Black begins: "Newly-released documents expose more explicitly the details of IBM's pivotal role in the Holocaust - all six phases: identification, expulsion from society, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination."
Auschwitz survivor Leon Greenman displays his number tattoo. (photo: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
IBM at Auschwitz, New Documents
28 February 12
ewly-released documents expose more explicitly the details of IBM's pivotal role in the Holocaust - all six phases: identification, expulsion from society, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination. Moreover, the documents portray with crystal clarity the personal involvement and micro-management of IBM president Thomas J. Watson in the company's co-planning and co-organizing of Hitler's campaign to destroy the Jews.
IBM's twelve-year alliance with the Third Reich was first revealed in my book IBM and the Holocaust, published simultaneously in 40 countries in February 2001. It was based on some 20,000 documents drawn from archives in seven countries. IBM never denied any of the information in the book; and despite thousands of media and communal requests, as well as published articles, the company has remained silent.
The new "expanded edition" contains 32 pages of never-before-published internal IBM correspondence, State Department and Justice Department memos, and concentration camp documents that graphically chronicle IBM's actions and what they knew during the 12-year Hitler regime. On the anniversary of the release of the original book, the new edition was released on February 26, 2012 at a special live global streaming event at Yeshiva University's Furst Hall, sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists together with a coalition of other groups.
Among the newly-released documents and archival materials are secret 1941 correspondence setting up the Dutch subsidiary of IBM to work in tandem with the Nazis, company President Thomas Watson's personal approval for the 1939 release of special IBM alphabetizing machines to help organize the rape of Poland and the deportation of Polish Jews, as well as the IBM Concentration Camp Codes including IBM's code for death by Gas Chamber. Among the newly published photos of the punch cards is the one developed for the statistician who reported directly to Himmler and Eichmann.
The significance of the incriminating documents requires context.
Punch cards, also called Hollerith cards after IBM founder Herman Hollerith, were the forerunner of the computers that IBM is famous for today. These cards stored information in holes punched in the rows and columns, which were then "read" by a tabulating machine. The system worked like a player piano - but this one was devoted to the devil's music. First designed to track people and organize a census, the Hollerith system was later adapted to any tabulation or information task.
From the first moments of the Hitler regime in 1933, IBM used its exclusive punch card technology and its global monopoly on information technology to organize, systematize, and accelerate Hitler's anti-Jewish program, step by step facilitating the tightening noose. The punch cards, machinery, training, servicing, and special project work, such as population census and identification, was managed directly by IBM headquarters in New York, and later through its subsidiaries in Germany, known as Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG), Poland, Holland, France, Switzerland, and other European countries.
Among the punch cards published are two for the SS, including one for the SS Rassenamt, or Race Office, which specialized in racial selections and coordinated with many other Reich offices. A third card was custom-crafted by IBM for Richard Korherr, a top Nazi statistician and expert in Jewish demographics who reported directly to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and who also worked with Adolf Eichmann. Himmler and Eichmann were architects of the extermination phase of the Holocaust. All three punch cards bear the proud indicia of IBM's German subsidiary, DEHOMAG. They illustrate the nature of the end users who relied upon IBM's information technology.
In 1937, with war looming and the world shocked at the increasingly merciless Nazi persecution of the Jews, Hitler bestowed upon Watson a special award - created specifically for the occasion - to honor extraordinary service by a foreigner to the Third Reich. The medal, the Order of the German Eagle with Star, bedecked with swastikas, was to be worn on a sash over the heart. Watson returned the medal years later in June 1940 as a reaction to public outrage about the medal during the bombing of Paris. The return of this medal has been used by IBM apologists to show Watson had second thoughts about his alliance with the Reich. But a newly released copy of a subsequent letter dated June 10, 1941, drafted by IBM's New York office, confirms that IBM headquarters personally directed the activities of its Dutch subsidiary set up in 1940 to identify and liquidate the Jews of Holland. Hence, while IBM engaged in the public relations maneuver of returning the medal, the company was actually quietly expanding its role in Hitler's Holocaust. Similar subsidiaries, sometimes named as a variant of "Watson Business Machines," were set up in Poland, Vichy France, and elsewhere on the Continent in cadence with the Nazi takeover of Europe.
