New York Magazine devoted a full nine pages of their September 13 issue to a story about a lampshade made of human skin said to be from a Nazi death camp. It turns out that they could only prove that its made of human skin, NOT that it came from a Nazi death camp. Their source for the human skin part was the very reputable medical examiner's office of the NYPD, who could only get enough DNA to prove that it was human, but nothing more specific like sex, race, or origin. The finding was confirmed by a number of experts in pathology, taxidermy, and drum making. Their ONLY source for the Nazi death camp part was the admitted drug addict who stole the lampshade from an abandoned house in the aftermath of Katrina, and later sold it on the sidewalk. Most of the story is still a good read. There is a brief history on a woman named Ilse Koch, who was the wife of a Nazi commandant, and was obsessed with objects made of human skin. She went so far as to inspect each prisoner and have the ones with interesting tattoos or markings executed so that she could use them in her macabre craft.
There is also a fascinated background on the man who found the lampshade. He had spent years working as a grave robber to fund a drug habit. His rock bottom moment was when he was so high that he slept through Katrina and didn't know about the storm until the next day when he SWAM to his drug dealer's house and found her dead.
The boring parts of the story are all about the author himself - MarK Jacobson. He goes on a long, boring, and cliche history about growing up and being picked on as a young Jewish boy in New York, only to make the point that all the gentile bullies would tell him they were going to make him into a lampshade. I can sympathize, kids are really mean, I just a lot more interested in the lampshade than his autobiography. But like I said, it's still a good read. You can read an excerpt here.
