Mark Jacobson - The Lampshade : A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans read online MOBI, PDF, FB2
9781416566274 English 1416566279 Few growing up in the aftermath of World War II will ever forget the horrifying reports that Nazi concentration camp doctors had removed the skin of prisoners to makes common, everyday lampshades. In The Lampshade, bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of one of these awful objects, and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning, of what can only be described as an icon of terror.Jacobson's mind-bending historical, moral, and philosophical journey into the recent past and his own soul begins in Hurricane Katrinaravaged New Orleans. It is only months after the storm, with America's most romantic city still in tatters, when Skip Henderson, an old friend of Jacobson's, purchases an item at a rummage sale: a very strange looking and oddly textured lampshade. When he asks what it's made of, the seller, a man covered with jailhouse tattoos, replies, "That's made from the skin of Jews." The price: $35. A few days later, Henderson sends the lampshade to Jacobson, saying, "You're the journalist, you find out what it is." The lampshade couldn't possibly be real, could it? But it is. DNA analysis proves it.This revelation sends Jacobson halfway around the world, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where the lampshades were supposedly made on the order of the infamous "Bitch of Buchenwald," Ilse Koch. From the time he grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, Jacobson has heard stories about the human skin lampshade and knew it to be the ultimate symbol of Nazi cruelty. Now he has one of these things in his house with a DNA report to prove it, and almost everything he finds out about it is contradictory, mysterious, shot through with legend and specious information.Through interviews with forensic experts, famous Holocaust scholars (and deniers), Buchenwald survivors and liberators, and New Orleans thieves and cops, Jacobson gradually comes to see the lampshade as a ghostly illuminator of his own existential status as a Jew, and to understand exactly what that means in the context of human responsibility.One question looms as his search goes on: what to do with the lampshadethis unsettling thing that used to be someone? It is a difficult dilemma to be sure, but far from the last one, since once a lampshade of human skin enters your life, it is very, very hard to forget., Renowned writer Jacobson's chronicles his historical and philosophical journey that begins when he finds a lampshade made of human skin in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina., The journey that takes Mark Jacobson to Weimar, Buchenwald, Yad Vashem, the Museum of natural history, and DNA labs began in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1991, when he met Skip Henderson. About six months after Hurricane Katrina drowned the city, Henderson was at a rummage sale lookihg for a drum for Mardi Gras, when Dave, the guy selling the stuff on the sidewalk, said , 'Check out the lamp', and told Skip with certainty that it was made from the skins of Jews. Skip didn't believe anything Dave said, but he bought the lampshade for $35. But his wife wouldn't let him bring it in the house with Dave's story attached to it, true or not. It sat in the attic until he shipped it to a drum maker to look at-who'd never seen anything like it-and then Skip sent it to Mark - 'You're a journalist, you figure out what it is'. The Lampshade is Mark's singular investigation not only into the truth of the thing itself, but of the idea of it, our understanding and reliance on history, on myths and reality, facts and evidence, on artifacts from the past, on evil.
9781416566274 English 1416566279 Few growing up in the aftermath of World War II will ever forget the horrifying reports that Nazi concentration camp doctors had removed the skin of prisoners to makes common, everyday lampshades. In The Lampshade, bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of one of these awful objects, and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning, of what can only be described as an icon of terror.Jacobson's mind-bending historical, moral, and philosophical journey into the recent past and his own soul begins in Hurricane Katrinaravaged New Orleans. It is only months after the storm, with America's most romantic city still in tatters, when Skip Henderson, an old friend of Jacobson's, purchases an item at a rummage sale: a very strange looking and oddly textured lampshade. When he asks what it's made of, the seller, a man covered with jailhouse tattoos, replies, "That's made from the skin of Jews." The price: $35. A few days later, Henderson sends the lampshade to Jacobson, saying, "You're the journalist, you find out what it is." The lampshade couldn't possibly be real, could it? But it is. DNA analysis proves it.This revelation sends Jacobson halfway around the world, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where the lampshades were supposedly made on the order of the infamous "Bitch of Buchenwald," Ilse Koch. From the time he grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, Jacobson has heard stories about the human skin lampshade and knew it to be the ultimate symbol of Nazi cruelty. Now he has one of these things in his house with a DNA report to prove it, and almost everything he finds out about it is contradictory, mysterious, shot through with legend and specious information.Through interviews with forensic experts, famous Holocaust scholars (and deniers), Buchenwald survivors and liberators, and New Orleans thieves and cops, Jacobson gradually comes to see the lampshade as a ghostly illuminator of his own existential status as a Jew, and to understand exactly what that means in the context of human responsibility.One question looms as his search goes on: what to do with the lampshadethis unsettling thing that used to be someone? It is a difficult dilemma to be sure, but far from the last one, since once a lampshade of human skin enters your life, it is very, very hard to forget., Renowned writer Jacobson's chronicles his historical and philosophical journey that begins when he finds a lampshade made of human skin in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina., The journey that takes Mark Jacobson to Weimar, Buchenwald, Yad Vashem, the Museum of natural history, and DNA labs began in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1991, when he met Skip Henderson. About six months after Hurricane Katrina drowned the city, Henderson was at a rummage sale lookihg for a drum for Mardi Gras, when Dave, the guy selling the stuff on the sidewalk, said , 'Check out the lamp', and told Skip with certainty that it was made from the skins of Jews. Skip didn't believe anything Dave said, but he bought the lampshade for $35. But his wife wouldn't let him bring it in the house with Dave's story attached to it, true or not. It sat in the attic until he shipped it to a drum maker to look at-who'd never seen anything like it-and then Skip sent it to Mark - 'You're a journalist, you figure out what it is'. The Lampshade is Mark's singular investigation not only into the truth of the thing itself, but of the idea of it, our understanding and reliance on history, on myths and reality, facts and evidence, on artifacts from the past, on evil.