Particularly powerful are the newly-released copies of the IBM concentration camp codes. IBM maintained a customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in virtually every concentration camp to sort or process punch cards and track prisoners. The codes show IBM's numerical designation for various camps. Auschwitz was 001, Buchenwald was 002; Dachau was 003, and so on. Various prisoner types were reduced to IBM numbers, with 3 signifying homosexual, 9 for anti-social, and 12 for Gypsy. The IBM number 8 designated a Jew. Inmate death was also reduced to an IBM digit: 3 represented death by natural causes, 4 by execution, 5 by suicide, and code 6 designated "special treatment" in gas chambers. IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps.
Newly-released photographs show the Hollerith Bunker at Dachau. It housed at least two dozen machines, mainly controlled by the SS. The foreboding concrete Hollerith blockhouse, constructed of reinforced concrete and steel, was designed to withstand the most intense Allied aerial bombardment. Those familiar with Nazi bomb-proof shelters will recognize the advanced square-cornered pillbox design reserved for the Reich's most precious buildings and operations. IBM equipment was among the Reich's most important weapons, not only in its war against the Jews, but in its general military campaigns and control of railway traffic. Watson personally approved expenditures to add bomb shelters to DEHOMAG installations because the cost was born by the company. Such costs cut into IBM's profit margin. Watson's approval was required because he received a one-percent commission on all Nazi business profits.
Two telling U.S. government memos, now published, are remarkable for their telling irony. The first is a State Department memo, dated December 3, 1941, just four days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and as the Nazis were being openly accused of genocide in Europe. On that day in 1941, IBM's top attorney, Harrison Chauncey, visited the State Department to express qualms about the company's extensive involvement with Hitler. The State Department memo recorded that Chauncey feared "that his company may some day be blamed for cooperating with the Germans."
The second is a Justice Department memo generated during a federal investigation of IBM for trading with the enemy. Economic Warfare Section chief investigator Howard J. Carter prepared the memo for his supervisors describing the company's collusion with the Hitler regime. Carter wrote: "What Hitler has done to us through his economic warfare, one of our own American corporations has also done ... Hence IBM is in a class with the Nazis." He ended his memo: "The entire world citizenry is hampered by an international monster."
At a time when the Watson name and the IBM image is being laundered by whiz computers that can answer questions on TV game shows, it is important to remember that Thomas Watson and his corporate behemoth were guilty of genocide. The Treaty on Genocide, Article 2, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." In Article 3, the treaty states that among the "acts [that] shall be punishable," are the ones in subsection (e), that is "complicity in genocide." As for who shall be punished, the Treaty specifies the perpetrators in Article 4: "Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals."
International Business Machines, and its president Thomas J. Watson, committed genocide by any standard. It was never about the antisemitism. It was never about the National Socialism. It was always about the money. Business was their middle name.
Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust, The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, newly released in the Expanded Edition.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
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Perhaps Black could unearth documents showing the connection of U.S. companies to Israel’s genocide of Palestine. I doubt it.
And he might even operate a bulldozer (although i think the Israeli crime against the Palestinians is not to be compared with the Nazi's, at least, not unless they start systematic gassing or something).
But this IBM thing, if true, is just awful.
Mussolini, Hitler and Franco defined the ideology of Fascism, not to numbers killed, but their ideological dogma of promoting corporate , class power trough the totalitarian class state. A marriage of the class state to corporate tyranny....whic h explains the fascist role of corporations to class tyrants.
Today the same fascist austerity, enslavement of social masses is used to justify AMERIKA'S/ISRAE L'S/NATO fascism, as a global fascist matrix....WHERE FASCIST CAPITALISM is called "Freedom", in the same way German fascist called the enslaved labor, JEWISH/SOCIALIS T PRISON LABOR, in concentration camps....FREEDO M....their fascist capitalist sogan "ARBEIT MACHT FREI".....
WORK(SLAVERY) through fascist corporations is FREE ENTERPRISE, FREEDOM.
But i do think that a quantitative difference can become so great that it is qualitative, and the Nazis went off the scale, and that it is wrong to try to compare (and thus cheapen) this ultimate evil with something very offensive and even fatal for many, but not at .01% of the scale.
(That, btw, is one additional reason why we and the Israelis should very careful of what we do. Besides all moral questions, we are inviting all kinds of future problems for ourselves, for we are both minorities.)
