| Original caption: “Exhibit of ‘souvenirs’ created by Nazis in Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar. They were seized by General Patton’s Third Army. German civilians were brought from town to gaze upon shrunken human heads (left) parts of organs of victims who died of various diseases, and stenciling and tattoo markings on sections of human skin (foreground). Lamp at right was fabricated from skin of camp’s dead. An exhibit of human remains and artifacts retrieved by the American Army from a pathology laboratory run by the SS in Buchenwald. These items were used as evidence of SS atrocities in the Buchenwald war crimes trial held at Dachau, Germany. The 2 shrunken heads are from Polish prisoners who were recaptured after escaping from the camp and executed. The same lampshade made of human skin in this view also stood on the desk of the 1st camp commandant SS-Standartenführer Karl Otto Koch (August 2, 1897 – April 5, 1945) and then the office of camp commandant SS-Oberführer Hermann Pister (February 21, 1885 – September 28, 1948). Initiated by the SS camp doctor SS-Hauptsturmführer Doctor Hans Müller (January 7, 1906 – 1959), the removal, tanning and processing of tattooed skin from prisoner corpses into everyday objects such as pocket knife cases and lampshades began in 1941. In 1940, the SS set up the pathological department at Buchenwald concentration camp. It was subordinate to the SS camp doctor and produced, among other things, show specimens, e.g. for the SS Medical Academy in Graz. SS-Sturmbannführer Doctor Erich Wagner (September 15, 1912 – March 22, 1959) had been working as a camp doctor in Buchenwald since 1939. In 1940, he received his doctorate from the Medical Faculty of the University of Jena with his thesis “A contribution to the tattooing question”. The socio-racist thrust of the thesis is clear from the introduction: tattoos were to be regarded as a “sign of low cultural status and inferior intelligence.” There is no doubt that Erich Wagner used this forensic biology approach to select and kill tattooed prisoners in order to use their skin as illustrative material. At the same time, hundreds of the prepared skins were turned into everyday objects for the SS. The human remains were thus also “trophies” for the SS men, who had become masters of life and death. The Austrian prisoner chemical engineer of the pathology department, Gustav Wegerer (August 2, 1897 – 1954), reports: “It was Müller who gave the order to remove tattoos from the bodies of deceased prisoners and to make lampshades from this skin. He referred to an order from Berlin when he passed this order on to me. Hundreds of pieces of tattooed skin, tanned in various ways, were repeatedly transferred to the head of Office D III of the economic and administrative apparatus in Berlin, Obersturmführer Lolling. […] Müller commissioned Stöckel and Werner Bach through me to make pocket knife cases and other objects from this tanned skin.” This production of everyday objects as trophies took on such proportions that the site doctor Waldemar Hoven felt compelled to prohibit the production of “so-called gift items (shrunken heads, etc.)” after Müller’s departure in 1942. Nevertheless, the tanning of tattooed skin was continued. As late as 1944, Enno Lolling (July 19, 1888 – May 27, 1945), the superior of all camp doctors in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, immediately demanded that the Buchenwald SS site doctor Schiedlausky dispatch the “existing 142 tattoos.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0582.jpg |
| Image Size | 611.29 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2000 x 1587 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 16, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and records Administration |
| Record Number | 111-SC-203584 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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