COPY OF DOCUMENT 3420-PS

Mobile Field Interrogation Unit No. 2 PW INTELLIGENCE'BULLETIN No. 2/20 19 December 1944
Address Briefs and Requests to HQ, FID, MIS, APO 887
Extract
13. Concentration Camp, Buchemvald.
Preamble. The author of this account is PW Andreas Pfaffenberger, 1 Coy, 9 Landesschuetzen Bn. 43 years old and of limited education, he is a butcher by trade. The substantial agreement of the details of his story with those found in PWIS (H)/LF/736 establishes the validity of his testimony.
PW has not been questioned on statements which, in the light of what is known, are apparently erroneous in certain details, nor has any effort been made to alter the subjective character of PW's account, which he wrote without being told anything of the intelligence already known. Results of interrogation on personalities at Buchenwald have already been published (PWIB No. 2/12 Item 31).
In 1939, all prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary. No one knew what the purpose was. But after the tattooed prisoners had been examined, the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were kept in the dispensary, and then killed by injections, administered by Karl Beigs, a criminal prisoner. The corpses were then turned over
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to the pathological department, where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated. The finished products were turned over to SS Standartenfuehrer Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and other ornamental household articles. I myself saw such tattooed skins with various designs and legends on them, such as "Hans'l und Gret'l", which one prisoner had had on his knee, and ships from prisoners' chests. This work was done by a prisoner named Wernerbach.
There I also saw the shrunken heads of two young Poles who had been hanged for having had relations with German girls. The heads were the size of a fist, and the hair and the marks of the rope were still there.