The Holocaust Historiography Project

Copy of document 3420-PS

            Mobile Field Interrogation Unit No. 2
                  PW INTELLIGENCE BUTLLETIN

No. 2/20
19 December 1944

      Address Briefs and Requests to HQ, FID, MIS, APO
                             887
                           Extract

13.  Concentration Camp, Buchenwald.

Preamble.  The author of this account is PW
Andreas Pfaffenberger, 1 Coy, 9 Landesschuetzen
Bn. 43 years old and of limited education, he is a
butcher by trade.  The substantial agreement of
the details of his story with those found in PWIS
(H) /LF/736 establishes the validity of his
testimony.

PW has not been questioned on statements which, in
the light of what is known, are apparently
erroneous in certain details, nor has any effort
been made to alter the subjective character of
PW’s account, which he wrote without being told
anything of the intelligence already known.
Results of interrogation on personalities at
Buchenwald have already been published (PWIB No.
2/12 Item 31).

                      *******

In 1939, all prisoners with tattooing on them were
ordered to report to the dispensary.  No one knew
what the purpose was.  But after the tattooed
prisoners had been examined, the ones with the
best and most artistic specimens were kept in the
dispensary, and then killed by injections,
administered by Karl Beigs, a criminal prisoner.
The corpses were then turned over
to the pathological department where the desired
pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the
bodies and treated.  The finished products were
turned over to SS Standartenfuehrer Koch’s wife,
who had them fashioned into lampshades and other
ornamental household articles.  I myself saw such
tattooed skins with various designs and legends on
them, such as “Hans'l und Gret'l", which one
prisoner had had on his knee, and ships from
prisoners' chests.  This work was done by a
prisoner named Wernerbach.

There I also saw the shrunken heads of two young
Poles who had been hanged for having had relations
with German girls.  The heads were the size of a
fist, and the hair and marks of the rope were
still there.