Many people believe that this use of felt and fat recalled a plane crash experienced while flying for the "Luftwaffe" in the Crimea in the winter of 1942-43. Beuys claimed that he had been saved by a nomadic tribe of Tartars who, sympathetic to the Germans after persecution by the Soviets, ‘covered my body in fat to help it regenerate warmth, and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep warmth in’. In fact this episode was fabricated, partly on the basis of a dream, but he consistently referred to this episode and it can be seen as a private mythology of his.