Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1917-06-21
HUMAN CORPSES
USED IN GERMANY
Tanks Like Carcasses of so
Many Dead Animals

almost too horrible to believe. 1t
| is from the Peoples Journal of April
21st, 1917, published at Aberdeen,
! Scotland, in which we find the fol-
| lowing:
The Germans are using the bodies
of their dead to produce food for
pigs, oil and manure.
OF all the horrors which the Huns
! have perpetrated since the begin
ming of the war, none has been so
! terribly repulsive and most unbe-
lieveable as this one. Yet it is an
undisputable fact that the enemy not
only carries out this vile operation
but speaks openly of it, almost glor-
! flying in it, and heralding it as an
other proof of the efficiency of Ger
man organization.
When long ago rumors of this
wholesale official bodytsnatching
were spread by travellers from Ger
many, even the most impressionable
discounted them as being too awful
to be true. Now, however, Herr
Karl Rosner, a German himself, spe-
cial correspondent of the Berlin
'Lokal-anzeiger" publishes def
mite admission concerning the use
Germany makes of the dead bodies
of her own soldiers. Describing the
battlefield north of Rheims he
writes:
1--WE pass through Erergncour
| There is a dull smell in the air as if
! lime were being burnt. We are
passing the great Corpse Exploitation
Establishment (Kadaververwertung
sansalt) of this army group. The
fat that is won here is turned into
lubricating oils and everything else
is ground down in the bone mill into
! powder, which is used for mixing
with pigs food and as manure"
Herr Rosner adds complacently-
THE theory on which our army
works is that nothing must go I'M
used"
This statement corroborates a re-
markable description of this new
Hun industry which appeared in
La Belique" of Layden. Holland.
For long it has been known, says
this paper, that the Germans strip
ped their dead behind the firing line
fastened them into bundles of three
or four bodies with wires. and then
dispatched these grisly bundles to
Seraing, near Liege. and point
north of Brussels, where there are
| refuse consumers. Lately, however
much surprise has been caused
amongst local observers by the fact
that daily increasing proportion of
this traffic has proceeded to another
destination and has been labeled,
I'D. A. V. G." These initials, it trans
| pires, represent in German, the Ger
man Offal Conversion Company" a
Limited Liability Company with a
capital of S1,500.000. which turns
the dead into dividends. The chief
factory has been constructed near
Gerolstein in the lonely Eiffel dis
trict, southwest of CoblentZ. This
factory deals specially with the dead
from the west front. IF the results
are as good as the company hopes. -
the newspaper declared another
will be established to deal with the
corpses on the east front"
There is laboratory and in charge
of the works is chief chemist with
two assistants and rs men. All the
employees are soldiers and are at
tached to the Sth Army Corps. There
is a sanitorium by the works. and
under no pretext is any man permit
ted to leave them. They are guard
ed AS prisoners at their appalling
work
The trains arrive full of bare bod
les, which are unloaded by the work
ers who live at the works The men
wear oilskin overalls and masks
with mica eye-pieces. They are
equipped with long hooked poles, and
push the bundles of bodies TO an
endless chain which picks them up
| with big hooks attached at intervals
of two feet. The bodies are trans
| ported on this endless chain into
long, narrow compartment where
they pass through bath which dis
infects them. Then they go through
| drying chamber, and finally are
automatically carried into a digester
or great caldron, into which they are
| dropped by an apparatus which de-
| taches them from the chain. In the
! digester they remain for six or
| eight hours, and are treated by
steam, which breaks them up. while
they are slowly stirred by machinery.
| From this treatment results several
| products. The fats are broken up
| into stearin, a form of tallow and
oils. which requires to be redistilled
| before they can be used. The pro-
| cess of distillation is carried out by
| boiling the oil with carbonate of
soda, and some part of the by-pro-
ducts resulting from this is used by
German soap makers. The oil dis
tillery and refinery lies in the south
eastern corner of the works. The
refined oil is sent out in small casks
| like those used for petroleum, and
is of a yellowish-brown color
A short time ago one of the Amer
lean counsels on leaving Germany,
stated that the Germans We're dis
tilling glycerine from the bodies of
! their dead and were thus obtaining
some part of their explosives.
A nation that so far reverts TO
savagery and barbarism as to con-
vert its dead soldiers into fertilizer,
oil and animal food, and encourages
| increase in population regardless of
marriage vows, is not fit to cucumber