Lampshades made from human skin

In the 2010s, peptide mass fingerprinting technology provided the opportunity to test books in libraries, archives, and private collections which were purported to be bound using the skin of humans.

[11] 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.

"[12] 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.

[1] British pathologist Bernard Spilsbury also identified pieces of tanned human skin obtained by observers at Buchenwald after the liberation of the camp.

"[22][23][2] Ed Gein was an American murderer and body snatcher, active in the 1950s in Wisconsin, who made trophies from corpses he stole from a local graveyard.

[24] Gein appears to have been influenced by the then-current stories about the Nazis collecting body parts in order to make lampshades and other items.

[26] These references can take the form of literary allusions, such as Sylvia Plath's description of her skin as "Bright as a Nazi lampshade" in her 1965 poem, "Lady Lazarus".

In 1995, August Kreis was ejected from the set of The Jerry Springer Show after telling the host, "Your relatives – weren't they all turned into soap or lampshades?...