Burial of the soap: the legends and reality of the Holocaust

Abstract

In the end of 1945 the Jewish community of the Ukrainian town of Chernovcy demanded from the city committee and other Soviet government officials to hold an immediate funeral of trophy German soap. The reason that almost led the Jews to a direct protest were the rumours that had reached Chernovcy via Romania. Information that the Nazis had launched the production of soap from bodies of executed Jews (less often - of any concentration camp prisoners) started circulating in the lines back in 1941-1942. This story rapidly became a textbook example of Nazi atrocities, and thus was presented as such the Nuremberg trial in 1945. Only in the 2000s a number of historians revisited the evidence and testaments presented at the Nuremberg trial by the Soviet side and deemed those insufficient. What we really deal with here is an urban legend stemming from propaganda hoaxes of the WWI. In the paper we shall dwell upon how this legend was formed and why it was used for discussing an actual catastrophe and actual war crimes.