(Unrelated to this, but re the comment below questioning the use of gas --- i don't think there's any doubt about the use of gas, and there's a very sad story about its development---l ook up Clara Immerwahr [actual name] and Fritz Haber.)
BTW, no proof exists to confirm the
rumour that the Nazis used gas chambers. You're just repeating popular myth.
Quoting cadan:
Whether or not more people were killed in gas chambers or shot or starved or whatever does not change the slaughter that was the holocaust. Further it wasn't just the Jews -- they liquidated gypsies, gay men, and captured Russian soldiers as well.
Holocaust denial never made any sense to me, but then, I knew, before his death, one of the American soldiers who liberated Dachau. He was the unit cameraman. He still had pictures. I've seen original pictures therefore of the stacked bodies of prisoners that they hadn't managed to get into the crematories before the camp was overrun. Revisionism has no hold for me.
Regards,
Reyn
Children growing in post world war II in Central Europe were shown in schools many documentaries from Auschwitz, Terezin and other Nazi camps. Anyone, who once saw these movies, will never forget them. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of American forces in Europe 1943-1945 who insisted to document all findings in Nazi's camps "Because the day may come that somebody will deny that this even happened". In the twenty first century it was president Ahmadinijad
who denied the existence of Holocaust and he is as much right as is Mr Netanyahu stating that Iran is an imminent threat to Israel.
The movies you mention are the greatest source of gas-chamber propaganda. If they existed, then prove it. Nothing in your post remotely refers to gas chambers. Nobody doubts the existence of concentration camps, but the "gassing' was asserted after the fact.
BTW, Ahmadinejad is correct to deny the official dogmatized version of the Holocaust, whereas Netanyahu is wrong about Iran.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines
... people who lived in the southern coast of Canaan at the beginning of the Iron Age (circa 1175 BC). ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
...The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the region synonymous with that defined in modern times was in 5th century BC Ancient Greece.[not in citation given] Herodotus wrote of a 'district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories,...
Here's the first pictorial illustration of elimination camps I Googled:
http://www.shamash.org/holocaust/photos/
By the way, what's with the affected British spelling "rumour"- or are you an Englishman?
(I was there & saw a concentration camp with my own eyes)
You should know that "concentration camp" and "death camp" are not the same. Can't trust your eyes, it seems.
There's nothing "affected" about my writing.
I don't rewrite history; I uncover the real history that has been buried.
You can Google unlimited information on this subject should you wish to know the history.
The documentation is likely pure hasbara. Also, you're doubtless right about all the negative votes.
I do know personally that a number of my relatives disappeared then -- one cousin I talked to 'passed' as non-Jewish, but lost her immediate relatives. The holocaust, against both Jews and non-Jews was well established as I was growing up in the 50s.
As for hasbara, there is plenty of it now, but back in the 40s there was no such program, and the records and testimonies I saw dates from then. There is also a great deal of propaganda -- "hasbara" from holocaust deniers.
At this point hasbara takes two forms. One is centering on the atrocities of the Nazis as strictly anti-Jewish, and although it was largly against them many other died also: gays, socialist, Gypsies -- anyone who did not meet the Nazi master race' criteria -- or just policial opponents. And the 'victim' card has been played up for political advantage to an extreme degree. The zionists are now the greatest force feeding anti-semitism, which is tragic.
The other aspect of hasbara is the organized demonization and censorship of anyone criticizing Israel or zionists.
Is it because I said I think the chambers were well documented? I doubt it.
Or because I said that Israel has a propaganda machine? That seems likely -- but it well known they do, even from Israeli documents.In fact Jpost has a story about the Megaphone software.
Zionists hate the Uruknet news sites which reports news about Palestine and has made concerted efforts to shut it down. I was suddenly banned from two popular 'liberal' news sites right after I posted a link to Uruknet, with a message that they had gotten many complaints about me (even though posts were generally well recieved by the readers, according to their 'votes'). So I had to wonder, who was it that suddenly made all those complaints?
