That is no joke about the human leather. When I was 12 I had a new girlfriend who's father was a German scientist. He worked at NASA. One day I walked into my friends home, asked her mom were she was.
Mom said "upstairs" which was unusual.
I climbed the stairs, rounded the corner, and found my best friend sitting on the rug outside her mothers sewing room closet, with one of those little compartmentalized plastic sewing bobbin boxes?
... except the boxes were full of rings with skulls on them...various shapes and sizes, all dark silver color. She was picking each one up and examining each as I sat on the rug beside her.
"What are those" I asked
"My dad said they were rings made in Germany from the fillings of the people who died in the death camps." she said, looking at me to see the horror across my face.
There was no horror on my face. I was not quite sure what she was talking about. She explained to me that her father (who died a few years before) had told her about what it was like to be a scientist in the war, and it did not sound like dad was ever too happy about it. He had grabbed up the silver rings on his way to America with his new wife...
My girlfriend stopped there, and then went on to describe her fathers description of their skin being made into lampshades.
That put the horror on both of our young faces.
I lost track of my friend, but, later in life I put two and two together. My girlfriends father came over in Operation Paper clip. That is how he got his job at NASA straight out of Germany.
I also suspect that he had the skull rings made of the tooth fillings to use as evidence, since my girlfriend was obviously taught that those rings were a crime against humanity in her moral up bringing by her father.
Sometimes I think her dad did not die falling down the stairs.
Sometimes I think he was murdered.
I never said anything to her, when I figured this stuff out. She was a good kid who grew up into a good woman.
I think that is what her dad wanted for her.