Soap made from human corpses During World War II, many people thought that the Nazis were making soap from the bodies of Jewish people who died in the concentration camps. The Yad Vashem Memorial says the Nazis did not make a lot of soap from Jewish bodies. They say the Nazis used rumors about making soap from bodies to scare the camp inmates.[1][2][3] However, there is evidence that research facilities had come up with a way for large amounts of soap to be made from human bodies.[4][5][6] HistoryWorld War IDuring World War I, the British had already accused Germany of using the fat from human bodies to make things. In April 1917 The Times wrote that the Germans were using the bodies of their own dead soldiers to make soap and other products.[7] It was not until 1925 that the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Austen Chamberlain, officially said that the "corpse factory" story had been an error.[8]  World War IIStories that the Nazis made soap from the bodies of concentration camp victims were common during the war. Germany did not have enough fats to make soap during World War II. Because of this, the government took control of making soap. RIF soapThe "human soap" stories may have started because the bars of soap made by the government were marked with the initials "RIF." Some people thought this stood for Reichs-Juden-Fett in German. This means "State Jewish Fat" in English. (In German acronyms, "I" and "J" were often used like the same letter, so people thought "RIF" could mean "RJF".) In fact, "RIF" stood for Reichsstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung. This was the German government agency in charge of making and giving out soap and washing products during the war. (In English, the agency's name was the "National Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning.") RIF soap was not very good, and did not have any kind of fat in it.[9] Stories about soap spreadAs early as October 1942, stories about soap made from human fat were told in Lublin, Poland, according to Raul Hilberg. The Germans knew about the stories. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, got a letter saying the Poles thought Jewish people were being "boiled into soap." The letter said the Poles feared they would also be used to make soap. These stories were so widely known that some Polish people actually refused to buy soap.[10] Himmler was worried by the rumors, and the thought of poor security at the camps, so he ordered all bodies to be burnt or buried as quickly as possible.[11] Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg reported a common version of the story as fact in The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry:
Evidence of soap-making at Stutthof Lab worker testimonyDuring the Nuremberg Trials, Sigmund Mazur, a laboratory worker at the Danzig Anatomical Institute, said that soap had been made from the bodies of dead people at Stutthof concentration camp. He said that 70 to 80 kg of fat collected from 40 bodies could make more than 25 kg of soap. He claimed that Professor Rudolf Spanner kept the finished soap. Mazur showed a recipe that read: "5 kilos of human fat are mixed with 10 liters of water and 500 or 1,000 grams of caustic soda. All this is boiled 2 or 3 hours and then cooled. The soap floats to the surface while the water and other sediment remain at the bottom. A bit of salt and soda is added to this mixture. Then fresh water is added and the mixture again boiled 2 or 3 hours. After having cooled, the soap is poured into molds." [4] Eyewitness testimonyAt the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi witnesses and British prisoners of war supported Mazur's story. (The British prisoners of war had been used as forced labor to build the Stutthof camp.) These witnesses talked about seeing:[5][6][13]
In his book Russia at War 1941 to 1945, Alexander Werth described visiting Danzig in 1945, just after it was freed by the Red Army. He claimed he saw an experimental factory outside the city for making soap from human bodies. He wrote:[14]
Postwar & researchAfter the war, in 1955, Alain Resnais released a Holocaust documentary called Nuit et brouillard. In it, he repeats the idea that the Nazis made large amounts of "human soap". After the war, some Israelis spoke about Jewish victims of Nazism with the Hebrew word סבון (sabon, "soap").[15] Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt researched whether the Nazis made soap out of human fat. He concluded that they did, but only in experiments - it had never been mass produced.[16][17] Holocaust historian Robert Melvin Spector agreed that the Nazis "did indeed use human fat for the making of soap at Stutthof," but in small amounts.[18] Historian Yisrael Gutman agrees that "it was never done on a mass scale."[17] Like Blatt, Spector, and Gutman, most mainstream Holocaust scholars think the "human soap" stories are part of WWII folklore.[19] Supporters of this theory include the well-known Jewish historians Walter Laqueur,[20] Gitta Sereny,[21] and Deborah Lipstadt;[22] Professor Yehuda Bauer of Israel's Hebrew University; and Shmuel Krakowski, archives director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center.[1][2][3] Today Holocaust deniers use this story to make people doubt the Nazi genocide.[23] PlayThe Soap Myth is a 2009 play about Nazis making soap from the bodies of the people they murdered.[24] Related pagesNotes
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