TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT USSR-197, CONFESSION OF HUMAN SOAP MAKER SIGMUND MAZER

The document is in Russian, and is a "certified true copy" on which the signatures are typewritten. That is, where the word "signature" appears in the translation, there is no signature on the document: only the typewritten word "signature".

Sigmund, his signature, his statement and his soap may have gone to a better world, but their memory survives in this document. The human soap accusation is particularly important because it was upheld in the judgement at Nuremberg on the same page (IMT I - 252) as gassing millions of Jews and cutting their hair off to make human hair mattresses.

The so-called "original document" (i.e., the copy with typewritten signatures) is almost illegible. As a "certified true copy" of a photostat of an original which has never been found, it is a typical Hoaxoco$t "document".

RECORD OF EXAMINATION

of the witness Z. Yu. MAZUR on 11 June 1945.

Mazur declared that he would make is declarations in Polish.

The witness and interpreter were warned of their liability under Articles 92 and 95 of the Criminal Law Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic:

[typewritten]: signatures.

QUESTION: In previous examinations, you testified that you boiled human fat into soap according to a special recipe given by Professor Spanner. Could you tell us whether you received the recipe in oral or written form?

ANSWER: After I received Professor Spanner's instructions to start boiling human fat into soap, Professor Spanner at once, on that same day, personally handed me the recipe for making this soap, in written form; that is to say, the recipe had been typed out on the letterhead of the Anatomical Institute. As soon as I started to read the recipe, Spanner took it from me, and there and then he told the senior laboratory assistant von Bargen to stick it to a plywood board, and nail the board with the recipe in the building where this soap was prepared, that is to say, in the second room of this building -- the middle room, and von Bargen immediately carried out this task. This happened on 15 February 1944 in the presence of Secretary Horn and four students. On that same day, we prepared soap from human fat.

QUESTION: You have been shown a recipe typed in the letterhead of the Anatomical Institute. What do you have to say in respect of this recipe?

ANSWER: The recipe shown to me, dated 15 February 1944, is the same recipe about which I have just testified. This recipe was stuck to a plywood board which hung in the building where soap was prepared.

Faithfully taken down from my words, read to me and translated into my native language, Polish.

[typewritten] /Mazur/

[typewritten] Interpreter /Kotlyarevskaya/

Examiner: Judge-Advocate of the Garrison Gdansk, Major of the Legal Service.

[typewritte] /Vodopyanov/

The examination was attended by a member of the Special State Commission.

[typewritten] /Zimenkov/

True Copy:

[stamp] Special State Commission

From the documents of the Special State Commission

RECORD OF EXAMINATION of the witness Z. Yu MAZUR

on 12 June 1945

The witness and the interpreter from Polish, Kotlyarevskaya, were warned of their liability under Articles 92 and 95 of the Criminal Law Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.

[typewritten] Signatures.

QUESTION: Could you tell us whether you took home with you from the factory any soap from human fat; how many times, and what you did with it at home, and also, to which members of your family you disclosed what kind of soap it was?

ANSWER: Yes, I took soap made from human fat home with me two or three times, in February and March 1945. Altogether the total weight of the soap I took home on all those occasions did not exceed 4 kilograms. Each time, I handed the soap over to my mother. My mother knew what kind of soap it was, because I had already told her and my sisters everything in 1944, when we first started making this soap, I mean soap made of human fat, as a novelty unheard of at that time. At first my mother did did not want to take the soap from me and use it, but I convinced her that it was absolutely harmless for washing laundry and even for washing oneself, since the caustic soda added to it during its preparation rendered it completely harmless. To convince them further, I also did what Professor Spanner had done for me and washed my hands with it in front of them, that is, in front of my mother and sisters. In spite of this, my mother was contemptuous about the soap, but all the same I think my family used it for washing laundry. True, none of my family ever asked me to bring this soap. The soap I brought home, made of human fat, was in the form of a hard lump of white stuff, with an unpleasant smell.

Testimony faithfully taken down from my words, and translated for me into my native Polish when read out.

Signatures:

[typewritten] Interpreter /Kotlyarevskaya/

Examiner: Judge-Advocate of the Garrison of Gdansk, Major of the Legal Service.

