Rudolf Spanner (born 17 April 1895 in Metternich bei Koblenz; died 1960) was Director of the Danzig Anatomical Institute during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. On his own initiative, he set up a process to produce soap from human fat

Soap made from human corpses

In the 20th century, there have been various alleged instances of soap being made from human body fat. During World War II it was believed that soap was being mass produced from the bodies of Polish and Jewish concentration camp victims....

 in 1943-44 and a limited quantity of the soap was produced on his order to clean autopsy rooms.

In his book "Russia at War 1941 to 1945", Alexander Werth

Alexander Werth

Alexander Werth was a Russian-born, naturalized British writer, journalist, and war correspondent.-Biography:Werth's family fled to the United Kingdom in the wake of the Russian Revolution....

 reported that while visiting Gdansk

Gdansk

Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

 in 1945 shortly after its liberation by the Red Army, he saw an experimental factory outside the city for making soap from human corpses. According to Werth it had been run by "a German professor called Spanner" and "was a
nightmarish sight, with its vats full of human heads and torsoes pickled in some liquid,
and its pails full of a flakey substance - human soap".

During the Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....

, Sigmund Mazur, a laboratory assistant at the Danzig Anatomical Institute, testified that soap had been made from corpse fat, and claimed that 70 to 80 kg of fat collected from 40 bodies could produce more than 25 kg of soap, and that the finished soap was retained by Professor Rudolf Spanner. Eyewitnesses included British POWs who were part of the forced labor that constructed the camp, and Dr. Stanislaw Byczkowski, head of the Department of Toxicology at the Gdansk School of Medicine. Suggested sources for the fat include Stutthof concentration camp

Stutthof concentration camp

Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...

, Gdansk Municipal Jail, and a Gdansk psychiatric hospital.

Allegations of large scale human soap production is a myth with origins dating back to World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt

Thomas Blatt

Thomas "Toivi" Blatt was one of the few survivors who successfully escaped Sobibor extermination camp. While fleeing the SS he was betrayed by a farmer who was hiding him resulting in a gunshot injury to the jaw. The bullet remains there to this day...

, who investigated the subject, found little concrete documentation and no evidence of mass production of soap from human fat, but concluded that there was indeed evidence of experimental soap making.

In 1946, he returned to Cologne to work as a guest professor.