After the defeat of Nazi Germany, claims circulated that
Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of
Buchenwald concentration camp, had possessed lampshades made of human skin, and had specifically tattooed prisoners killed in order to use their skin for this purpose.
[3] After her conviction for war crimes, General
Lucius D. Clay, the interim military governor of the
American Zone in Germany, reduced her sentence to four years' prison on the grounds "there was no convincing evidence that she had selected
Nazi concentration camp inmates for extermination in order to secure tattooed skins, or that she possessed any articles made of human skin".
[4] Jean Edward Smith in his biography,
Lucius D. Clay, an American Life, reported that the general had maintained that the leather lamp shades were really made out of
goat skin. The book quotes a statement made by General Clay years later:
There was absolutely no evidence in the trial transcript, other than she was a rather loathsome creature, that would support the death sentence. I suppose I received more abuse for that than for anything else I did in Germany. Some reporter had called her the "Bitch of Buchenwald", had written that she had lamp shades made of human skin in her house. And that was introduced in court, where it was absolutely proven that the lamp shades were made out of goat skin.
[5] The charges were made once more when she was rearrested, but again were found to be groundless.
[4]