The Lampshade

A very interesting story about a horrifying artefact. The subtitle "...from Buchenwald to New Orleans" is only too accurate. There is a lot of travel in the book and the author spoke to many people, some of whom seemed entirely irrelevant. But every red herring and every digression went into the book (some in the Notes; Jacobson kept the Notes for entire mini-stories that even he could not shoehorn into the book; perhaps he should have made more extensive use of the section). We follow Jacobson to and fro on his travels as he tells the story in pieces and revisits New Orleans multiple times. He may have revisited Germany multiple times too; quite frankly I started to lose interest around page 200, only two-thirds of the way into this show more somewhat bloated book, and skimmed the remainder. Perhaps he was in Germany once and interspersed it with New Orleans stories. Probably the most unexpected part of the story to me was the reaction of Holocaust museums to the lampshade. It was tested and proven to be made from human skin, it was of the correct era and place more or less (European, first half of 20th century), the circumstantial evidence was fairly solid, but the director of the major Holocaust museum in the USA insisted in the face of all testimony that the Nazi lampshade thing was "a myth". Her parting words were to the effect that even if it were proven to be true, it's still a myth. Yad Vashem had a more professional, museum science reason for wanting no part of it: the provenance was lacking, where might it have actually been before it was looted from the rubble of post-Katrina New Orleans? The ending of the book is inconclusive and (presumably by design) unsatisfying. Jacobson decides to bury the lampshade. He has the details mostly clear; the medical examiner from NYC who is also a cantor will sing at the funeral. Then he decides not to and takes it back to Buchenwald for further testing. It might stay there. Whatever. show less

Fascinating and horrifying book to read. After Hurricane Katrina, a man claims to have found a lampshade made of human skin. Mark Jacobson tracks down it's history and much much more.

It was interesting and well-written, if a little creepy. A lot I didn't know. Not to be insensitive, but I would have thrown the thing away.