IBM and the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
IBM and the Holocaust is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black
which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation
International Business Machines
(IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler
during the 1930s and the years of World War II
. In the book, Black outlines the way in which IBM's technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide
against the Jewish people
through generation and tabulation of punch card
s based upon national census
data.
(1860-1929), a young employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation. The millions of cards created for each individual counted in the national census could then be sorted and resorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained — thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation.
Hollerith built a prototype
of his counting machine in 1884 and later won a contest for the best automated counting device conducted by the Census Bureau in conjunction with its 1890 census. The Census Bureau saved $5 million through use of Hollerith counting machines — about one-third of its annual budget — and Hollerith and his patented
invention gained international renown and customers around the world.
By the turn of the 20th Century, Hollerith and his Tabulating Machine Company had achieved near-monopoly
status. A rival arose in the next decade, however, and the U.S. Census Bureau abandoned its use of the more costly and slower Hollerith machines for its 1910 census. A disconsolate Hollerith licensed out his patents abroad. In 1910, the German
licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), commonly known by the acronym "Dehomag
."
The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint
(1850-1934) for $1.41 million. The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate
called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).
To head this massive new enterprise, Flint chose Thomas J. Watson
(1874-1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation
. Watson was initially paid $25,000 per year — a substantial salary in the day — plus 1200 shares of stock and a commission of 5% of CTR's after-tax, after-dividends profits.
The German hyperinflation
of 1922-1923 made it impossible for Dehomag, the German licensee of CTR's technology, to make its scheduled royalty payments
to America, with its balance in arrears topping the $100,000 mark. Threatened with bankruptcy and complete loss of his investment, Dehomag chief Willy Heidinger agreed to transfer 90% of the stock in his company to Watson's CTR as a means of settling his debt. The German licensee Dehomag thus became a direct subsidiary
of the American corporation CTR.
In 1924, following the death or departure of several key figures in the company, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer
of CTR and renamed the now-focused company International Business Machines (IBM).
and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoner
s in the Bavaria
n town of Dachau
, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.
Despite the violent and repressive climate emerging in the new ultra-nationalist
Germany, business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott. Indeed, Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.
On April 12, 1933, the German government announced the plans to immediately conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic group
s deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to actively assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating first upon the 41 million residents of Prussia
.
This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 reichsmarks — about $1 million. This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin
and to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime."
Black also asserts that a "secret deal" was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories." As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black notes.
On September 13, 1935, Hitler demanded the immediate implementation of a "Law for the Protection of German Blood" which deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited them from having sexual relations with or from marrying Aryans. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.
Another German census was conducted on May 17, 1939, when 750,000 census takers conducted interviews with the country's 22 million households, and also millions of factories. The purpose of the census was to identify the number of Jews in Germany and its newly expanded territories and to precisely locate each individual so that the Jewish population could be effectively ghettoized
. Ancestral lines had to be documented by each head of household as part of the national census, which dwarfed in size and detail the 1933 Prussian census.
As the Nazi war machine spread occupied the nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of the subjugated nations, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Gypsies. For example, the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland was followed by an October 14 order of the Special Operations unit of the German Secret Police
for a full census of the Jewish population, information which supplemented published information from the 1931 general Polish census. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New York office following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg
invasion.
In the case of Poland, the ordered census took place over several days, from December 17 to December 23, 1939. The census was both meticulous and cold-blooded, as Black notes:
Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe, Black demonstrates. He also notes, in an understated aside, that fully half of IBM's German subsidiary's annual profit — RM 1.8 million — was suddenly generated in December 1939.
Each of the major concentration camps was assigned a Hollerith code number for paperwork purposes: Auschwitz
— 001; Buchenwald
— 002; Dachau — 003; Flossenbürg
— 004; Gross-Rosen
— 005; Herzogenbusch — 006; Mauthausen — 007; Natzweiler — 008; Neuengamme — 009; Ravensbrück
— 010; Sachsenhausen
— 011; and Stutthoff
— 012.
Upon arrival at the camps in 1943, incoming prisoners would be examined for fitness to work, physical information would be recorded on a medical record, names would be cross-checked with data from the Political Section to determine whether the prisoner was additionally wanted for political offenses.
In 2002, IBM disputed Edwin Black's claim that IBM is withholding materials regarding this era in its archives. Nevertheless, IBM subsequently turned over a substantial portion of its corporate records of the period to academic archives in New York and Stuttgart, for review by independent scholars.
Edwin Black in his article published in George Mason University
's History News Network
openly accused IBM advocates of systematic elimination of references to IBM's role in the Holocaust in the Wikipedia article History of IBM
.
, writing for The New York Times Book Review
, wrote that Black's case "is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that IBM bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done." IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 press release "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit".
Others have seen Black's work as a revelatory piece of historical scholarship. In 2003, the American Society of Journalists and Authors
acknowledged IBM and the Holocaust with its award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
In 2004, the human rights organization Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action
(GIRCA) filed suit against IBM in Switzerland
. However, the case was dismissed in 2006.
