{"id":2266,"date":"2018-01-08T09:45:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T09:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=2266"},"modified":"2018-01-11T08:17:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T08:17:49","slug":"harvesting-tattoos-a-thesis-from-buchenwald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/harvesting-tattoos-a-thesis-from-buchenwald\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHarvesting Tattoos\u201d: A Thesis from Buchenwald"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Spanish daily El Pa\u00eds published a shocking story last week<\/a> about a rare and controversial document from the Buchenwald Nazi Concentration Camp. A PhD Thesis done by a Nazi camp doctor, Erich Wagner, titled On the Subject of Tattoos,<\/em> that analyzes the tattoos of the camp\u2019s earliest prisoners, many of whom were Jews arrested during Kristallnacht<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wagner \u201cmeticulously catalogued the race, nationality, criminal past and education\u201d of those sent to Buchenwald in an attempt to connect tattoos with criminal tendencies – an approach, needless to say, with no scientific merit.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In all, more than 800 prisoners were questioned by Wagner, and their tattoos photographed and examined. Wagner was infamous among those at Buchenwald. One survivor noted that all the patients the doctor operated on would die, likely so he could \u201charvest\u201d tattoos of his victims.\u201d Like the more infamous \u201cWitch of Buchenwald,\u201d Ilse Koch, Wagner displayed a disturbing fascination with the skin of his victims, one that went beyond scientific interest.<\/p>\n

Wagner was sent to Buchenwald in 1939 as a member of the Waffen-SS. \u00a0A dissertation committee at the University of Jena considered Wagner\u2019s scholarly contribution in On the Subject of Tattoos<\/em> as \u201cvery good\u201d. After the war, Wagner escaped prosecution before committing suicide in 1959. In 1957, experts found that his work had not only broken every possible principle of research ethics, but also that most of the interviews and the writing had been done by a Buchenwald prisoner, Paul Gr\u00fcnwald, under Wagner\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n

On the Subject of Tattoos<\/em> has found its way to sale in the US. It is available at USM Books, a Rapid City, SD company that specializes in the sale of rare and controversial material relating to World War II.<\/p>\n

The original text recently sold for an undisclosed amount. A translated copy is in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s library.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Spanish daily El Pa\u00eds published a shocking story last week about a rare and controversial document from the Buchenwald Nazi Concentration Camp. A PhD Thesis done by a Nazi camp doctor, Erich Wagner, titled On the Subject of Tattoos, that analyzes the tattoos of the camp\u2019s earliest prisoners, many of whom were Jews arrested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[96747,2846,10095],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-buchenwald","tag-holocaust","tag-tattoos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2058"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2270,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}