Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 2: The Camps
had been charged with in World War I. 73 By the time the IMT was done “developing”
the fact about the tattooed skin found at Buchenwald, we had an official
deposition: 74
“In 1939 all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the
dispensary. No one knew what the purpose was, but after the tattooed prisoners
had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens
were kept in the dispensary and then killed by injections. […] the desired
pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated. The finished
products were turned over to Koch’s wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades
and other ornamental household articles. I myself saw such tattooed
skins with various designs and legends on them, such as ‘Hansel and Gretel’
which one prisoner had on his knee, and designs of ships from prisoners’
chests.”
Frau Koch was convicted of such crimes at her trial before a U.S. military
court, but in 1948, the American military governor, General Lucius Clay, reviewed
her case and determined that, despite testimony produced at her trial, Frau
Koch could not be related to the lampshades and other articles, which were “discovered”
(i.e. planted) in the Buchenwald commandant’s residence when the
camp was captured in 1945. For one thing, she had not lived there since her husband’s,
and her own, arrest in 1943. Also her “family journal,” said to be bound in
human skin and which was one of the major accusations against her, was never
located and obviously never existed. Clay thus commuted her life sentence to four
years imprisonment for ordinary sorts of brutalities.
What happened after the commutation provided one of the many episodes
which, together with the 1948-49 revelations of what had transpired at the Dachau
“trials,” exposed quite effectively the lawlessness that prevailed in the war crimes
trials. Rabbi Wise and other influential people protested the commutation so
strongly that there was a Senate investigation into the matter, which concluded
that:
“military authorities say they have been unable to find evidence of any
other crime Ilse Koch committed on which she could be tried without violating
the rule of double jeopardy. However […] because the trial conducted by our
special military government court was based on charges that the various accused
had mistreated ‘non-German nationals,’ the German courts might well
try Ilse Koch under their law for crimes committed against German nationals.
[…] Should the German people bring Ilse Koch to trial on such charges, the
subcommittee is convinced that it would then be the duty of our military authorities
to give complete cooperation to the German authorities.”
This distinction between crimes against Germans and crimes against non-
Germans was merely a bit of sophistry that was trotted out for the occasion. Not
only had the U.S. war crimes courts always assumed jurisdiction in cases of alleged
crimes against German Jews, but the distinction was irrelevant anyway, for
73
74
3420-PS; 3422-PS. For pictures see, e.g., Andrus, photographs. A “macabre collection” of specimens
from Buchenwald is also pictured in Pélissier, 640 pp.
3421-PS; IMT, vol. 3, 515; quoted Shirer, 984.
61