Not to mention the academic and media censorship! Or the need for political candidates to be vetted by AIPAC or JINSA. People learn about these things, and the zionists end up finding they have shot themselves in their feet by such deception
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=42902
That said, I've also watched (in person) Israel bulldozing Palestinian homes and attacking Palestinians. Nazi Germany & SOME (not all) Israelis believe in the same hate-based fascist genocide but only qualitatively. Quantitatively what's happening in Israel/Palestin e differs greatly in scope from the Nazi Holocaust in that the Israelis are NOT (so far I know) pursuing a systemic final solution. That's not to excuse Israel's so-called "refugee" camps, but I do NOT know of any Palestinian "refugee" camps in which Israel is running gas chambers and cremation ovens. They aren't.
The US (especially business) has dirty hands from its involvement with both the Nazis & Israel.
Hate is the enemy, but Hate's closest collaborator is Ignorance (willful stupidity).
There is no systematic murdering of Palestinians by Israelis. On the contrary, it is there Arab brethren who keep them in (refugee) camps and do not allow them integrate in the countries where they live.
"The 'final solution' of the Jewish question meant the complete extermination of all Jews in Europe. I was ordered to establish extermination facilities at Auschwitz in June 1941. At that time, there were already in the General Government three other extermination camps: Belzek, Treblinka, and Wolzek. These camps were under the Einsatzkommando of the Security Police and SD. I visited Treblinka to find out how they carried out their exterminations. The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of one-half year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. He used monoxide gas, and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz, I used Cyklon B, which was a crystallized prussic acid which we dropped into the death chamber from a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses."
l) Your ignorance regarding American history & denial of the "Holocaust".
2) Your lack of empathy for the way in which millions of Jews suffered during Hitler's attempt to exterminate them by torture, burning in ovens, malnutrition, unruly medical experimentation , forced labor, witnessing family/friends shot, & beaten, & suffering other atrocities.
The Jews were innocent people who had their careers ruined, homes & property stolen from, lives & families torn apart in an unprecedented & inhumane manner.
What defines us as human beings & makes us different from beasts & psychopathic
personalities is empathy & a conscience. Humans beings are interconnected by a common humanity, and we have a soul.
A "good soul" connects with others by
feelings of compassion & good deeds elicited by empathy & a kind heart.
A "shrinking" soul is alienated from the suffering of others demonstrated by a "Holocaust Denier", RLF's cynical remark to "piss off", & your shameless, discourse on the "Holocaust", Secret Squirrel.
but those who commit these horrible crimes killing millions of people should not be forgotten, ibm included.
Noitall's point is well taken.
It won't be a fascinating pious in the sky display of supernatural power. Just a slow but inexorably complete collapse of the corrupt institutions that define human society.
Also known as the Lord of Hosts, this world redeemer will summon the Jews back to Israel and ... hmmmm. Looks like he has already done this.
It might be wise to abandon the side taking, and look to the future when we all work together as one human race. Anger and hostilities are always justified, always destructive. When everything collapses, we will be saying 'Why did we do that' and we will still have to build all over again--without hatred and greed.
are grossly misinformed.
Keep Fascism Alive. This was abetted by the Catholic Church & private individuals, thoroughly documented. May people toss the term around casually, but corporate fascism really is an imminent threat to our staggering democracy.
closing paragraphs I've ever read.
But the Godless anti-Christians don't want to hear this truth, particularly here, so they will falsely call me "anti-Semitic" and "red-zone" me an extremely low number "oblivion". Whatever, the truth is still the truth, and they can't destroy it no matter how hard they try to do so, praise and thanks be to God alone.
i watched the ibm computer that tied into the watson on jepeody that destroyed the two live champions and got a kick out of it, but also thought about the film terminator, where the robots took over the planet. but it all started with joseph heller's book, catch 22 which had the watsons of the world rolled up into one character, milo minderbender, a man who would do anything for money. too many of us are milos and this is the reason our race will not survive more than another fifty years or so. greed is not good.
"Greed, Death is all they know, may
they have this fall on them,"
Greed, hatred, sadism & seeking revenge is what is keeping human beings from evolving collectively to a higher level of humanity that seeks peace rather than war.
We know inherently that settling conflict by torturing & killing others is wrong.
Seeking revenge on others, especially by sadistic means which we find unaccepable in "Nazi Corporations" & other enemies feeds into this mindset perpetuating war as the only means we know to live in the world today.
Surely, we can do better than this.
Like so many activist Jews, back then David Horowitz was opposed to the Western Fascism and wrote articles for Ramparts. He understood the obvious connection between CORPORATE CLASS TYRANNY and STATE TOTALITARINISM/FASCISM.
