As WW2 ended Germany made a desperate effort to cover up its crimes.
As WW2 ended Germany made a desperate effort to cover up its crimes.
They failed miserably but they did succeed in creating a fair bit of confusion following the end of the war. Investigators initially were told a number of rumors prisoners had heard and then investigated said rumors.
Keep in mind the premise of the Holocaust was insane to begin with. Using gas chambers to exterminate Jews on an industrial scale? I mean it’s insane on the surface so concepts like human-made soap or giant electric floors are not that far-fetched in the scope of what really happened.
The whole notion of Jews being turned into soap comes from a few accounts.
A lab assistant named Sigmund Mazur at the Danzig Anatomical Institute along with a few British POWs stated that Dr.Spanner (who ran the institute) had been producing soap made from human fat on an industrial scale. Moreover, a few Soviet soldiers who stumped upon the institute also claimed there was a bunch of soap there made from human fat.
An investigation was hastily done and a “greasy substance made from human fat” was presented as “practically soap” at the Nuremberg trials. There had long been rumors, mostly started by camp guards, that Jews were being turned into soap and that the soap at concentration camps was made from human fat.
So after the war, a book named Medallions is written by a Polish author. This book is made up of 8 short stories that recount Nazi atrocities during the war. One such story is about how Jews were turned into soap. When the book was written (in 1946) the whole “soap” story had not been researched and was widely believed so it made it into the book.
The story spread as stories do especially in the wake of post-WW2 anti-German sentiment in Poland. It’s a great horror story- with an evil doctor turning Jews into soap. It makes sense so it caught on in popular imagination.
Fast forward to the modern era. Historian Joachim Neander, IPN employee Piotr Semków, and historian Monika Tomkiewicz decide to study this story and see what really happened.
What happened was actually fairly simple. The Danzig Anatomical Institute made cadavers and anatomical models for medical research. Now there is a lot that goes into making a cadaver. Bodies are boiled and their fat content is turned into a greasy substance that is injected into the joints so they can be moved.
As a byproduct of all these processes, a cleaning substance was produced in small quantities. As the war went on cleaning substances became harder to come by and so Dr.Spanner decided to use this cleaner to clean the facilities there.
So
No soap was ever produced at the Danzig institute
The greasy substance presented as soap was actually used to lubricate cadaver joints so they could be moved
None of the bodies at the institute were from the Holocaust. The bodies were all Germans and procured through legal and typical means
Dr. Spanner had nothing to do with the Holocaust at all
After the war, Dr. Spanner just kept being a doctor. He was arrested multiple times and there were multiple investigations, all of which determined the “soap” thing was a complete myth.
That assistant, Sigmund Mazur, either lied or was just not very bright. He presented a “recipe” for soap made from human fat that was found to be fraudulent. Moreover, the British POWs hadn’t really seen much of anything and just misunderstood what they had seen. When it comes to the Soviets- they had seen a room where bodies were being turned into cadavers and had assumed the greasy substance in the room was soap.
So that settles that- no soap.
You may wonder why this is a big deal.
Well, the stories about human soap spread- particularly in Russia and Poland. These have become popular horror stories because of their shock value.
Thus many people believe Jews were turned into soap because propaganda and post-war confusion have spread far further than academic research.
So a denier can come along and use the extensive and detailed research done by real historians to “debunk” the soap myth and then use that to cast doubt on the historical authenticity of the Holocaust.
Holocaust deniers are not scholars or researchers so their arguments are easily debunked. In this case, though they can rely on real research done by actual which makes their argument sound great. This is why so many deniers bring up the whole soap myth again and again- it’s because the work here has been done for them.
The irony of course is that every academic agrees Jews were never turned into soap already- but the population hasn’t caught up quite yet. This is why we need to debunk the soap myth publically so that Holocaust deniers lose their favorite and only valid argument.
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