Rudolf Spanner

Rudolf Spanner (born 17 April 1895 in Metternich bei Koblenz; died 31 August 1960) was Director of the Danzig Anatomical Institute during World War II.

A memorial tablet in Gdańsk, Poland, chronicling Rudolph Spanner's experiments.

Allegations of human soap

Further information: Soap made from human corpses § Danzig Anatomical Institute

During the Nuremberg Trials, Sigmund Mazur, a laboratory assistant at the Danzig Anatomical Institute, testified that soap had been made from corpse fat at the institute, and claimed that 70 to 80 kg (155–175 lb) of fat collected from 40 bodies could produce more than 25 kg (55 lb) of soap, and that the finished soap was retained by Professor Rudolf Spanner. Two British POWs who had to assist with auxiliary task at the Institute provided witness-accounts.[1]

In his book Russia at War 1941 to 1945, Alexander Werth claims that while visiting Gdańsk/Danzig in 1945 shortly after its conquest by the Red Army, he saw an experimental factory outside the city for making soap from human corpses. According to Werth it had been run by "a German professor called Spanner" and "was a nightmarish sight, with its vats full of human heads and torsos pickled in some liquid, and its pails full of a flakey substance—human soap".[2]

Polish historian Joachim Neander states that the rumors of Nazi soap production of murdered Jews in concentration camps, long-since thoroughly debunked, still hold wide belief, which is exploited by holocaust deniers. He however goes on to say that even scholars that reject the aforementioned claims of soap production are still convinced that small-scale, "experimental" soap production was done in by the Germans in Danzig, and that this claim is also repeated as a firm fact in several remembrance contexts.[3]

He, and the other Polish historians such as Monika Tomkiewicz and Piotr Semków, have thoroughly investigated the claims of human soap production in the Danzig Anatomical Institute by Spanner and all concludes these soap-making claims are also a myth, particularly cemented into Polish consciousness by Zofia Nałkowska's 1946 book Medaliony[4], which was mandatory reading in Poland until 1990, widely distributed in the Eastern Bloc, and is still popular today.[5] They all alleged that such secondary sources have played a far larger role of spreading information about the claim than scholarly research.

It is pointed out the soap-making recipe given by Manzur at the Nuremberg trials to be contradictory and unrealistic, with a testimony from 12 May 1945 claiming 75kg fat produced 8kg soap from the first boiling, a testimony from 28 May 1945 claiming 70-80kg fat from 40 bodies produced 25kg soap from both boilings, and a testimony from 7 June 1945 claiming 40 bodies produced 40kg soap from both boilings. These inconsistencies were even pointed out before the Chief Commission.[3] The witness testimonies from the two British POW's were also noted in a 1990's report from the newly established Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. to be "contradictory and inconclusive", and they hold a cautious stance of the Danzig Soap issue.[3]

Tomkiewicz and Semków state that recent surface analysis by the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Medical University of Gdańsk of soap tested negative for human DNA. They also document how a Polish 2006 delegation by Andrzej Stołyhwo from the Gdańsk University of Technology to the Hague which sampled the soap-material presented in the Nuremberg trials did show to possibly contain human fat[6][7], but that the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) Gdánsk branch closed the investigation citing lack of evidence of crimes committed. The IPN did however maintain that human fat has been used, based on 1945 testimonies and the presence of kaolin in the samples, the abrasive qualities of which indicated possible use as a cleaning soap.[5] Tomkiewicz and Semków's research, however, concluded that Spanner, a well-respected physician who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939, would not have been "experimenting" with soap production (which was widely understood and not something which needed experimentation) instead of teaching his students, and that the soapy grease (claimed to be "unfinished soap"[3]), a by-product stemming from bone maceration in the creation of anatomical models for the institute, was injected into the models flexible joints.[5] They further noted that Spanner had previously done research on kaolin injections into cadavers, and stated that the kaolin could have come from the cadaver itself, rather than as a later additive.[5]

Both Neander, and Tomkiewicz and Semków, state that the origin of this myth come from the findings of bodies and maceration processes in a small brick building on the premise the anatomical institute which was used by the Soviets and newly established Polish Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation as "proof" of human soap production in concentration camps, which had been presented as fact and become a stock phrase in Soviet propaganda, but of which no evidence could be found in the liberated camps. The "human soap" found in Danzig was conflated with the separate rumors regarding the concentration camps and presented together during the Nuremberg trials.[3][5] Neander concludes that no research, experiments or production on soap-making were conducted in Danzig, that Manzur never made soap according to his "recipe", that the corpses delivered to be boiled to create anatomical models were all Germans, and which had not been killed in order to "harvest" their bodies. His research did however conclude that the grease was used for simple cleaning purposes towards the end of the war and that Spanner bore responsibility for this, whether he was aware of it or not, as head of the institute, but that it amounted to a misdemeanor in the handling of dead bodies, as opposed to any criminal behavior, let alone a crime against humanity or involvement in any genocidal activities, something which is today officially acknowledged in Poland.[3]

Tomkiewicz and Semków write that when Zofia Nałkowska, Vice-Chairperson of the Chief Commission, was already writing her short-story "Professor Spanner" (which would be published in Medaliony), Spanner was already back to working as a medical doctor, under his own name, in Schleswig-Holstein in September 1945, unaware that he was being linked with any possible crimes. He was arrested in May 1947, but released three days later. He was later arrested again, but once again released after explaining the maceration and injection process. He was officially exonerated in 1948 and resumed his academic career.[5]

Neander states:

The time therefore has come to reduce the "Danzig Soap Case," inflated by postwar propaganda to a prime example of Nazi German crimes, to its real dimensions. "Revisionists" would lose one of their favorite "arguments" in their efforts to discredit serious Holocaust scholarship. Moreover, de-demonizing "Profesor Spanner" would dismantle a popular Polish anti-German stereotype and would contribute to a better mutual understanding. The list of the Nazi crimes perpetrated in Poland and during the Holocaust is long enough. It will not become significantly shorter, if an alleged crime is deleted from it, but it will become more trustworthy.[3]

Notes

1. http://holocaust.skeptik.net/documents/soap.htm
2. Werth, Alexander (1964). Russia at War, 1941-1945. Dutton. p. 1019.
3. Neander, Joachim (2006). "The Danzig Soap Case: Facts and Legends around "Professor Spanner" and the Danzig Anatomic Institute 1944-1945" (PDF). German Studies Review. 29 (1): 63–86.
4. "Zakończono śledztwo w głośnej "sprawie profesora Spannera"". Dziennik Bałtycki. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30.
5. Tomkiewicz, Monika; Semków, Piotr (2013). Soap from human fat: the case of Professor Spanner. Gdynia Wydawnictwo Róża Wiatrów. ISBN 9788362012022.
6. Polska Press Sp. z o.o. (2006-10-07). "Zakończono śledztwo w głośnej "sprawie profesora Spannera"". Wiadomosci24.pl. Retrieved 2016-01-14.
7. "Human Fat Was Used to Produce Soap in Gdansk during the War" Archived 2011-05-21 at the Wayback Machine, Auschwitz–Birkenau Memorial and Museum website, 13 October 2006. Accessed July 12, 2011.