Ilse Koch and Rudolph Spanner were both accused of monstrous crimes during WWII. Ilse Koch was accused of having Buchenwald prisoners murdered so that she could have decorative and personal items, such as lampshades and purses, made from their tattooed skin. Rudolph Spanner was accused of using the bodies of Jewish prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp to make soap. Both cases were introduced into evidence at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, though neither Koch nor Spanner were charged in that proceeding. Ilse Koch was eventually tried by both American and German authorities: she was sentenced to life imprisonment twice, though her initial life sentence from an American tribunal was reduced to four years. She eventually committed suicide in a German prison in 1967, one of the last German war criminals in custody. Rudolph Spanner, on the other hand, was never prosecuted, lived openly and freely in the Federal Republic of Germany, and died of natural causes.

Why did these two cases follow such different trajectories? This book explores some of the reasons for these very different outcomes. It also clarifies what is known about the lampshades alleged to have been made from human skin, as the rumors of Ilse Koch’s involvement with these objects contributed so much to her fate. Last seen in a basement in Indiana, it seems unlikely now that any of the pieces of the lampshade will ever resurface. We may thus never know of what the infamous lampshade was really constructed.