Abraham Botines is selling a bar of soap that he claims may have been made from the fat of people who were murdered in the Holocaust. According to CBC News, the soap, "inscribed with a swastika and displayed in a glass case with a card that says 'Poland 1940,'" was displayed in the window of Botines's curiosity shop in Montreal, Canada. A controversy erupted and Botines has since removed the item from the shelf, making it available only to potentially serious buyers. From CBC News:
On Friday, Abraham Botines, a Spanish-born Jew who has operated the quirky boutique since 1967, admitted he has no idea whether the soap is really made of human remains.
"I'm 73 and I was collecting things from the Holocaust and from World War II because I belong to that period," Botines told The Canadian Press in an interview Friday in the cluttered shop…
Most Holocaust experts say the stories that have circulated over the years about Nazis mass-producing soap from the remains of Jews and others who died in concentration camps are largely untrue although there is evidence the Nazis experimented with soap-making using human remains…
Fake or real, the soap is outrageous, and "this individual, and others like him, are not preserving history in any way," said Alice Herscovitch, director of Montreal's Holocaust Centre. "The sale of objects which glorify Nazism and hatred, to me, do nothing. They certainly don't help us remember."
The idea is also disgusting, she said.
"These are items that should not be out there in a promotional, sales kind of way."
"Shop owner defends sale of 'Holocaust' soap"