However, this obvious link was not encouraged in the Universities, like Ohio State, because it went against the IDEOLOGICAL MYTH, that Fascism and Captalism were not intimately linked. Professor Klein, himself a teacher of Western History and Jewish Holocaust studies was forced to tread lightly on
this issue between THE EARLY WESTERN EMBRACE OF FRANCO AND HITLER against social forces opposed to FASCISM.
In fact, Western class states and their corporations only fought Fascism on military grounds, and not on IDEOLOGICAL grounds, re establishing conservative, reactionary class parties that would degenerated into FASCIST ZIONISM, FASCIST NATO, FASCIST U.S. class states, as the new AXIS OF WESTERN FASCISTS.
I mention this because while I probably got my most negative votes from Liberals, I also got mostly positive feedback on the growing TOTATIARIAN FASCIST STATE, which in the hands of liberals, like the Weimar Republic, has ended in a POLICE STATE AND FASCIST LAWS.
There is a need for liberals to understand that the social principle established by the Enlightenment and revolutionary liberals, is not the same ideology of class compromising liberals, where all class ideologies DEGENERATE THROUGH CLASS COMPROMISES, TOTALITARIAN EMBRACE OF EMPIRE into, first, fascist appeasers, finally crossing the Rubicon, into FASCISTS themselves.
Class ideologies in class deformed historical cycles can only end in class tyranny, class tyrants and class Empires, making relative class labels, useless when they all haved arrived at the door of Fascist totaltiarianism:
President Obama and His Key Advisors are a Gang of War Criminals
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1081
excerpt:
In international relations and international law, the same applies. Under the Nuremberg Principles, later incorporated into the United Nations Charter, to which the United States is a signatory...
Liberals like Beethoven and Hegel would watch this degenerating class cycle on the Enlightenment and civil society, just as the ancient Greeks did, millenniums ago, and condemned the cowardice, class compromising by Liberal class politicians, who all morphed into class tyrants and later into Fascism and police states. Beethoven, initially, dedicated his musical piece and support for the French revolution, but renamed it "Eroica", when Napoleon betrayed social patriotism for class-nationali sm and colonialism and called himself an Emperor. Beethoven tore out the dedication page and declared:
" So he is no more than a common mortal. Now too, he will tread underfoot all the rights of man, indulge only in ambitions, now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant."
The creation of class-patriotis m, class nationalism is the basis on which all class tyrants are constructed, including Late Capitalism.
Also Prescott Bush who did business directly with companies like Krupps and Hitler's war-machine.
And you might wonder how the US military Death-culture and worship-of-anyt hing-in-uniform keeps alive and well lo all these years later.
More evidence is being unearthed all the time about US -Nazi direct links and those who would have the sorry spectacle repeat itself here -and are pushing us all closer weekly. -But how would they treat the Jews now, so powerful is that lobby and so similar is LIKUD's revenge and war apparatus to those who did unto them what they'd like to do to Iran and are trying to do to Palestine? -There's the rub!
Also, one or two on the American Eugenics Society board were invited to Germany to instruct Himmler on the sterilzation part of the Holocaust. The American Eugenics Society was promoting sterilization of Negroes when the slaves were freed b/c the wealthy elite didn't want their taxes to go up care for these uneducated souls. The story of this horror can be watched in the documentarly Maafa 21: Black Genocide in the 21st Century. And many black American politicans sold out to the agenda. You must get this DVD to grasp the full, horrific picture.
And, in the book, Holocaust by Bullets, there's a chapter on understanding the truth. It speaks about how crimes such as the Holocaust and other mass genocides are perpetrated right in front of the masses who chose to live in denial. It's a philosophy that all gov't use. And, you can fast forward this to what is happening in America today regarding the crimes of the U.S. gov't against the 99 percent.
btw, American knew what was going on in Germany but stayed out for quite some time.
Charles Lindberg, the hero of american aviation, was also Hitler's greatest cheerleader in the US.
In the 30s very many Ameicans loved hitler and Nazism.
you & bespoken by your anti-Israeli comments.
When on a business trip to Europe, my friend called her cousin in Poland, and arranged to meet him at the concentration camp where his mother had died during WW2.
