Let their be Light (Brauner)

Documents on the allegation about
lampshades made from human skin

Introduction:
parallel with the legend
about Nazi factories boiling down corpses of their victims to manufacture human soap the story gained currency, thanks to the war crimes trials, that Nazi camp staff had made lampshades from human skins of their victims..

Jewish soap and human skin legends

On May 6,
1995, as Germany geared up to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of VE-Day, the film producer Arthur (Atze)
Brauner, who had spent the war unscathed in Berlin, published in several German newspapers, including the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (on page 3) and the
Süddeutsche Zeitung, an advertisement containing the words:

NEVER
FORGET, because how should one forget that Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald, had lampshades made from the skin of the murdered victims, and that the hair of the victims was turned into mattresses for
German households, and that soap was manufactured from the boiled-down bodies of those who had been gassed.

WIDER
DAS Vergessen, denn wie sollte man vergessen, daß Ilse Koch, die Frau des Buchenwald-kommandanten, aus der Haut der getöteten Opfer Lampenschirme anfertigen ließ, daß die Haare der Opfer für
Matratzen deutscher Haushalte verarbeitet und aus den ausgemergelten Körpern der Vergasten Seife hergestellt wurde.

Brauner’s family backed the advertisement — his wife Maria-Theresa, daughter Alice and son Sammy. In the same advertisement
Brauner excoriated the Germans who proposed to remember their war dead on May 8, 1995, fortieth anniversary of the end of the war.

ONLY
ONE newspaper
group, the Axel Springer Verlag refused to accept the
advertisement, fearing it would rebound on Brauner. Atze
insisted on his rights, but Springer still refused. Brauner
expressed vehement scorn at this refusal, in an interview
with Der Spiegel No. 20, 1995.

Spiegel:
Mr Brauner, Axel Springer Verlag has refused to print in Die Welt and the Berliner
Morgenpost an advertisement by you in which you wanted to remind people of the Holocaust on May 8
and warn against a right wing resurgence. What was the reason?

Brauner:
Everybody other than the Springer papers published my announcement “Never Forget”. Most of them were even very accommodating on the financial side too. Der Tagesspiegel did not ask any fee at all and the Süddeutsche charged only a symbolic amount.

Spiegel:
Herr
Brauner, der Axel Springer Verlag hat es abgelehnt, in der Welt und in der Berliner Morgenpost eine
Anzeige von Ihnen zu drucken, in der Sie zum 8. Mai an den Holocaust erinnern und sich gegen einen rechten Aufruf wehren. Was war der
Grund?

Brauner:
Alle, außer den Springer-Blättern, haben meinen Aufruf “Wider das Vergessen” gebracht. Und die meisten sind mir dabei finanziell sogar entgegengekommen. Der Tagesspiegel hat gar kein
Honorar verlangt, die Süddeutsche nur einen symbolischen Preis.

Here’s a another Curious Thing . . .

On
August 1, 1998 the German tabloid newspaper BILD
Zeitung published this wartime picture of Atze Brauner
“strolling proudly down Kurfurstendamm” in Berlin in
1943.

Note that he was not sporting the mandatory Yellow
Star.

To
Order Books
| Auschwitz
Index |
Irving
Index |
Irving
Page |
Irving
Book-List
| Action
Report
| Other
FP Authors

Buchladen
| Auschwitz
| Irving-Verzeichnis
| -Hauptseite
| -Bücher
| Action
Report
| Weitere
FP-Autoren©Focal
Point 1998 write
to David Irving