[typewritten] /Vodopyanov/

True Copy:

[stamp]

Special State Commission

From the documents of the Special State Commission.

[Handwritten]: I hereby confirm that the Records of Examination of Z. Yu. Mazur are exactly reproduced from the original documents. The text of the records is true to the text of the originals, which are kept among the proceedings of the Special State Commission in Moscow.

Authorized representative of the Special State Commission, D. Kuzmin.

17/1/1946.

COPY.

RECORD OF EXAMINATION of witness.

In Danzig on 28 May 1945, the Judge Advocate of the rear services of the Byelorussian Front, Lieutenant-Colonel Geitman of the legal services, and the Investigating Officer of the Judge Advocate's Office of the Second Byelorussian Front, Major Kadensky of the Legal Services, examined the undernamed person as a witness, and he gave evidence: Zigmund Yuzefovich MAZUR, born in 1920, native of Danzig, a Pole who received German citizenship in January 1944; completed 6 classes of the Polish "gymnasium" [grammar school] in Danzig in 1939; a clerical worker; unmarried; according to his declaration, not previously convicted; he lived at no. 2, Betschergasse, Danzig, and was employed until April 1945 as a laboratory assistant at the Anatomical Institute of Danzig; his mother lives in Danzig at no. 10, Neuschottland Street; he has a command of the Polish and German languages.

The testimony is translated from Polish into Russian by the interpreter of the Danzig Commandant's Office, Boguslava Kostinova. The word "German" has been altered to "Polish", which should be taken as the correct version.

The witness was warned of his liability for withholding evidence and for giving false evidence under Articles 92 and 95 of the Criminal Law Code of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.

The interpreter was also warned of her liabilty for refusing to translate and for giving a false translation under Articles 92 and 95 of the Criminal Code of the Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.

In October 1940, while I was in Danzig, I was looking for work.

The German official Gustav Lange from the Danzig employment office, to whom I had given some of the rooms of my flat, promised to find me a better, more suitable job in one of the educational establishments of Danzig, and after this I was sent to the Anatomical Institute of Danzig, where I began work in January 1941. At first, I was working as a courier for three months. While working as a courier, I began to take an interest in medicine, and with the help of Lange and Professor Spanner, I was appointed to the post of laboratory assistant at the Anatomical Institute, from January 1941. My duties as laboratory assistant included drawing charts and assisting in the dissection of corpses.

The Director of the Anatomical Institute was a German from the town of Kiel, Professor Rudolf Spanner, who left for the area of the town of Halle in January 1945.

Professor Spanner's deputy was a doctor, Senior Lecturer Wollman -- he was an SS officer, but wore civilian clothes, and sometimes a black SS uniform. Wollman was from Czechoslovakia, and his Czechoslovakian surname was Kozklik.

In January 1945 he voluntarily entered the SS forces.

From October 1944, a woman, Fosbeck from Doppot, was working as an assistant. She left for Halle with Professor Spanner.

The senior laboratory assistant was von Bargen, who came to Danzig from Kiel with Professor Spanner,.

The attendant for laying out corpses was a German, Reichert from Danzig, who left in November 1944, to join the German army. Borckmann, a German from Danzig, was likewise an assistant, but I do not know he is now.

QUESTION: In the summer of 1943, a one-storey stone building with three rooms was built inside the yard next to the Anatomical Institute. The building was constructed for processing corpses and boiling bones; this was the official laboratory of Professor Spanner. This laboratory was designated as a laboratory for preparing human skeletons and incinerating flesh and superfluous bones. But as early as the winter of 1943-1944, Professor gave me the order to collect human fat and not to throw it away. This order was given to Reichert and Borckman.

In February 1944, Professor Spanner gave me a recipe for making soap from human fat. This recipe gave instructions to take 5 kilograms of human fat, with 10 litres of water and 500 or 1,000 grams of caustic soda, boil all this for 2-3 hours, then leave to cool. The soap floats to the surface, and the residues and water remain at the bottom, in buckets. Common salt and a further handful of soda were added to the mixture. Then fresh water was added and the mixture was again boiled for 2-3 hours. After cooling, the finished soap was poured out into moulds.

