed specifically in order to use their skin for this purpose. After her conviction for war crimes, General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, reduced her sentence to four years' prison on the grounds "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected Nazi concentration camp inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin." Jean Edward Smith, in his biography Lucius D. Clay, an American Life, reported that the general had maintained that the leather lamp shades were really made out of goat skin. The book quotes a statement made by General Clay years later:

There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin. The charges were made once more when she was rearrested but again were found to be groundless. The Buchenwald Memorial Foundation states that: For the existence of a lampshade from human skin there are two credible witnesses who made statements under oath: Dr. Gustav Wegerer, an Austrian political prisoner and kapo of the infirmary, and Josef Ackermann, a political prisoner and secretary of the camp doctor Waldemar Hoven. Wegerer explained: "One day at about the same time [1941] the camp commandant Koch and the SS doctor Müller appeared at my work command in the infirmary. At that time a lampshade made of tanned, tattooed human skin was being prepared for Koch. Koch and Müller chose among the available tanned, parchment-thin human skins the ones with suitable tattoos, for the lampshade. From the conversation between the two it became clear that the previously chosen motifs had not pleased Ilse Koch. The lampshade was then completed and handed over to Koch." Dr. Hans Mueller, later SS physician in Obersalzberg, was a pathologist in Buchenwald from March 1941 to April 1942. The time period can be defined more precisely through Ackermann's statement. Ackermann delivered the lamp, as he testified in 1950 in court. The lamp-foot was made from a human foot and shinbone; on the shade one saw tattoos and even nipples. On the occasion of the birthday party of Koch [August 1941] he was tasked by the camp doctor Hoven to bring the lamp to the Kochs' villa. This he did. One of the party guests told him later that the presentation of the lamp had been a huge success. The lamp immediately disappeared after the SS leadership learned about it. Ilse Koch could not be accused of making the lampshade. Five other witnesses testified that they had seen or knew of the existence of human skin artefacts in the possession of Ilse Koch. In footage taken by American military photographers tasked by then-General Dwight Eisenhower to record what they saw as the army advanced into Germany in 1945, a large lampshade and many other ornaments reportedly made of human skin can be seen alongside shrunken heads of camp prisoners in Buchenwald, all of which were being displayed for German townspeople who were made to tour the camp.

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