A piece of tattoced human skin was today introduced as evidence against Ilse Koch, notorious Nazi war criminal, at her trial at Augsburg for crimes against German and Austrian nationals.
The piece of tanned skin was presented following the Koch woman’s denial yesterday that she had ever ordered human skin made into lampshades or other ornaments. Her statement was contradicted in the German court today by Josef Ackermann, a newspaperman who served as an orderly in the “Pathological Research Institute” at the Buchenwald concentration camp, commanded by the Koch woman’s late husband.
Herr Ackermann told the court, which is trying Koch for 45 murders, that he and other orderlies were told to prepare sections of human skin for a lampshade to be given by Koch to her husband. The shade was mounted to a lamp constructed of human bones, he testified, but was later dismantled when the Gestapo investigated the camp.
Another prosecution witness, Alfred Kieper, a former prisoner who now works for the German Government, said that the camp loudspeaker used to announce the names of prisoners flogged for failing to salute Ilse Koch. The defendant yesterday denied this charge and said she had never heard of the camp phenomenon known to prisoners and guards alike as the “singing horsemen”–a form of torture applied exclusively to Jews. This consisted of gangs of Jews harnessed together to wagons loaded with stones and forced to sing marching songs while they pulled their loads at a run.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
