Torkild Thanem, professor of Management & Organization Studies at Stockholm University
Thanem writes in his 2011 book The Monstrous Organization
"Since the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, there have been discussions and investigations about the Nazi exploitation of human corpses and body parts for industrial purposes. Although some mainstream historians have come to doubt the reliability of the witness accounts giving rise to these discussions, Claude Lanzmann's documentary film Shoah (1985), the narrative accounts of Kurt Vonnegut (1968) and Martin Amis (1991) and Ben Hirsch's (2000) biographical account all maintain that the flesh and bones of dead human bodies murdered in the Nazi concentration camps first became ammonia, then soaps and candles, glues and explosives." (p.37)
As to Thanem's sources:
- Lanzmann's Shoah consists mostly of survivors telling their tales, there's probably no shortage of mentions of soap, one I know of is by Benjamin Murmelstein
- Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five) makes several mentions candles and soap made from enemies of the Reich, but adds: "So it goes."
- Time's Arrow by Amis (born 1949!) is a novel!
- Ben Hirsch famously insists that soap was made out of Jews at Auschwitz, because his convicted fraudster (posthumously pardoned) uncle claimed that's what he did there.