The cousins met, and my friend began taking photos, the first with her cousin standing beneath the concentration camp's overhead sign. Other photos followed, with her male cousin standing inside the camp at various places.
Once back in the States, my friend had the photos developed, and was shocked to see the photos showed a woman standing beside her male cousin, when my friend no such person had been anywhere nearby when the photos were taken.
Calling her cousin in Poland, my friend, upon being asked, described the woman who so curiously and unexplicably, had appeared in the photos. Dead silence. Then her cousin tearfully said he believed the woman was his mother, the same woman who had been put to death at the camp dozens of years earlier. After receiving and viewing the photos, he called my friend and verified that indeed, it was his dear departed mother.
So, evil greed and power addicted 1%ers, including IBMers, today's slayers in Gaza, in oh so profitable for the l% wars, etc. - hell looms!
But even as a (notably skeptical) newspaper reporter, I've heard all sorts of credible ghost stories from cops, fire fighters, paramedics, park rangers and even a few military people, and as a photographer (who like most older photogs spent a lot of time in the darkroom), I am uncomfortably aware of the eerie and inexplicable capabilities occasionally evidenced by emulsion, particularly of black-and-white film.
That said, I remain an agnostic, convinced we will eventually discover – probably in the unknown dimensions of the human mind – a rational explanation for so-called “paranormal” phenomena.
Nevertheless great trauma – especially trauma of the concentration-c amp or battlefield intensity – must surely leave traces on its surroundings. Hence the many accounts of hauntings in such places, including for example the Pennsylvania meadow in which Flight 93 crashed.
As my Wiccan kinfolk might say, may the cousin's mother find karmic peace. And may her killers suffer unspeakable misery through all their remaining lifetimes: so mote it be.
Do you really believe that it will help the Mother, her family or any human being if "her killers suffer unspeakable misery through all their remaining life-times?" The woman died a tragic, unjust death which cannot be made less tragic or unjust by misery inflicted on her killers. The suffering of Jews tortured by Nazis cannot be lessened by torturing the torturers.
We have a judicial system with legal procedures, criminal & civil laws, punishments, & relativistic justice.
There is a universal system of justice operating beyond our earthly existence in ways & in a time span beyond our full comprehension, but it exists endlessly.
The only way to end the rampant hatred, cruety, greed, envy & conflict leading to war is to stop pointing our fingers at others, & hoping they'll suffer as much misery as they caused others.
Instead, we need to start looking inside ourselves. At our thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, actions. At the words we use to describe & condemn others. If we are ever to to be part of a collective consciousness that promotes peace rather than war, we need to evolve individually before we can evolve to a higher level as a community & nation.
No one was above this tyranny. Sad so many died for such Criminal nations
1. Anti-semitism was not just a Nazi confine. The Catholic Church as a group (not referring to some courageous acts by individual office bearers) with particular note to the Pope, was extremely well placed to make efforts to save lives,or to make efforts to make public statements? Why did it not? Because it was policy to condemn them.
What about the active conduct of Petaine and the French Vichy regime? By all reports they were more vigilante in round ups than the brown shirts.
One can safely say that almost every major german company had some role, active or passive. When does this stop.
We all condemn the vile conduct. Lets not forget that there many others besides the Jews that were subject to evil, both by the Nazis and by others over the millenium. Be it the moors in Spain, the 30 million in Soviet Russia, Rwanda, Victims of imperalism and colonialism.
And of course the most blatant and ongoing genocidal conduct, done with acquescience, and complicity of the majority of the world.......
There is a time to move on... do we allow the Israelis to get away with genocide because they were victims once??
You point out correctly though, that genocide was not confined to Nazi Germany (ask any American Indian) but for the purposes of this debate, the article is about the collaboration of those in power representing an allegedly Democratic regime with those who came closer to any nation to carrying forward to it's ultimate conclusion, a "Final Solution".
Glad you mentioned the current LIKUD and MOSSAD criminals in Israel and here though, as did I.
Ditto for the Chinese. 10's of millions perished under Mao, too. Both Stalin and Mao get a pass, but that is also in large part to both countries being mostly closed to the West, where the camps in Poland and Germany were very well documented immediately after the war.
The psychopaths and sociopathic mass-serial-mur derers love and worship death; and, like their lord and master, Satan, they want most of humankind completely exterminated from the face of the earth via even more mass-genocide.
so you like others like to hear yourself bs about Catholics, leading me to see you are no better than those who condemn any Faith or Race. Most only condemn anything if it fits their needs to do so.
