Nazis used human remains to make soap, tests confirm

dpa German Press Agency
Published: Friday October 6, 2006

Warsaw/Gdansk- The Nazis used human fat to make soap during the Second World War in a Nazi German medical academy located in what is now the Polish Baltic sea port city of Gdansk, Polish war crimes prosecutors confirmed Friday pointing to new laboratory tests. Officials with Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) based their findings on a laboratory analysis of a piece of soap found in 1945 in the medical academy in Gdansk run by Nazi German Professor Rudolf Spanner.

A new laboratory analysis of the soap revealed human fat was one of its components, spokesperson for the Gdansk branch of the IPN Paulina Szumera told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview Friday.

Commissioned by the IPN, Professor Andrzej Stolyhwo of the Warsaw Agricultural University found human tissue in the soap.

The piece of soap was used as evidence in the post-WWII Nuremburg Trials where prominent German Nazis were prosecuted for crimes against humanity. At the time, prosecutors lacked the technology to determine whether the soap contained human tissue.

Human remains used to make the soap were believed to have been brought from Kaliningrad, Bydgoszcz and the Stutthof Nazi German concentration camp located some 30 kilometres from Gdansk.

The IPN investigation found that the soap in question produced by Professor Spanner was used to clean operating and autopsy rooms.

© 2006 dpa German Press Agency