Lampshades made from human skin

There are two notable allegations of lampshades made from human skin: the debated Nazi lampshade and the confirmed trophy of Ed Gein.

History of anthropodermia

There has been notable use of human parts for violent, artistic, and scientific purposes. As far back as ancient Assyria, the flaying of defeated enemies and dissidents was common practice. The Assyrians would leave the skin to tan on their castle walls while Vlad the Impaler would leave his enemies' bodies impaled on stakes on display on the battlefields.^[1]

Artistically, it has been rumored that the binding on many ancient and medieval books may be made of human skin. Allegedly, a thirteenth century bible and a text of the Decretals were bound in human skin. Along with this hearsay, there are reports of copies of the 1793 French Constitution being written on human skin and 19th century anatomy textbooks being symbolically bound in skin.^[1]

Nazi era

General Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the American Zone in Germany, reduced the judgment of Ilse Koch to four years' prison on the grounds "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected Nazi concentration camp inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin".^[2]

Jean Edward Smith in his biography, Lucius D. Clay, an American Life, reported the general maintained that the leather lamp shades were really made out of goat skin. The book quotes a statement made by General Clay years later:

There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin.^[3]

Mark Jacobson and The Lampshade

In 2010 author Mark Jacobson published The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans. In it he described how after Hurricane Katrina he uncovered a lamp which he believed to be made of human skin, and which may have come from a Nazi concentration camp. Initial DNA testing appeared to show that the lamp Jacobson found was in fact made of human skin,^[4] but later more sophisticated testing showed that it was in fact cow skin.^[5]

Ed Gein

Ed Gein was a serial killer, active in the 1950s, who made trophies of his kills. When he was finally arrested, a search of the premises revealed, among other disturbing artifacts, a lampshade made out of human skin.^[6]

References