Blog : Ragazou

By JANICE ARNOLD, Staff Reporter (CJN)

 

MONTREAL ?   Montreal police are investigating a complaint that a Jewish dealer in Nazi memorabilia offered a bar of soap for sale suggesting that it was made of human remains.

 

The existence of the soap on display at La Boutique du collectioneur Botines on St. Laurent Boulevard came to light March 26 in a CBC radio report. CJAD radio reported the following day that the shop's owner, who is Jewish, had sold the soap for $150.

 

The complaint was filed by B'nai Brith Canada under a Criminal Code section forbidding the desecration of human remains. While there have been persistent rumours since World War II that the Nazis made soap from the fat of Jews who died in the concentration camps, Israel's Holocaust authority Yad Vashem has denied it.

 

After the news broke, the shop's owner, whose name is Abraham Botines, said he never claimed that the soap, in fact, contained any human remains.

 

He said he bought the bar of soap from a retired Canadian soldier who told him he found it in a concentration camp. He also claimed he tried to sell the item to a Holocaust museum, which refused the offer.

 

He said that the existence of such items, authentic or not, is part of the historical record of Nazi atrocities and he will continue dealing in memorabilia of that era until he's told it's illegal to do so.

 

B'nai Brith regional director Heidi Oppen visited the shop on March 26, posing as a customer. The bar, which was in a glass case, was wrapped in a cover that had a small swastika and German writing, which she did not understand. The CBC said a card in the case read ?Poland 1940.?

 

Botines refused to speak to her, but another person working there, who identified himself as Jewish, did speak to her. He didn't tell her explicitly that it was human soap, and defended offering it for sale as a means of preserving history.

The store has been in business for more than 40 years.

 

Oppen also noticed pack of cigarettes with swastikas. She said she was most disturbed to see the soap near mezzuzot and other Jewish religious items.

 

B'nai Brith is leaving it to the police to determine if there is a criminal case ? if not desecration of a body, then possibly fraud.

 

In any event, Oppen said trying to profit from goods that are even suggestive of the suffering of Holocaust victims is highly offensive.

 

The sale of items bearing swastikas is not illegal in Canada.

 

Eiran Harris, archivist emeritus of Montreal's Jewish Public Library, said claims that soap made from human fat by the Nazis have been rampant for decades. He said the archives holds several such bars, all fakes.

 

The rumour that the Nazis made such soap was started in 1943 by the Soviet Union's NKVD, forerunner of the KGB secret police, as a propaganda tool against the Nazis, Harris added.