Talk:Soap made from human corpses

message: The quoted article doesn't support your claim. The production in Danzig took place in 1944, so after the Himmler's order.Xx236 13:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is implication illegal here? Xx236 08:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not illegal - just borderline dishonest. Maybe slightly more dishonest than borderline.159.105.80.141 12:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The experiments in Danzig must have been stopped immediately 

message: Quote: The claim resurfaced very early during World War II, so early that it almost certainly was not true. However, contemporary jokes, threats, rumors and insults show beyond a doubt that many people thought that it was at least believable. The main support for this belief was found in the abbreviation "RIF" which was imprinted on most pieces of soap available in Germany during WWII. It was interpreted as "Reines Jüdisches Fett" (pure Jewish fat) while, in fact, the abbreviation stood for "Reichsstelle für industrielle Fettversorgung" (National Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning).
Unsourced and smacks of an urban myth. I have therefore removed it.  Maikel (talk) 13:50, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The IHR (not exactly a reliable source, but I doubt they would just pull exact citations out of thin air) quotes Wiesenthal talking about RIF soaps made of Jewish bodies. --Tgr (talk) 18:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Another mention of the RIF soaps, from 1942. --Tgr (talk) 18:10, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  RIF 

message: In botth the book and the movie Fight Club Tyler Durden makes soap using fat from liposuction clinics. Is this worth a mention? // Liftarn (talk) 20:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not from corpses, though, is it?  Geoff B (talk) 21:49, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not explicitly anyway, but quite similar. // Liftarn (talk) 21:57, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  They don't do liposuction on corpses at liposuction clinics, do they? All soap is made from fat, so the only feature in common is that it is human fat. --Hugh7 (talk) 02:18, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fight Club 

message: If I remember rightly, there is a poignant speech in the trial scene of The Caine Mutiny that treats the soap story as fact. This would have helped to give it more currency. --Hugh7 (talk) 02:18, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''The Caine Mutiny'' 

message: I've rewritten the paragraph referencing The Black Book. It is incorrect to attribute the quote to Ilya Ehrenburg since he did not write those words. Rather, the Black Book is a collection of different people's first hand accounts. In this case, the quote is part of a report from I Herts and Naftali Nakht which was prepared for publication by R. Fraerman and R. Kovnator (see page 86). Hers and Nakht also specifically state that they learned it from someone else, namely Artur [Izrailevich] Rozenshtraukh, a bank clerk from Lvov. GabrielF (talk) 00:47, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Black Book 

message: I've removed a bunch of material recently added to the article that essentially contradicted every other source on this page. Yes, 30 years ago Deborah Lipstadt wrote a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, saying that the Nazis never made soap from human corpses. Her view is already included in the article, cited to that source. However, more recent investigation indicates that the Nazis likely experimented with doing this, though never on an industrial scale. Jayjg (talk) 01:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yad Vashem, Israel's own official Holocaust memorial archive, has specifically dismissed the "Nazi soap from humans" as a hoax. Are you saying that both Yad Vashem and Professor Deborah Lipstadt are liars? In fact, this entire article needs to be rewritten to bring it into line with the facts. Outrageous exaggerations such as these only discredit the Holocaust and give grist to the deniers.TheFallenCrowd (talk) 19:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