Edwin Black
Edwin Black is an American Jewish syndicated columnist, and journalist specializing in the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany, among other topics...
which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
International Business Machines
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
(IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
during the 1930s and the years of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. In the book, Black outlines the way in which IBM's technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
against the Jewish people
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
through generation and tabulation of punch card
Punch card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
s based upon national census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
data.
Thesis
Author Edwin Black describes the thesis of his book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation in the following way:
"[The book] tells the story of IBM's conscious involvement — directly and through its subsidiaries — in the Holocaust, as well as its involvement in the Nazi war machine that murdered millions of others throughout Europe.
"Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction.... Hitler and his hatred of the Jews was the ironic driving force behind this intellectual turning point. But his quest was greatly enhanced and energized by the ingenuity and craving for profit of a single American company and its legendary, autocratic chairman. That company was International Business machines, and its chairman was Thomas J. Watson."
Origins of IBM
Black begins his study with the origins of IBM. In the early 1880s, Herman HollerithHerman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith was an American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. He was the founder of one of the companies that later merged and became IBM.-Personal life:Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New...
(1860-1929), a young employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation. The millions of cards created for each individual counted in the national census could then be sorted and resorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained — thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation.
Hollerith built a prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
of his counting machine in 1884 and later won a contest for the best automated counting device conducted by the Census Bureau in conjunction with its 1890 census. The Census Bureau saved $5 million through use of Hollerith counting machines — about one-third of its annual budget — and Hollerith and his patented
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
invention gained international renown and customers around the world.
By the turn of the 20th Century, Hollerith and his Tabulating Machine Company had achieved near-monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
status. A rival arose in the next decade, however, and the U.S. Census Bureau abandoned its use of the more costly and slower Hollerith machines for its 1910 census. A disconsolate Hollerith licensed out his patents abroad. In 1910, the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), commonly known by the acronym "Dehomag
Dehomag
Dehomag was a German subsidiary of IBM with monopoly in the German market before and during World War II. The word was an acronym for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH . Hollerith refers to the German-American inventor of the technology of punched cards, Herman Hollerith.Under Nazi...
."
The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint
Charles Ranlett Flint
-Further reading:**...
(1850-1934) for $1.41 million. The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate
Conglomerate (company)
A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...
called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).
To head this massive new enterprise, Flint chose Thomas J. Watson
Thomas J. Watson
Thomas John Watson, Sr. was president of International Business Machines , who oversaw that company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956...
(1874-1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation
NCR Corporation
NCR Corporation is an American technology company specializing in kiosk products for the retail, financial, travel, healthcare, food service, entertainment, gaming and public sector industries. Its main products are self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, automated teller machines, check...
. Watson was initially paid $25,000 per year — a substantial salary in the day — plus 1200 shares of stock and a commission of 5% of CTR's after-tax, after-dividends profits.
The German hyperinflation
Hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or out of control. While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases...
of 1922-1923 made it impossible for Dehomag, the German licensee of CTR's technology, to make its scheduled royalty payments
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
to America, with its balance in arrears topping the $100,000 mark. Threatened with bankruptcy and complete loss of his investment, Dehomag chief Willy Heidinger agreed to transfer 90% of the stock in his company to Watson's CTR as a means of settling his debt. The German licensee Dehomag thus became a direct subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
of the American corporation CTR.
In 1924, following the death or departure of several key figures in the company, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of CTR and renamed the now-focused company International Business Machines (IBM).
IBM business relations with the Nazi regime
The bulk of Black's book details the ongoing business relationship between Watson's IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s in the Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n town of Dachau
Dachau
Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 km north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 40,000 inhabitants...
, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.
Despite the violent and repressive climate emerging in the new ultra-nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
Germany, business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott. Indeed, Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.
On April 12, 1933, the German government announced the plans to immediately conduct a long-delayed national census. The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
s deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to actively assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating first upon the 41 million residents of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
.
This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 reichsmarks — about $1 million. This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime."
Black also asserts that a "secret deal" was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories." As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black notes.
Holocaust implications
The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Black describes the situation faced by German Jews:
"Since the advent of the Third Reich, thousands of Jews nervously assumed they could hide from the Aryan clause.
"But Jews could not hide from millions of punch cards thudding through Hollerith machines, comparing names across generations, address changes across regions, families trees and personal data across unending registries. It did not matter that the required forms or questionnaires were filled in by leaking pens or barely sharpened pencils, only that they were later tabulated and sorted by IBM's precision technology."
On September 13, 1935, Hitler demanded the immediate implementation of a "Law for the Protection of German Blood" which deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited them from having sexual relations with or from marrying Aryans. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.
Another German census was conducted on May 17, 1939, when 750,000 census takers conducted interviews with the country's 22 million households, and also millions of factories. The purpose of the census was to identify the number of Jews in Germany and its newly expanded territories and to precisely locate each individual so that the Jewish population could be effectively ghettoized
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
. Ancestral lines had to be documented by each head of household as part of the national census, which dwarfed in size and detail the 1933 Prussian census.
