Jack Werber who survived in Buchenwald for over 5 years, writes in his 1996 book that Ilsa Kock's human skin lampshade - was one of his friends
"One day, Ilse Koch passed by the building we were putting up and noticed a bare-chested man, a German prisoner named Hans, who was working with me on the scaffold. She became intrigued by his tattoos and wrote down his number. That evening, at the appel, his number was called and he was told to come to the gate. There, he was taken away and executed.
His skin was removed and brought to the tannery to be made into parchment for a lampshade. The Jehovah's Witnesses were the only ones who worked there and they refused to do this. So the Nazis hanged three of them, one after the other, to scare the others into obeying but it didn't help and they gave up in their efforts. Instead, the skin was taken to Weimar to be made up...
... As a bricklayer, I volunteered to go out and help repair the damage. I was motivated by curiosity about Ilse Koch's home. I wanted to see the lampshade that had been made from Hans' skin, the fellow who had worked with me on the scaffold. Well, I got to see it with my own eyes. It was all the more shocking to look at since
I had known the man it belonged to so well when he was alive.
Underneath the lampshade was a stand made from pieces of human bone and, as a decorative item, a shrunken human skull. The parchment-like material looked like a Torah scroll. You could see the tiny holes where the hair once was... To this day, whenever I think about it, I close my eyes and the lampshade with Hans' tattoos is right there. It is a horrific vision that has always remained with me."
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