10 October 2006
The Nazi occupiers of Poland used "substances" from the bodies of concentration camp prisoners to make soap, according to a study carried out by Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN). The study, which was conducted in order to counter claims by revisionists and Holocaust deniers, concludes that soap was produced using substances obtained from human bodies at the anatomical institute of the Medical Academy of Gdansk (Danzig). "We launched our investigation to still the voices denying that this ever happened," Paulina Szumera of the IPN told the AFP news agency. For the probe, Polish scientists studied a bar of soap that was presented as evidence during the Nuremberg Nazi war crime trials after World War II and was in the archives of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands. The Polish television station TVN24 cited IPN investigators as saying the bodies of prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp of Stutthof, in northern Poland, and at Gdansk municipal jail were used to make the soap. The bodies of patients at a psychiatric hospital in Gdansk were also used, the investigators told TVN24. Several dozen kilograms of soap were produced by the Nazis in Gdansk and used to clean laboratory work surfaces, the IPN said. Almond extract was added to the soap to give it a palatable scent. Soaps are usually made from fats and oils that react with lye (sodium hydroxide).
