Making soap from human cadavers

In the early period the Germans ground the bones of the victims, and threw them into the river; but later they put the bones to use. From 1943 the Germans broke up the bones and sold them to the German firm ‘Strem’ for conversion into super-phosphates. Documents have been found showing that the ‘Strem’ firm received 112,600 kilo of human bones. They were probably used for soap manufacture. That was the story that went about among the people in Poland, where many people refused, for that reason, to use the German soap which was distributed there. We have no evidence, however, that human bones and fat were taken out of Oswiecim, and used for making soap. But we have evidence that there was such a soap factory in Poland. Terrible evidence about this was given by the Danzig City President, Kotus-Jankowski, at the Session of the National Council held on May 5, 1945.

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Electrocutions at Belzec

The Belzec camp is built underground. It is an electric crematorium. There are two halls in the underground buildings. People were taken out of the railway cars into the first hall. Then they were led naked to the second hall. Here the floor resembled an enormous plate. When the crowd of men stood on it, the floor sank deep into a pool of water. The moment the men sank up to their necks, a powerful electric current of millions of volts was passed through, killing them all at once. The floor rose again, and a second electric current was passed through the bodies, burning them until nothing was left of the victims save a few ashes.


Source: The Black Book of Polish Jewry, 1946 (English-language edition), page 313.

Pits of boiling human fat

  • In Auschwitz, on 24th May 1945, Jan Sehn, examining judge in Cracow, member of the Central Commission for the Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes in Poland, at the request of, in the presence of and with the participation of the vice-prosecutor of the Cracow Regional Court, Edward Pechalski, pursuant to Article 254 and in connection with Articles 107 and 115 of the Criminal Code, interrogated former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner 90124.
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