Operating from a small outhouse in the courtyard of the Medical Academy, Dr Rudolf Spanner perpetrated what is commonly regarded as one of the most heinous crimes of WWII. It was here that he produced soap using the fat of prisoners from the nearby Stutthof death camp. When Gdańsk was liberated in 1945 over 400 bodies were discovered in the buildings' basement, their use only too apparent. Spanner was not prosecuted, and though details of his life are foggy, he was apparently allowed to continue with a career in medicine in the following years. Today the set of buildings where he conducted his grisly research have been renovated, with a plaque outside reading:

'In this building, during World War II, the Nazis used the bodies of victims of genocide. People executed in the prisons of Konigsberg and Gdansk, the patients of the regional home for the mentally impaired in Kocborowo, and the inmates of the concentration camp in Stutthof as material to produce soap. People brought this fate upon people.'