We have allowed Armies of all Nations to commit genocide/holoca usts everywhere...th e blood in on everyone one of us. Head in the Sand Humans...no one has the right to claim to be Victim, every Faith, Race has been victim...we have annihilated everything we touch Human, Animal, Land, Air, Water. It is all we know
The Catholic persecution gave australia the Stolen Generation, It gave death and misery to much of America, and grief in Ireland and England for many centuries. But hey lets not be harsh against catholics because thats not what you were taught!! Jesus h Christ.... You think they were telling the german kids at school that there were wiping out another race. You think the South African schools told people that they were murdering any one that was outspoken against the Regime (Biko anyone???)
Typical catholic. How about you use the computer in front of you to research these issues? You know I got told that there was a man born to a virgin.... Crikey that is awesome.... but only like woman I think the story is f..ked
One genocide or ethnic cleansing does not justify another, not does it justify campaigns of deceptive or slanted political propaganda.
They were every bit as cruel and sadistic as the Germans.
I was shocked, I had no idea that the French were such bastards. Of course I should not be shocked with all that is going on in the world, and here also.
IBM got away with their heinous acts then and plenty have followed in their path.
Does this sound familiar in current U.S. culture, where governments and corporations are hiding why and how people are being banned from air flights and spied upon as they object to atrocities in peaceful groups? From Occupy to Quakers, we are being spied upon and computerized and have been for decades.
There are reams (at least) of surviving documents from companies that created or maintained the machinery of the Holocaust. Notable is a body of correspondence between J.A. Topf and Sons and members of the Nazi hierarchy. Asked to produce crematoria for the concentration camps, Topf did not question the need for or purpose of the furnaces. They merely asked for specifications, offered several designs, and in at least one letter, a Topf employee wrote "we look forward to the pleasure of your custom". As Topf employees supervised at and assisted with the construction of the crematoria at Auschwitz and possibly other camps, it is impossible to conclude that they believed their customer would put their products to an innocent use.
Apple, Microsoft and a host of other companies are doing the same thing for our gov't right now so where's the uproar?
This was a silly story to publish, it's well documented but all those responsible are long dead or will quickly be. maybe we should continue to condemn the whole country of Germany for this as well.
1. I have visited these sites of evil. I visited Buchenwald, evil enough that at the end they sent people from Auschwitz there. I openly wept when I went to the Jewish section, but there was just as many of the gypsies, disabled, political dissidents that disappeared too.
My ax to grind is against genocide anywhere by anyone. It is my field of study and I have looked at it from the angle of my own country (Australia) and have looked at the effect on other British colonies (US, Canada, South Africa -- yes british before they handed it back to the Dutch, the Boer war remember). The difference between almost all of these and the Israel on is that the world powers (US and UN) are failing to act to condemn the actions of Israel.
Legally, Schindler was guilty as a nazi collaborator -- no one would deny that, not Spielberg, not Israel who accorded him a hero's burial. But here, the LAW is not the point of the story - although even the law allows for sentence modifications as a result of one's subsequent actions. Our subsequent actions don't excuse our wrongs, but they can redeem us as human beings.
Morally, the fact that Schindler experienced guilt and remorse for his actions, recognized these people were human beings, and then did SOMETHING--howe ver small--is what makes him heroic and gives us all hope that in such dark times, we too might find the courage to turn from evil and try to do good.
Like Greek heroes, we are all deeply flawed and imperfect, but the real hope of our existence is that we might learn from our errors and mistakes, act human, and do what is right.
Socrates and Plato believed that by using our reason, we might learn to recognize the falseness of our "lower, and outer existence" and, perhaps, come to know "the idea of the good", the highest possible human attainment.
"Schindlers List" is an outstanding example of the ability of a rational human being to change and ascend from a self-centered hedonist to an authentic hero. Schindler, who was seen as a chauvinist, sadistic cynic ascended from the cave and evolved to a level where he came to sanctify human beings. It was a brilliant movie; a classic demonstrating the indomitability of the human spirit & how a man came to find the goodness in his heart & the"courage to turn from evil and try to do good." I am a Platonic scholar and could not agree with you more about "using our reason..