text: Your "source" for the human soap story is, incredibly, an article about a comedy (?) play built around the soap allegations which features a person burying bars of soap in the belief that it it is his parents.  How on earth can you claim fiction such as this as a source?TheFallenCrowd (talk) 19:49, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Lipstadt source is a letter to the editor, not a scholarly source, and she made her statement 30 years ago, before more recent discoveries. It is not scholarly, nor is it relevant any more. I've already pointed this out before, so don't waste our time by bringing it up again. The actual source in the article is not a play, but include Robert Melvin Spector, who concurs with Konnilyn Feig that the Nazis "did indeed use human fat for the making of soap at Stutthof", and this 2006 study of soap by the Gdańsk Branch of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation which you'll find in English here, on the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum website. Historians all agree soap was not made on an industrial scale, but do not rule it out on an experimental or small scale. All of this is in the article already, so it's unclear why you talk about "plays". Now, please read the article, respect WP:NPOV, and discuss. Jayjg (talk) 22:38, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Your news source isn't more scholarly then the Lipstadt letter. The alleged analysis wasn't made open to review. If you read between the lines this was supposedly soap use to clean rooms for autopsies. And btw. skeletal preparations do leave have a soap-like byproduct. Using that one could prove any facilities doing anatomical research manufacturing human soap. https://archive.org/details/WykorzystywanieZwlokWiezniowDoBadanWInstytutachAnatomicznychWIiiRzeszy --41.146.35.111 (talk) 13:18, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deborah Lipstadt's letter to the editor 

message: keeps adding the phrase "Polish and" to the sentence "The Yad Vashem Memorial has stated that the Nazis did not produce soap from Polish and Jewish corpses on an industrial scale..." However, the source's don't say this; they refer only to Jewish corpses, and as far as I can tell, it was never alleged that the Nazis made soap from Polish corpses. Could Brassco please explain why he/she is doing this? Jayjg (talk) 23:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Polish and" Jewish corpses 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reines_J%C3%BCdisches_Fett
translated to english this actually means "pure jewish fat", i think this is better to be removed (dunno how).--91.49.164.21 (talk) 23:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Reines jüdisches Fett" relinks to this article 

message: The Jewish Virtual Library article states that this whole story is unsupported. Wikipedia still trying to say "evidence of small experimental" soap making. Still can't seem to weed out the garbage.
159.105.81.25 (talk) 14:48, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jewish Virtual Library 

message: There is a new film and associated useful article on this subject .  It is behind a paywall but if someone wants to use it to improve this article, send me email and I'll provide the text. The last sentence is cute: "Israeli poet Yisrael Har, who is interviewed in the film, says the refutations of the soap myth come from Holocaust deniers and Wikipedia." Zerotalk 01:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  New film "Soaps" by Eyal Ballas 

message: Is the article meant to be only about the 20th century? If so, shouldn't that be indicated in the title? Would it be appropriate to add an example from the 18th century?
Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Innocents%27_Cemetery. Here are the relevant parts:
"After a prolonged period of rain in spring 1780, conditions became untenable. On 4 September 1780, an edict forbade burying corpses in Les Innocents and in all other cemeteries in Paris. Bodies were exhumed and the bones were moved to the Catacombs in 1786.[3] Many bodies had incompletely decomposed and had turned into fat (margaric acid). During the exhumation, this fat was collected and subsequently turned into candles and soap.[4]"
4. "You (posthumously) light up my life". Scientific American blog. 15 April 2011.
I came across this in a newsletter, http://adrianleeds.com/component/acymailing/archive/view/mailid-741?key=fAqhD7WF&subid=9161-bff88e6b7b471699b91e92183a35d3fb&tmpl=component
The author, Adrian Leeds, also provides some illustrations.
Printphi (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds awesome, and relevant. Feel free to add the information. Don't copy & paste, but definitely add it, with an apprpriate section heading and the reference information. - Boneyard90 (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Earlier instance in 18th century Paris 

message: The Gulag Archipelago (Part 1) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says that Stalin made people soap in the Gulags. Also, if memory serves, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Yale historian Timothy D. Snyder said that the Soviets did it during the Holodomor.
:Cool (albeit macabre) find, why didn't you add it? I'll hunt both of those down. Sounds like an interesting read. 121.210.33.50 (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Later instance in Stalin's USSR 

message: Wanted to comment so people know it's not a defacement given I'm at a library and not signed in. I changed a lede element slightly to bring it in line with what the citation provided actually says, specifically that there is one tested sample of soap and maybe two. I'm erring on the side of caution and going with two. 121.210.33.50 (talk) 20:47, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent change on lede. 

