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Scholar Denies Nazis
Made Soap From Jews
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Tel Aviv (JTA) . Professor
Yehuda Bauer, head of the
Hebrew University's Holo-
caust history department
and regarded as one of the
foremost researchers of the
Holocaust, has denied the
frequently quoted charge
that the Nazis used the
bodies of Jewish death camp
victims to make soap.
The technical possibilities
for transforming human fat
into soap were not known at
that time, Bauer said at a
Holocaust memorial
meeting for Yom Hashoah.
The camp inmates were
prepared to believe any
horror stories about their
persecutors, and the Nazis
were content to let them go
on believing the reports, he
said.
"The Nazis did enough
horrible things during the
Holocaust. We do not have to
go on believing untrue
stories," Bauer said.
Unsubstantiated rumors
about the use of bodies of
British soldiers to make soap
had circulated during both
World War I and World War
II, he said.
Raoul Hilberg, John G.
McCullough Professor of Po-
litical Science at the Univer-
sity of Vermont and a
preeminent historian of the
Holocaust, agrees that the
soap rumor, although wide-
spread, was probably un-
founded.
"There were all kinds of
rumors," he said, noting
that a New York Times arti-
cle during the war suggested
that Jews were given lethal
injections before deportation
and arrived at the exter-
mination camps already
dead.
Other rumors speculated
that Jews were killed in the
Belzec camp by electrocution
in water; some thought that
Jews were gassed in the
trains.
"All of these rumors are
untrue, based on nothing at
all," Hilberg said. "No
evidence has turned up" to
suggest that the Nazis used
human fat to make soap.
In Danzig, Germany (now
Gdansk, Poland), pictures of
dead, heavy set people cut
into pieces and a recipe for
soap were discovered in 1945
at the Stutthof camp. "But
we don't know that the
bodies were of Jews, or that
the pictures and recipe went
together," said Hilberg.
Moreover, the rumor was
being circulated as early as
1942, according to documen-
tary evidence.
"It's fairly reliable that
the story was circulated, but
I can't say whether or not it
is true," said Hilberg.
4,000 Youths March
Between Two Camps
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14
FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1990
Tel Aviv (JTA) . Some
4,000 youths from 35 coun-
tries on Sunday silently
marched the two miles bet-
ween the Auschwitz and
Birkenau death camp com-
plexes in southeastern
Poland, in a moving com-
memoration of International
Holocaust Martyrs and
Heroes Day.
Wearing blue parkas, they
marched, with arms linked,
in ranks of five behind
banners which read "March
of the Living" and the
names of the countries they
represented.
They trooped through the
main gate of Auschwitz
under the warped slogan
"Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work
Makes Freedom).
Along a dirt track still
bordered by barbed wire
fences that were once elec-
trified, the marchers retrac-
ed the infamous "death mar-
ch" of 1945 when, as the Red
Army approached, the Nazis
evacuated Auschwitz.
The surviving inmates
were forced to walk to the
Birkenau crematoria.
Others were marched fur-
ther into Poland and Ger-
many.
At the entrance of
Crematorium No. 2, where
an average of 6,000 people —
mostly Jews — were incin-
erated a day, a memorial
service was conducted Sun-
day by the chief rabbi of Tel
Aviv, Israel Lau, himself a
concentration camp sur-
vivor.
Lau led the recitation of
the Kaddish, accompanied
by the cantor of the
Yeshurun Rehavia Syn-
agogue in Jerusalem.
Six of the marchers each
lit a torch in memory of
the 6 million Jews.
The ceremony was broad-
cast live on Israel's educa-
tional television station.