"to recognize the falsness of our "lower and outer existence".."to know "the idea of the good", the highest possible human attainment." Do you teach philosophy?
You reduce a population from 60 Million to less than 4 million in North America alone, or in the case of Hawaii, 1 million to less than 100,000 or less depending on how you count, then its clear Hitler and Stalin are amateurs compared to the US, at least with non-white peoples, however those are defined. It doesn't really matter if you think God or White Jesus is on your side, (As with the US Cavalry in North America, or the US Navy in Hawaii) or its nothing personal, just business (As with IBM et al).
Hitler is alleged to have said that his inspiration for the Holocaust, was the American treatment of Natives. Tentatively accepting that at face value, then based on body count alone, he didn't even approach the scale of U.S. genocide even with the help of IBM, Ford, Chase, ITT-Siemens, Standard Oil, and a host of others.
Much of what we know has been fed to us as propaganda for two reasons: the victor writes history and the Nazi oppression of Jews was taken up by the Zionists as an excuse to establish a Jewish theocracy in Palestine. The world swallowed it out of guilt and the rest is history.
apart from the fact that religions don't have land rights and do not a race, people, or nation make, the Zionists in the beginning and still and Israelis and Jewish and Christian supporters still, hold to the Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis - marketed as The Holocaust - as the justification for the invasion, occupation and colonisation of Palestine. And so the holocaust propaganda not only needs to be maintained it needs to be intensified.
The irony of course is that it is Germany which should have been partitioned to create Israel - not Palestinians, the latter being complete innocents and the ultimate victims in this cause.
To a large degree however, gas chambers or not, 6 million Jews or 1 million Jews, is irrelevant. The Holocaust Industry has been so milked that it no longer carries weight in the world at large and the Israelis have made two states impossible so it will be one secular state, with a Palestinian majority, called you can bet, Palestine.
To oppose either the existence of an Istraeli state, or it's actions, does not mean one has to deny the genocide or the existence of anti-semitism. Listen to Norman Finklestein, who lost realtives, and yet is a fierce anti-zionist.
We know that Ford produced tanks for the Nazis, and in fact sued the gov of America after WWII for bombing one of their German factories!
Most people however, don't know the extent the pestiside & GM producing Bayer & BASF enabled the holocaust.
They were part of chemical conglomerate Faben IG that gave massive campaign contributions to bring Hitler to power.
They practically ran Auschwitz, in return for massive profits. They supplied Zyklon B, the gas used in the extermination chambers. The slave labour camp at Auschwitz provided labour. They were paid to select prisoners for Mengali's experiments.
Full info here: http://www.gmwatch.eu/latest-listing/1-news-items/13646-bayer-and-the-holocaust
Importantly, the Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg, Telford Taylor, said "These companies, not the lunatic Nazi fanatics, are the main war criminals. If the guilt of these criminals is not brought to light and they are not punished they will pose a far greater threat to world peace than Hitler would if he was still alive."
50 years after the fact, as corporations ruthlessly destroy our planet & cultures for profit, it seems he hit the nail on the head.
and the money that he made
as ibm paved the way
to genocide.... for cash
international bureau of murder
The Hollerith machine was used by many other countries pre-WW2 as a means to tabulate census information. IBM did not knowingly do business with the intent of participating in genocide. Blaming IBM for the holocaust is akin to blaming United Airlines for the Sept 11th attacks. Your book is about sensationalizin g a very small role in IBM’s history in Germany.
On a personal note. My Grandfather, a lifelong IBM executive was also a Special Officer during the invasion of Europe and tasked with retrieving Hollerith Punch Cards to be used in the prosecution of Nazis and to aid in the liberation of prisoners as the allied forces moved towards Berlin. An angle you’ve clearly lacked to research as there were many soldiers assigned with this task.
Your article is written as if IBM knowingly participated in genocide and reveals your lack of perspective on these historical events and shows little journalistic integrity in an attempt to create conspiracy theories where there were none. A one-sided piece of biased dribble and overall disrespectful to all the people who lost their lives in that war.
A social mainifesto and historical theory
http://asocialmanifestoagainstclasshistory.com
Therefore, by insisting the word "Holocaust" be used, the Vatican has hidden its complete complicity in such absolute evil and mass murder in the plain sight of the entire planet, with no one questioning its motive for such a word.
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