message: First of all, it's the first time I heard the name and looking for the guy hardly brings up any names in Polish academia.
Second of all, his homepage describes him as "freelance historian" dedicated to "perception of Holocaust" and "revisionism".
Third of all, the alleged "debunking"  article is full of statements like "anti-German Polish myths" and "de-demonizing Spanner". These are very big warning sign about quality of this work and publication. The historical record is clear that Nazis have experimented with soap making although not on industrial scale.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 22:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Neander is certainly not a holocaust denier and is rather active writing for anti-denier websites. The Polish state has also cleared Dr. Spanner from these accusations, since they are indeed untrue, even if medialiony has placed them into the collective memory of Poland. That "soap" made from corpses existed in the Danzig institute =/= that "Nazi human soap" was made or "experimented with". The holocaust-related claims of human-soap are not related to the "soap" from the institute. That human fat is detected in the Danzig-soap does not "prove" that "Nazi human soap" was made, since the "Danzig-soap" is unrelated. Its a non-sequitor and grounded on a false premise to use evidence of human-fat in the Danzig-soap to "prove" "Nazi-soap". --Havsjö (talk) 15:45, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The Polish state has also cleared Dr. Spanner from these accusations, since they are indeed untrue, Absolutely false as can be easily read here:--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 17:28, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Citing the human fat found in the Danzig soap as proof "limited production of Nazi soap" in the article is incorrect, as the Dazing institute is not related to the Nazi Holocaust and the human fat in the Danzig-soap is not sourced from any holocaust victims. This is why Spanner officially acknowledged as innocent and was not prosecuted for any crimes. The article includes all mentions that "soap" was crated in Danzig and so on, but puts this in its proper context, i.e. not connected to the Holocaust. --Havsjö (talk) 17:36, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joachim Neander-Polish historian ?! Big warning signs about this alleged author. 

message: The article only depicts the history of usage but fails to scientifically present how chemical properties work and what makes human corpses favourable for soap production. --2001:16B8:3152:4E00:D12:C694:B8EF:9D16 (talk) 08:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The essence of the article is completely missing 

message: This entire page is bizarrely anti semitic and pro Nazi, dismissing the idea of Nazis making soap out of humans in spite of also citing people and sources stating it to be true and stating as fact that it was thoroughly debunked without citing a single piece of evidence that it was debunked. Propaganda and making statements about how it’s folklore is not evidence or fact. I am especially confused as to how this is all scientifically and rigorously disproved when the Nazis sometimes destroyed their evidence to the point where they planted flowers and built homes on the one where they committed their very real atrocities. Yet those who treat the testimonies of individuals including Holocaust survivors as “fact” are referred to dismissively here as spreading mythology. One letter where Nazis covering up their crimes in one circumstance, Himmler ordering Mueller to incinerate bodies, is cited as proof that they never processed or experimented with dead bodies through the entire war, which they absolutely did. It is very strange to essentially accuse those who lived in the Holocaust of “exaggerating” when every aspect of the Holocaust has been disbelieved and discounted from the time it began because it was clearly a preposterous “rumor.” People testified at trials about this, but the page repeatedly stated these rumors arose from random individuals making a rudimentary mistake. Elleoneiram (talk) 00:58, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and the evidence just isn't there. All the evidence indicates it was a repackaging of the "German Corpse Factory" myth. If I recall correctly, Anne Frank mentioned in her diary that allied propaganda broadcasts claimed Jews were being processed into soap, this would explain how the belief became so widespread among European Jews. Many authors have pointed out that clinging to the soap and lampshade myths aids holocaust deniers because they are so easily disproven. CorwenAv (talk) 14:46, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious Apologetics 

message: This topic belongs in this article. 109.245.39.22 (talk) 12:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Ustaše also created soap from serbs in their conc. camps