Does the museum have remains from World War II concentration camps?
Yes. The museum holds five pieces of tattooed human skin that were obtained from the pathology laboratory at the Buchenwald concentration camp when it was liberated. The records concerning the specimens are thorough, and testing of three specimens confirms they are human, although we cannot say with certainty if they were obtained from prisoners or if they existed before the war. (Because of religious restrictions on tattooing, we believe it is unlikely that the specimens were taken from Jewish prisoners.) A memorandum of May 18, 1945 from the Office of the Chief Surgeon, U.S. Army, to the War Crimes Commission, expresses the interest of the Army Medical Museum/Army Institute of Pathology (today’s National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) to receive “dried human skin” from Buchenwald after it is no longer needed by the commission in the Nazi war crimes trials. Also in the museum’s collection is a wax-impregnated half-head preparation. The proven