The soap produced has an unpleasant smell. To eliminate this unpleasant smell, benzaldehyde was added.

The work of preparing soap from human fat began in January 1944. The senior laboratory assistant von Bargen was the immediate head of the soap factory. All the equipment was taken from the Anatomical Institute.

The first batch of corpses was delivered from Konradstein; from the psychiatric hospital; I do not remember the quantity.

Apart from this, there was a large supply of corpses in the Anatomical Institute, amounting to about 400 corpses. A large number of the corpses had been decapitated. The decapitated corpses had been guillotined in the prison of the town of Königsberg, and in 1944 a guillotine was set up in the Danzig prison. I saw this guillotine in the yard, in one of the rooms of the prison; I saw it when I went to the Danzig prison for corpses. I attach a sketch of the guillotine.

When I arrived at the prison for corpses, the corpses were fresh, just after execution, and we received them in a room next to the one where the guillotine was. The corpses were still warm.

On each corpse there was a label giving the surname and year of birth, and these names were noted down in a special book in the Anatomical Institute. I do not know where that book is now. I went to the prison in Danzig for corpses 4-5 times.

From the Stutthof Camp, Borkner brought four corpses of Russian people, men.

Borkner and Reichert collected fat from human bodies.

I boiled soap from bodies of men and women. One productive boiling took several days, from 3 to 7 days. The two boilings which I know about, in which I took a direct part, yielded a finished product of more than 25 kilograms of soap. From these boilings, 70-80 kilograms of human fat were collected from about 40 corpses. The finished soap was passed to Professor Spanner, who personally stored it in his home.

The Hitler government was, I know, interested in the work on production of soap from human bodies. The Minister of Education Rust, the Minister of Health Koschti [?], the Gauleiter of Danzig Albert Forster, and also many professors from other medical institutes, came to the Anatomical Institute.

So I personally used soap made from human fat for my washing and laundry requirements. I took 4 kilograms of this soap for my own personal use.

Since this work on soap production was being carried out on Professor Spanner's orders, I considered it a normal occurrence.

Reichert, Borckman, von Bargen and our boss, Professor Spanner, as well as all our other colleagues, also took this soap for their personal use.

This soap was also given to some students who were helping in the work

Professor Spanner said the production of soap from human fat must be kept secret.

The production of soap in our institute was of an experimental nature, but I do not know when it was suggested that corpses should be used for soap production on a large scale.

Professional Spanner was trying to obtain an many corpses as possible, and was corresponding with prisons and camps, with which he was negotiating for corpses in these places to be reserved for the Danzig Anatomical Institute.

In the preparation room, we shaved the corpses which arrived, and the hair was burnt; in any case, the facts about use of hair are unknown to me.

In exactly the same way as human fat, Professor Spanner ordered that human skin should be collected; after degreasing, it was treated with certain chemicals. The senior assistant von Bargen and Professor Spanner himself attended to the production of human leather. The processed skin was stored in a box, and went for special purposes; what special purposes these were, I do not know.

Conferences of a scientific nature took place in the Anatomical Institute, and I know of about three such conferences, but I cannot say what was discussed, since I did not attend them.

Correctly taken down from my words, translated into Polish for me, and confirmed by me.

[typewritten] Zigmund Mazur /signature/

Judge Advocate of the rear services of the 2nd Byelorussian Front, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Legal Service.

[typewritten] /Geitman/

Examining Officer, Major of the Legal Services,

[typewritten] A. Kadensky

[typewritten] Interpreter B. Kostinova /signature/

Certified true copy:

[stamp]

Special State Commission

From the documents of the Special State Commission.

[handwritten] I hereby confirm that this Record of Examination of the witness Zigmund Mazur is exactly reproduced from the original record.

The text of the record is true to the text of the original which is kept among the proceedings of the Special State Commission in Moscow.

Authorized representative of the Special State Commission, D. Kuzmin.

20/1/1946 [stamp] Special State Commission

[All signatures typewritten unless otherwise stated].

See also: Nizkoprophagists Refute Porter on Human Soap