Lampshades & Pocket Knife Pouch From Human Skin (AAFS 2025) 🔬 скачать в хорошем качестве

Lampshades & Pocket Knife Pouch From Human Skin (AAFS 2025) 🔬

Speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), Baltimore, Feb 2025 The Lampshades and Pocket Knife Pouch From the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Are Made From Human Skin (The Shrunken Head is Not) Mark Benecke, PhD; Antoaneta Trommer, MSc; Sandra Stenzel, PhD; Kristina Baumjohann, MSc; Holm Kirsten, MSc A shrunken head, a heart (in liquid), a pocketknife soft pouch, and two lampshades — one fully intact, one originally given as a sample to British forces — were long thought not to be of human origin. After study of the original files relating to the production as gifts and the general use of such materials in the Buchenwald concentration camp, we decided to perform a final and conclusive check on the items using microscopy, DNA, and historical as well as criminalistic approaches. The samples are not on display any more at the memorial site due to their grim history, their political nature, and the formerly established idea of possible forgery. Another lampshade found in the United Stats coming from unclear sources had received wide public interest but was found to be made of non-human (cattle) skin. All of our samples came from the collection of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial site’s archive, including a recent acquisition from England. Stain-wise, we performed a step-by-step approach to conserve as much material as possible. We used samples as small as possible and performed each analysis only after the previous one was fully done. This caused long delays that we decided to be preferable over a loss of stain evidence or a diagnostically less-conclusive statement. We double-checked results in different laboratories wherever possible, including laboratories in other countries, and also including checks of negative results. All laboratories involved, except the presenting author’s laboratory, did not know which samples and which case they handled to avoid possible bias. The hair of the shrunken head was microscopically not excluded as being made of horsehair; DNA revealed that it was made of goat skin and goat hair. Some anatomical features do not match those from shrunken human heads that we usually encounter, so we reported the shrunken head skin and hair as not being of human origin. The pieces that we cut out of two lampshades as well as the pocketknife soft pouch not only microscopically resemble the structure of human skin made into leather-like materials but also contained human DNA. Genetic fingerprinting was done with COI barcoding primers. DNA quantity was low; therefore, we applied nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) sequencing and Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) revealed a 99% match to Homo sapiens. Initially, the heart could not be identified using DNA approaches since no DNA could be extracted. Several specialized forensic and industrial testing laboratories were involved in extraction but to no avail. A clear anatomical distinction from a pig heart was not possible. By using old photographic evidence and visible features of the heart that we compared to the photographs, we found that the heart is most likely human. Mark Benecke, PhD, International Forensic Research & Consulting, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany; Antoaneta Trommer, MSc, FILK Freiberg Institute gGmbH, Freiberg, Sachsen, Germany; Sandra Stenzel, PhD, FILK Freiberg Institute gGmbH, Freiberg, Sachsen, Germany; Kristina Baumjohann, MSc, International Forensic Research & Consulting, Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany; Holm Kirsten, MSc, Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial, Weimar, Thüringen, Germany My AAFS 2025 Youtube Channel →    • 🇺🇸 AAFS 2025   My Baltimore Yotube Channel →    • ⛴️ Baltimore, Maryland   ‪@StiftungGedenkstätten‬