As the Nazi war machine spread occupied the nations of Europe, capitulation was followed by a census of the population of the subjugated nations, with an eye to the identification and isolation of Jews and Gypsies. For example, the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland was followed by an October 14 order of the Special Operations unit of the German Secret Police
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
for a full census of the Jewish population, information which supplemented published information from the 1931 general Polish census. These census operations were intimately intertwined with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by decision of the New York office following Germany's successful Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
invasion.
In the case of Poland, the ordered census took place over several days, from December 17 to December 23, 1939. The census was both meticulous and cold-blooded, as Black notes:
"Each person over the age of twelve was required to fill out census and registration in duplicate, and then was fingerprinted. Part of the form was stamped and returned as the person's new identification form. Without it, they would be shot. With it, they would be deported."
Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe, Black demonstrates. He also notes, in an understated aside, that fully half of IBM's German subsidiary's annual profit — RM 1.8 million — was suddenly generated in December 1939.
IBM technology in the camps
Black also reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology. In his book, Black charges that "without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did.Each of the major concentration camps was assigned a Hollerith code number for paperwork purposes: Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
— 001; Buchenwald
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
— 002; Dachau — 003; Flossenbürg
Flossenbürg concentration camp
Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the border with Czechoslovakia. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners...
— 004; Gross-Rosen
Gross-Rosen concentration camp
KL Gross-Rosen was a German concentration camp, located in Gross-Rosen, Lower Silesia . It was located directly on the rail line between Jauer and Striegau .-The camp:...
— 005; Herzogenbusch — 006; Mauthausen — 007; Natzweiler — 008; Neuengamme — 009; Ravensbrück
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
— 010; Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
— 011; and Stutthoff
Stutthof concentration camp
Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...
— 012.
Upon arrival at the camps in 1943, incoming prisoners would be examined for fitness to work, physical information would be recorded on a medical record, names would be cross-checked with data from the Political Section to determine whether the prisoner was additionally wanted for political offenses.
Company response
While not directly contradicting Black's evidence, IBM has questioned Black's research methodology and conclusions. IBM indicates it does not have much information about this period or the operations of Dehomag, as most documents were destroyed or lost during the war. IBM also claimed that a lawsuit, which was dismissed, was filed to coincide with the book launch.In 2002, IBM disputed Edwin Black's claim that IBM is withholding materials regarding this era in its archives. Nevertheless, IBM subsequently turned over a substantial portion of its corporate records of the period to academic archives in New York and Stuttgart, for review by independent scholars.
Edwin Black in his article published in George Mason University
George Mason University
George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...
's History News Network
History News Network
History News Network is a project of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Although the HNN resides on GMU's server, it operates independently of the university as a non-profit corporation registered in Washington State...
openly accused IBM advocates of systematic elimination of references to IBM's role in the Holocaust in the Wikipedia article History of IBM
History of IBM
International Business Machines, abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to...
.
Critical response
Richard BernsteinRichard Bernstein
Richard Bernstein is an American journalist, columnist, and author. He writes the Letter from America column for The International Herald Tribune...
, writing for The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
, wrote that Black's case "is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that IBM bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done." IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 press release "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit".
Others have seen Black's work as a revelatory piece of historical scholarship. In 2003, the American Society of Journalists and Authors
American Society of Journalists and Authors
The American Society of Journalists and Authors was founded in 1948 as the Society of Magazine Writers, and is an organization of independent nonfiction writers in the United States...
acknowledged IBM and the Holocaust with its award for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year.
Legal actions
In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court against IBM for allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up Dehomag's activities. In April 2001, the lawsuit was dropped. Lawyers said they feared proceeding with the suit would slow down payments from a special German Holocaust fund created to compensate forced laborers and others who had suffered due to the Nazi persecution. IBM's German division paid $3 million into the fund, although the corporation made clear that it was not admitting liability with its contribution.In 2004, the human rights organization Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action
GIRCA
The GIRCA is a human rights organization.In 2002, GIRCA filed suit against IBM for IBM's involvement with Nazi war crimes....
(GIRCA) filed suit against IBM in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. However, the case was dismissed in 2006.
See also
- List of International subsidiaries of IBM
- IBM during World War IIIBM during World War IIIn both the United States and Germany concentration or internment camps were established during World War II, both countries utilizing the available IBM punched card technology for their operation.United States=...
- Identification in Nazi campsIdentification in Nazi campsIdentification of inmates in Nazi concentration camps was performed in two ways: by special badges and by identification numbers.-Badges:...
- Final SolutionFinal SolutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
- Holocaust
- The War Against the JewsThe War Against the JewsThe War Against the Jews is a 1975 book authored by Lucy Dawidowicz. The book researches the Holocaust of the European Jewry during World War II....
External links
- IBM and the Holocaust Official Website, ibmandtheholocaust.com Retrieved July 16, 2010.
- Excerpt from "IBM and the Holocaust" with photo of Hollerith machine, Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved July 16, 2010.