The author writes about gray, rectangular, low-quality pieces of soap he and other POWs received with the letters "RIF" inscribed on a center depression. When one of the POWs complained about the low-foam, smooth soap, the lady of the household[who?] answered it was made of "Rein Judisches Fett" (pure Jewish fat), when asked "out of human fat?", she answered "No, just Jews". A version of the story is included in The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, one of the earliest collections of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust, assembled by Soviet writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman.