How did the nazi's know jews were jews?

Sephiroth_dude

Just as the title sugguests,how did they identify them?people hardly went up to them and said"Im a Jew,persectute me"did they?.Its just something that I've never really understood,and would appreciate it if someone could give me answer.

cheers.

chin_grin

http://www.google.ie/search?q=how+did+the+nazi%27s+know+jews+were+jews&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enIE243IE243


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080331171808AAAfniP

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_Nazis_know_if_you_were_Jewish

^ google

challengemaster

Their noses.

Sephiroth_dude

thanks for that.

Morlar

In some cases there would have been distinguishing physical characteristics - in the less obvious cases census information was used.

There was an attempt to launch a class action suit against IBM a few years ago on the basis that a german subsidiary (I think dehomag (?) provided tabulating machines to the german govt during peace time.

The basiss of the lawsuit was that the tabulating machines were used to record census information and one of the questions on the census recorded 'religion' as a field.

The lawsuit failed (possibly one of the reasons was it was an american company and less vulnerable than say swiss banks) and the book 'IBM and the holocaust' didnt sell too well. Having read it I would have to say 'clutching at straws' would be putting it mildly. Of course as mentioned a visit to the synagogue would turn up names too. Plus dont forget jewish people were told to register for transportation to the east and also to work camps - if they didnt register there were civil penalties and at that time many did regsiter themselves vonuntarily to avoid possible penalisation.

Mahatma coat

People seem to forget that it wasnt just the Jews that were sent to the camps.

i the beginning there were lists and people who could be clearly identified as Unterrmenschen were rounded up, but as the war progressed and the expansion pushed ever further east they weren all that discriminating about who got exterminated, if an SS officer decided that you had aided the enemy or were of inferior stock or just simply thought you looked a bit dodgey, then off ya go, in a lot of cases on the eastern front people were herded into the woods and machinegunned or worse, the SS had some rather fiendish methods of dealing with undesirables.

but basicly to answer your question, if you werent a member of the Nazi party or clearly a member of the Aryan race then you had as good a chance as anyone else of endin up in a death camp.

Grizzly 45

Pretty simple really.Most European countries had and still have ,the requirement that it's citizens carry at all times in a public place,some form of issued State ID.So obviously it wasnt that hard to collate the information in govt as to where the Goldsteins and the Schmidts lived.:(
Then add on this nonsense of racial purity,cobbled together from history,myth and junk sciences .Aryans who wanted to marry or be involved in life in the 3rd Reich had to prove pure eugenics back to the 17th century free of the taint of Jewish relations or ancestors.Germans being a well organised society,would have had no problems finding the "undesireables" in society or in any country they conqured.

arnhem44

there was a documentary about this on tv once,as Mahatma Goat said above if you didn't look Aryan it raised suspicion,the Germans documented nearly everything and the Jewish community was well known,a great deal of them were business men and shop owners,in that documentary I recall seeing a man having his facial features checked and his nose measured,its ironic when you think of the SS being of so called pure blood and then as the war dragging on accepting soldiers from different backgrounds and nationalities,so much for the Aryan race then,also on that documentary if I'm not mistaken they featured the extermination of German hanicapped children

Rev Hellfire

You'd imagine with the church tax system present in Germany obtaining records of the religious denomination of individuals would have been easy.

Morlar

arnhem44 wrote: »

on that documentary if I'm not mistaken they featured the extermination of German hanicapped children

Aktion T4 (Tiergarten) was the name given to the euthanasia programme of that time.

Here is a then contemporary quote ;

"Crushed by the burden of taxation which they have not the resources to meet and to provide for children also: crushed by the national cost of the too numerous children of those who do not contribute to the public funds by taxation, yet who recklessly bring forth from an inferior stock individuals who are not self-supporting, the middle and superior artisan classes have, without perceiving it, come almost to take the position of that ancient slave population."

That one is from Marie Stopes (of family planning clinic fame) who was an ardent supporter of Eugenics - even attending a nazi conference on the subject. Another quote of hers "sterilisation of those totally unfit for parenthood [to] be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory." would not have been out of place in Nazi writings of that time. Back then it was a far more mainstream notion.

Also during the same period some states in america already had compulsory sterilisation for alcoholics & the mentally infirm, epilectics, physically deformed people etc;

So looking back it can seem out of this world but in reality of that context it doesnt stand out to the same extent. Much of it was common practice or if not it was the topic of then current mainstream debate much as nowadays euthanasia of elderly and terminally ill is the subject of debate.

arnhem44

Also during the same period some states in america already had compulsory sterilisation for alcoholics & the mentally infirm, epilectics, physically deformed people etc

;


When you look at it the way you just mentioned useing the example of euthanasia then It should be looked at with a broader perspective,I suppose back then all sorts of things were happening,even accepted,its hard to belive that even in the U.S that such things could be condoned,then to this day certain states still carry strange laws there.I guess for any parent in Germany during the war to have a handicapped child it was most likely frowned upon,I wonder did these parents willingly hand over these children just to fit it to the then German society or did any resist,I can't remember clearly on that documentary wheather in fact the parents had any knowledge of what was actually happening untill it was to late,its sad to think that any child could be treated like this.

FiSe

Mahatma coat wrote: »

People seem to forget that it wasnt just the Jews that were sent to the camps.

i the beginning there were lists and people who could be clearly identified as Unterrmenschen were rounded up, but as the war progressed and the expansion pushed ever further east they weren all that discriminating about who got exterminated, if an SS officer decided that you had aided the enemy or were of inferior stock or just simply thought you looked a bit dodgey, then off ya go, in a lot of cases on the eastern front people were herded into the woods and machinegunned or worse, the SS had some rather fiendish methods of dealing with undesirables.

but basicly to answer your question, if you werent a member of the Nazi party or clearly a member of the Aryan race then you had as good a chance as anyone else of endin up in a death camp.

I think it's too oversimplified...

Mahatma coat

FiSe wrote: »

I think it's too oversimplified...

well yeah, I know there are many more factors involved, but Hey I like nice simple analogies, and leave it to the reader to 'Lion iseach na Bearnai'

Grizzly 45

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

You'd imagine with the church tax system present in Germany obtaining records of the religious denomination of individuals would have been easy.

Belive it or not.Thats a hangover 3rd Reich law,that only applies in Bavaria!!!The Nazis brought it in to discourage "weak" christian faiths,and to go more to the state approved paganistic racial nonsense.

marcsignal

There seems to have been a lot of 'other' funny business going on in Nazi Germany, relating to their treatment of the Jews and the Nazi relationship with German Zionists. In recent times things have come to light pertaining to Nazi deals with Zionists regarding the expulsion of Jews from Germany, where the Zionists saw an opportunity to use the situation to push for a Jewish/Zionist homeland in Palestine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3we8Sg9oOs

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/nazisupport.cfm

http://www.freearabvoice.org/naziZionistCooperation.htm

http://www.savethemales.ca/041102.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3337805,00.html

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/BAZO.pdf

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/docs/nzc4hannaharendt

gizmo555

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Just as the title sugguests,how did they identify them?people hardly went up to them and said"Im a Jew,persectute me"did they?

Edwin Black has written a very interesting and eye-opening book on IBM's role in this - IBM and the Holocaust.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0609607995/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253089271&sr=8-2

Black's well-argued and well-documented thesis is that "IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloguing programmes of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s . . . only with IBM's technolgical assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust."

Amalgam

The camps were a catch all.. anyone that was seen as undesirable or troublesome during or after the Spanish Civil War was shipped off knowingly, to German camps.

The camps were very conveniant for 2 or 3 'governments' at the time. Mop up any unwanted political dregs.

r3nu4l

Morlar wrote: »

There was an attempt to launch a class action suit against IBM a few years ago on the basis that a german subsidiary (I think dehomag (?) provided tabulating machines to the german govt during peace time.

The basiss of the lawsuit was that the tabulating machines were used to record census information and one of the questions on the census recorded 'religion' as a field.

The lawsuit failed (possibly one of the reasons was it was an american company and less vulnerable than say swiss banks) and the book 'IBM and the holocaust' didnt sell too well. Having read it I would have to say 'clutching at straws' would be putting it mildly.

gizmo555 wrote: »

Edwin Black has written a very interesting and eye-opening book on IBM's role in this - IBM and the Holocaust.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0609607995/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253089271&sr=8-2

Black's well-argued and well-documented thesis is that "IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloguing programmes of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s . . . only with IBM's technolgical assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust."

Very different opinions there! I'd go for the former to be honest.

As for identifying Jews. ID cards and census would clearly have shown up classically Jewish names such as 'Goldstein', 'SpeilBerg' etc. Facial features would have played a part as would any Jews wearing skullcaps of course. Then you had the fanatical German paranoia that you can be sure had many non-Jews labelled as Jews and sent to camps anyway 'to be on the safe side'.

gizmo555

r3nu4l wrote: »

Very different opinions there! I'd go for the former to be honest.

Well, I can only tell you my opinion. I will say that although Black's style is a bit overwrought at times, he provides detailed source material for all of his allegations.

And on a point of information, IBM's subsidiary Dehomag continued its work for the Nazi regime right through the war - not just in peacetime as Morlar suggests.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

Well, I can only tell you my opinion. I will say that although Black's style is a bit overwrought at times, he provides detailed source material for all of his allegations.

I think it was more the validity of his conclusions rather than whether or not he invented them. Sources being provided in itself is not that unique, any historian can uncover say for example 10 sources of information all giving a conflicting account of an event and then select the one sourced account which fits the premise they had to begin with. Just because a piece of information is 'sourced' does not mean it can not be presented in a misleading manner, nor does it make it the truth or the full truth.

I would have to disagree with you on this book and would stand by my reasons for why the accompanying lawsuit (launched on the basis of the information contained in it and timed to coincide with it's release) failed which I put as the flimsiness of the allegations and also the fact that for the first time the target of the 'shakedown' was a US bluechip.

There has been much debate over this non-entity of a book and a great deal of free publicity generated for it in the process.

It is worth noting (imo) that the author also threatened litigation against a reviewer from the Jerusalem post for a review of it he did not appreciate in which it was said to be 'sloppy and padded'. Personally I think those 2 words perfectly describe this book. It is sloppy and it is extremely padded.

gizmo555 wrote: »

And on a point of information, IBM's subsidiary Dehomag continued its work for the Nazi regime right through the war - not just in peacetime as Morlar suggests.

I think Dehomag provided the tabulating machines (which were the basis of the lawsuit) during the inter-war period when the US and Germany were normal trading partners.

gizmo555

Morlar wrote: »

I think Dehomag provided the tabulating machines (which were the basis of the lawsuit) during the inter-war period when the US and Germany were normal trading partners.

Dehomag (acronym for something like Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft) continued to provide service to the Nazi regime throughout the war. The tabulating machines were never sold to the German government - they were leased and remained property of Dehomag at all times. After the war, IBM in the United States took steps to recover all of Dehomag's assets, including the profits from these contracts. While not admitting liability, after the lawsuit you mention was dropped, IBM Germany paid US$3m into a fund for victims of Nazi oppression. It's fair to say they would not have paid a sum of that magnitude if there was no case at all to answer.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.html

r3nu4l

gizmo555 wrote: »

It's fair to say they would not have paid a sum of that magnitude if there was no case at all to answer.

It's fair to say that 3m is a pittance for a company like IBM and a long, drawn-out court case probably would have cost more in legal fees, even if they won. I wouldn't use that payment as any admission of liability, I'm sure IBM stated that as part of their payment.

gizmo555

r3nu4l wrote: »

It's fair to say that 3m is a pittance for a company like IBM and a long, drawn-out court case probably would have cost more in legal fees, even if they won. I wouldn't use that payment as any admission of liability, I'm sure IBM stated that as part of their payment.

As I clearly said in my previous post, IBM did not admit liability. But even the costs of a long drawn out court case would have been a relative pittance for a company of IBM's size and resources and if they could clearly establish their innocence of the allegations of being involved in the biggest mass extermination ever, it would have been worth every cent. On the other hand, the plaintiffs would have to be very brave indeed to take on the might of IBM.

In the circumstances, the payoff looks to me much more likely to be a way of making an highly awkward and reputationally damaging situation go away than a way of saving on legal fees.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

Dehomag ........continued to provide service to the Nazi regime throughout the war.

............
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.html

There are a couple of interesting points in the CNN article you linked to ;

But if the plaintiffs win, their lawyers claim that would pave the way for Gypsy organizations to demand approximately $12 billion in damages. (from IBM)
........
IBM says that by this time this occurred, the Nazis had already taken over Dehomag -- so that IBM had no control over operations there, or over how Nazis used IBM machines.

The bottom line is that both the roma lawsuit in Europe and in the class action one in the U.S., IBM were not found to be guilty or liable in any way whatsoever.

They chose to donate 3 million for PR purposes due to the negative publicity of the book and the adjoining 2 lawsuits. From their perspective it's peanuts and makes them look good, probably worth the same amount in advertising.

Anyone taking that as a sign of guilt would be mistaken.

Don't forget that 3m donation to the victims fund was not conditional on no future lawsuits or anything like that & to my knowledge in the subsequent years to date there have been none by anyone anywhere against IBM re the 2nd world war.

gizmo555

Well, turning the question of lawsuits on it's head, Black's book was published nine years ago, and if there was anything defamatory in it, IBM have not seen fit to sue him.

Leaving aside the question of culpability for a moment and coming back to the OP's question of how the Nazis identified the Jews for deportation and extermination, it's an indisputable fact that Dehomag played a significant role in this, both before and during the war.

It's also a fact that Dehomag and its assets survived the war substantially intact and that IBM in the US regained full direct control over it after the war. By 1949 it was renamed IBM Deutschland. IBM has denied having control over Dehomag's activities during the war, but the best one can say is that it benefited from them after the fact. It's rather reminiscent of the way Vickers paid Krupp royalties on Krupp's patents for fuse designs it had used during WW I. Business is business and war presents many profitable business opportunities . . .

The book is flawed, but nonetheless, as I said before, an eye-opener and further proof if it were needed of the essential amorality of big business.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

Well, turning the question of lawsuits on it's head, Black's book was published nine years ago, and if there was anything defamatory in it, IBM have not seen fit to sue him.

Leaving aside the question of culpability for a moment and coming back to the OP's question of how the Nazis identified the Jews for deportation and extermination, it's an indisputable fact that Dehomag played a significant role in this, both before and during the war.

It's also a fact that Dehomag and its assets survived the war substantially intact and that IBM in the US regained full direct control over it after the war. By 1949 it was renamed IBM Deutschland. IBM has denied having control over Dehomag's activities during the war, but the best one can say is that it benefited from them after the fact. It's rather reminiscent of the way Vickers paid Krupp royalties on Krupp's patents for fuse designs it had used during WW I. Business is business and war presents many profitable business opportunities . . .

The book is flawed, but nonetheless, as I said before, an eye-opener and further proof if it were needed of the essential amorality of big business.

If I sell or rent you a typewriter and several years later you use it to write someones death warrant I am not morally, legally or financially responsible for that persons death.

gizmo555

Morlar wrote: »

If I sell or rent you a typewriter and several years later you use it to write someones death warrant I am not morally, legally or financially responsible for that persons death.

That's a pretty weak analogy. A better one would be if you have a huge volume of death warrants to process and I lease you a typewriter which contributes significantly to speeding up the process, increasing the number of warrants executed and I'm the only maker of typewriters in the world and I continue to service the typewriter and sell you the ribbons while the executions are ongoing and when all the death warrants are processed I get to keep my typewriter plus all the profits I made from leasing it to you, then in my opinion I would have serious moral if not legal questions to answer.

Here are two press releases IBM made around the time of the book's publication:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1388.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/828.wss

Nowhere in either of the two releases does IBM actually deny any of the facts in Black's book.

I'm struck in particular by this comment in the second release:

Since its publication, the research behind the book and the conclusions reached by its author have been questioned. A review in The New York Times concluded that the author's "... case is long and heavily documented, and yet he does not demonstrate that I.B.M. bears some unique or decisive responsibility for the evil that was done."

What a lame response - nobody, including Black, is saying the Holocaust wouldn't have happened without Dehomag, but it's beyond doubt that Dehomag contributed significantly to it. Saying that Black doesn't show IBM bore a "unique or decisive responsibility" is a very long way indeed from saying that IBM bore no responsibility.

Morlar

No it is not.

They leased equipment to a country's govt.

The political climate subsequently changed drastically, war broke out several years later. The original lease agreement was for machines to assist in a population census.

That is the sum total of IBM's guilt right there.

They provided equipment for a poplulation census to a (at that time) ally of the USA.

It is ridiculous for jewish or roma great grandchildren to seek 12bn from IBM in financial renumeration for events that happened years after the subsidiary company provided the equipment for the population census.

Dehomag were a conmpany in Germany - Germany was at war and the controlling NSDAP had extremely close ties to private industry. If dehomag had said 'no we refuse to continue to service our equipment per our agreement as we do not agree with nsdap policy' they would have been shutdown and sold off.

Worst case scenario, if (and this has not been established) their engineers were required for the war effort they would have been simply forced to service the equipment.

This is all notwithstanding the crucial fact that german public were not privy to what was or was not happening in concentration camps late war when they themselves were dealing with bombing and shortages and their own survival. It (both lawsuits) was a ridiculous money grab in my view, the legal teams had at that stage already milked the swiss banks & german govt for literally billions and were eyeing up any potential further cash-cows If you think there was noble intent on behalf of the legal teams involved, or if you think that IBM had some kind of psychic guilt for things that happened outside of their control years after they provided the equipment - then I would disagree with you on that point as it is ridiculous.

Exon

It's as easy as knowing a traveller is a traveller.

Common sense in most cases tbh.

It's quite easy to diffrentiate between the races and Jews are a race.

gizmo555

This article by Edwin Black in Village Voice, New York, 26/09/2002, deals comprehensively with the suggestion that IBM's active role in dealings with the Nazi regime ended before the outbreak of war.


When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, most of the world saw a menace to humanity. But IBM saw Nazi Germany as a lucrative trading partner. Its president, Thomas J. Watson, engineered a strategic business alliance between IBM and the Reich, beginning in the first days of the Hitler regime and continuing right through World War II. This alliance catapulted Nazi Germany to become IBM's most important customer outside the U.S. IBM and the Nazis jointly designed, and IBM exclusively produced, technological solutions that enabled Hitler to accelerate and in many ways automate key aspects of his persecution of Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others the Nazis considered enemies. Custom-designed, IBM-produced punch cards, sorted by IBM machines leased to the Nazis, helped organize and manage the initial identification and social expulsion of Jews and others, the confiscation of their property, their ghettoization, their deportation, and, ultimately, even their extermination.

Recently discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony make clear that IBM's alliance with the Third Reich went far beyond its German subsidiary. A key factor in the Holocaust in Poland was IBM technology provided directly through a special wartime Polish subsidiary reporting to IBM New York, mainly to its headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue.

And that's how the trains to Auschwitz ran on time.

Thousands of IBM documents reviewed for the first edition of my book 'IBM and the Holocaust,' published early last year and focused mainly on IBM's German subsidiary, revealed vigorous efforts to preserve IBM's monopoly in the Nazi market and increase contracts to meet wartime sales quotas.

Since then, continued research and interviews have uncovered details, described here for the first time, of IBM's work for the Nazis in Poland through the separate subsidiary and of the Polish subsidiary's direct contact with IBM officials on Madison Avenue.

Documents were obtained from IBM files shipped to NYU for processing and from scores of other archival sources here and abroad. Not a single sentence written by IBM personnel has been discovered in any of the documents questioning the morality of automating the Third Reich, even when headlines proclaimed the mass murder of Jews.

IBM's German subsidiary was Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft, known by the acronym Dehomag. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated U.S. census information in the late 19th century and founded the company which became IBM. Hollerith's name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi "departments" that operated them.)

Watson tightly managed the lucrative German operation, traveling to Berlin at least twice annually from 1933 until 1939 to personally supervise Dehomag. Major German correspondence was translated for review by the New York office and often for Watson's personal comment. Before big new accounts were accepted, Watson had to assent. For deniability, he insisted on making direct verbal instructions to his German managers the rule rather than exception—even in place of major contracts. Once, when German managers wanted to paint a corridor, they awaited his specific permission. Watson's auditors continuously tracked the source and status of every reichsmark and pfennig—in one typical case, exchanging numerous transatlantic letters over the disposition of just a few dollars. Not infrequently, Dehomag managers objected to his "domination." Understandably, IBM's lawyers and managers in Berlin personally updated Watson constantly, and generally signed their reports, "Awaiting your further instructions."

No machines were sold to the Nazis—only leased. IBM was the sole source of all punch cards and spare parts, and it serviced the machines on-site—whether at Dachau or in the heart of Berlin—either directly or through its authorized dealer network or field trainees. There were no universal punch cards. Each series was custom-designed by IBM engineers not only to capture the information going in, but also to tabulate the information the Nazis wanted to come out.

IBM constantly updated its machinery and applications for the Nazis. For example, one series of punch cards was designed to record religion, national origin, and mother tongue, but by creating special columns and rows for Jew, Polish language, Polish nationality, the fur trade as an occupation, and then Berlin, Nazis could quickly cross-tabulate, at the rate of 25,000 cards per hour, exactly how many Berlin furriers were Jews of Polish extraction. Railroad cars, which could take two weeks to locate and route, could be swiftly dispatched in just 48 hours by means of a vast network of punch-card machines. Indeed, IBM services coursed through the entire German infrastructure in Europe.

The war broke out on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Germany annexed northwestern Poland; the remaining Polish territory in Nazi hands was treated as "occupied" and called the "General Government." That annexed northwestern quadrant was serviced by IBM's German subsidiary, Dehomag, mainly to handle the payrolls of Silesian coal mines and heavy industry. At about that time, IBM New York established a special subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, to deal with the General Government. It remained completely legal for IBM to service the Third Reich until just before America entered the war in December 1941.

The savaging of Poland was no secret to IBM executives. From the outset, worldwide headlines reported barbarous massacres, rapes, purposeful starvation, systematic deportations, and the resulting unchecked epidemics. As early as September 13, 1939, The New York Times reported the Reich's determination to make Polish Jewry disappear, a headline declaring, "Nazis Hint Purge of Jews in Poland." A subhead added, "3,000,000 Population Involved." The article quoted the German government's plan for the "removal of the Polish Jewish population from the European domain." The Times added, "How . . . the 'removal' of Jews from Poland [can be achieved] without their extermination . . . is not explained."

Germany had plans. Polish Jews, during a sequence of sudden relocations, were to be catalogued for further action in a massive cascade of repetitive censuses and registrations with up-to-date information being instantly available to various Nazi planning agencies and occupation offices. How much usable forced labor for armament factories could they generate? How many thousands would die of starvation each month? A spectrum of Nazi census, registration, and statistical tabulation was performed on custom-designed IBM punch-card programs and machinery.

On September 9, 1939, Dehomag general manager Hermann Rottke wrote directly to Watson in New York, asking for advanced equipment. Rottke reminded Watson, "During your last visit in Berlin at the beginning of July, you made the kind offer to me that you might be willing to furnish the German company machines from Endicott [an IBM factory near Binghamton] in order to shorten our long delivery terms. . . . You have complied with this request, for which I thank you very much, and have added that in cases of urgent need, I may make use of other American machines. . . . You will understand that under today's conditions, a certain need has arisen for such machines, which we do not build as yet in Germany. Therefore, I should like to make use of your kind offer and ask you to leave with the German company . . . the alphabetic tabulating machines. . . . "

Eighteen days later, a vanquished Warsaw formally capitulated. The next day, September 28, IBM's general manager in Geneva, J.W. Schotte, telephoned Berlin to confirm Watson's permission for the new equipment.

Meanwhile, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of Heinrich Himmler's Security Service, the SD, had already circulated a top-secret letter to the chiefs of his Einsatzgruppen, which evolved into mobile killing units. Heydrich's September 21 memo, titled "The Jewish Question in the Occupied Territory," laid out a plan of population control through a sequence of strategic censuses and registrations. It began, "I would like to point out once more that the total measures planned (i.e., the final aim) are to be kept strictly secret." First, Jews were to be relocated to so-called concentration towns at "either railroad junctions or at least on a railway." Addressing the zone from east of Kraków to the former Czechoslovakian-Polish border, Heydrich directed, "Within this territory, only a temporary census of Jews need be taken." Heydrich demanded that "the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen report to me continually regarding . . . the census of Jews in their districts. . . . "

Shortly thereafter, Heydrich sent a follow-up cable to his occupying forces in Poland, Upper Silesia, and Czechoslovakia, outlining how a new December 17 census would escalate the process from mere identification and cataloguing to deportation and execution. Heydrich's memo entitled "Evacuation of the New Eastern Provinces" decreed, "The evacuation of Poles and Jews in the new Eastern Provinces will be conducted by the Security Police. . . . The census documents provide the basis for the evacuation. All persons in the new provinces possess a copy. The census form is the temporary identification card giving permission to stay. Therefore, all persons have to hand over the card before deportation. . . . Anyone caught without this card is subject to possible execution. . . . "
Quantifying and organizing the deportation of millions of people from various regions across Eastern Europe could take years using pencils and paper. Relying upon the lightning speed of Hollerith machines, it took just days. Heydrich assured, "That means the large-scale evacuation can begin no sooner than around January 1, 1940." Nazi Germany employed only one method for conducting a census: IBM punch-card processes, each one designed for the specific census.

In Nazi Poland, railroads constituted about 95 percent of the IBM subsidiary's business, using as many as 21 million punch cards annually. Watson Business Machines was headquartered at Kreuz 23 in Warsaw. And one of its important customer sites, newly discovered since the first edition of my book was published a year ago, was the Hollerith department of Polish Railways, at 22 Pawia Street in Kraków. This office kept tabs on all trains in the General Government, including those that sent Jews to their death in Auschwitz.

Leon Krzemieniecki is probably the only man still living who worked in that Hollerith department. It must be emphasized that Krzemieniecki did not understand any of the details of the genocidal train destinations. His duties required tabulating information on all trains, from ordinary passenger to freight trains, but only after their arrival.

The high-security five-room office, guarded by armed railway police, was equipped with 15 punchers, two sorters, and a tabulator "bigger than a sofa." Fifteen Polish women punched the cards and loaded the sorters. Three German nationals supervised the office, overseeing the final tabulations and summary statistics in great secrecy. Handfuls of printouts were reduced to a small envelope of summary data, which was then delivered to a secret destination. Truckloads of the preliminary printouts were then regularly burned, along with the spent cards, Krzemieniecki told me in an interview.

As a forced laborer, Krzemieniecki was compelled to work as a "sorter and tabulator" 10 hours per day for two years. He never realized that his work involved the transportation of Jews to gas chambers. "I only know that this very modern equipment made possible the control of all the railway traffic in the General Government," he said. Krzemieniecki recalled that an "outside technician," who spoke German and Polish and "did not work for the railroad," was almost constantly on-site to keep the machines running, performing major maintenance monthly.

IBM's tailored railroad-management programs, several million custom-designed punch cards printed at IBM's print shop at 6 Rymarska Street, across from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the railway's leased machines were under the New York-controlled subsidiary in Warsaw, not the German subsidiary, Dehomag. The distinction is important. Since the disclosures about IBM's involvement in the Holocaust first surfaced in February 2001, the company has continually pointed to supposed lack of control of its German subsidiary. But Watson Business Machines was established in Poland by IBM New York itself, at the time of Germany's invasion. "I knew they were not German machines," recalled Krzemieniecki. "The labels were in English. . . . The person maintaining and repairing the machines spread the diagrams out sometimes. The language of the diagrams of those machines was only in English."

I asked Krzemieniecki if the machine logo plates were in German, Polish, or English. He answered, "English. It said, 'Business Machines.' " I asked, "Do you mean 'International Business Machines'?" Krzemieniecki replied, "No, 'Watson Business Machines.' "
Dwarfing the railroad operation in Poland described by Krzemieniecki was a massive Hollerith statistical center at 24 Murner Street in Kraków, staffed by more than 500 punching and tabulating employees and equipped with dozens of machines. New research has uncovered the existence of a previously unknown Berlin agency, the Central Office for Foreign Statistics and Foreign Country Research, which continuously received detailed data from the Kraków statistical center.

By late 1939, the Reich's Jewish-population statistics wizard, Fritz Arlt, had been appointed head of the Population and Welfare Administration of the General Government. A Hollerith expert and colleague of Adolf Eichmann, Arlt edited his own statistical publication, Political Information Service of the General Government, which featured such data as Jews per square meter, with projections of decrease from forced labor and starvation.

"We can count on the mortality of some subjugated groups," one Arlt article asserted. "These include babies and those over the age of 65, as well as those who are basically weak and ill in all other age groups."
The data-hungry Nazis created an expanded Statistics Office in Kraków in 1940. The expansion was dependent on more leased machines, spare parts, company technicians, and a guaranteed continued supply of millions of additional IBM cards. IBM's European general manager, Werner Lier, visited Berlin in early October 1941 to oversee IBM New York's deployment of machines in Poland and other countries. In two detailed reports, written from Berlin and sent to Watson, as well as to other senior staff in New York, Lier reported moving a small group of Polish machines into Romania for the Jewish census there. The Polish machines would soon be replaced by others.

The expanded Statistics Office assured Berlin in a November 30, 1941, report that its Hollerith operation would employ equipment more modern than the old IBM machinery found in most pre-war Polish data agencies, thus allowing the Nazis to launch a plethora of "large-scale censuses." Also planned was a long list of "continuous statistical surveys," including those for population, domestic migration, and causes of death. Moreover, regular surveys of food and agriculture were "coupled with summary surveys of the population and ethnic groups." Tabulating food supplies against ethnic numbers allowed the Nazis to ration caloric intake as they subjected the Jewish community to starvation.

The Statistics Office's report concluded, "Our work is just beginning to bear fruit."

Once the U.S. Entered the war in December 1941, Germany appointed a Nazi devoted to IBM, Hermann Fellinger, as enemy-property custodian. He maintained the original staff and managers of Watson Business Machines, keeping it productive for the Reich and profitable for IBM. The subsidiary now reported to IBM's Geneva office, and from there to New York. The company was not looted, its leased machines were not seized. "Royalties" were remitted to IBM through Geneva. Lease payments and profits were preserved in special accounts. After the war, IBM recovered all its Polish profits and machines.

Since the war, IBM, having left Madison Avenue for new headquarters in suburban Armonk, has obstructed, or refused to cooperate with, virtually every major independent author writing about its history, according to numerous published introductions, prefaces, and acknowledgments. But silence cannot alter the historical documentation. A tangle of subsidiaries throughout Europe helped IBM reap the benefits of its partnership with Nazi Germany. After all, "business" was IBM's middle name.

The IBM Response: Asked about IBM's Polish subsidiary's involvement with the Nazis, IBM spokeswoman Carol Makovich in New York repeated the same official statement she issued more than a year ago: "IBM does not have much information about this period." Asked a dozen times, Makovich simply repeated the phrase.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-03-26/news/final-solutions/1

Morlar

That article is one big advert for a flimsy book, & trust me the book is even more over-dramatic.

To address some of the points raised ;

They leased equipment to a country's govt.

The political climate subsequently changed drastically, war broke out several years later. The original lease agreement was for machines to assist in a population census.

That is the sum total of IBM's guilt right there.

Re the lease agreement ;

It was and is common practice for companies providing very expensive machinery to lease it rather than sell it.

Dehomag were a company in Germany - Germany was at war and the controlling NSDAP had extremely close ties to private industry. If dehomag had said 'no we refuse to continue to service our equipment per our agreement as we do not agree with nsdap policy' they would have been shutdown and sold off.

In fact years before a predecessor (Tabulating machine company ?) collated a population census for Czar Nicholas II under Hollerith's leadership, so having large countries as customers was not unique or sinister.

Some of those points were already addressed but if you read it carefully most (eg Heydrichs 'top secret' unknown to IBM or Dehomag letter) are utterly irrelevant in a discussion about the supposed guilt of IBM.

diverdriver

To answer the original question, How did they know? Well the answer is simple, it wasn't a secret. Everyone knew who the Jews were. It was true in any country. Back then, everyone knew. It was the same when I was growing up not too long ago. We knew who was protestant, Jewish or whatever. If it came time to round up people, it's easy. We all knew for example, who the local IRA men were and the supporters. We knew who had relatives serving in the British military. Everyone knew, who did what and what they were.

The question could only be asked by someone living in a city in modern times where it hardly matters who or what your origins are. Even so, I'll bet most of you can name people locally who aren't Irish Catholic.

As for IBM, well the case is far from proved. In any case there is a massive amount of hindsight being applied here as usual. I speak as a former IBMer, the current company has little to be ashamed of.

gizmo555

Morlar wrote: »

That article is one big advert for a flimsy book, & trust me the book is even more over-dramatic.

I have read the book myself thank you. It is true that Black is an argumentative and tendentious writer. You may disagree with his conclusions, but the facts in the book and the article I referenced speak for themselves and IBM has never denied any of them.

Can I ask in particular why you persist in asserting that IBM was no longer supplying the Nazi regime by the time the war started, when this is manifestly untrue? As we have seen, after the invasion of Poland it established a subsidiary there which was under the direct control of IBM in the US until that country entered the war in December 1941. We have also seen that Thomas Watson personally approved the supply of new equipment to the Nazis after the fall of Poland in 1939.

Morlar wrote: »

Dehomag were a company in Germany - Germany was at war and the controlling NSDAP had extremely close ties to private industry. If dehomag had said 'no we refuse to continue to service our equipment per our agreement as we do not agree with nsdap policy' they would have been shutdown and sold off.

"We were only following orders" . . . that defence went down well at Nuremberg. Indeed, many of the industrialists you refer to were tried there. Of course, they didn't have the protection of a US owner.

Morlar

gizmo555 wrote: »

I have read the book myself thank you. It is true that Black is an argumentative and tendentious writer.

So have I unfortunately and no argument there.

gizmo555 wrote: »

You may disagree with his conclusions, but the facts in the book and the article I referenced speak for themselves and IBM has never denied any of them.

What are the facts of that book ? There is an over abundance of information but next to none of it is actually relevant when you break it down.

There are chapters where the author switches to a narrative, going into great detective pulp fiction like detail describing ragged jews looking at shiny tabulating machines while dodging ss men who try to punch them whenever they get within range, all the while the ticking clock of high-drama ups the momentum, cut to 'Thomas J Watson steps from his limousine' followed by the punchline 'on madison avenue'. It's a ridiculous book for the most part.

gizmo555 wrote: »

Can I ask in particular why you persist in asserting that IBM was no longer supplying the Nazi regime by the time the war started, when this is manifestly untrue?

This is the level of flimsiness these allegations come down to ?

Dehomag was in Germany. Germany was at war. IBM had no direct control over the war, Germany or their subsidiary company Dehomag (think of a collection of sales representatives, a office building and a network of technicians on the ground) who were servicing the machines which were used by the germans to gather data. What the Germans did with the gathered data was also unknown to both Dehomag in Germany and IBM in new york.

gizmo555 wrote: »

As we have seen, after the invasion of Poland it established a subsidiary there which was under the direct control of IBM in the US until that country entered the war in December 1941.

You are referring to the 'general government' subsidiary ? So what ?

USA was not at war with Germany or Russia after both countries invaded Poland in 1939. They also had offices/subsidiaries in many capitals of europe.

gizmo555 wrote: »

We have also seen that Thomas Watson personally approved the supply of new equipment to the Nazis after the fall of Poland in 1939.

And this is an ominous fact ? Why ? In 1939 the USA were not at war with Germany. The full extent of what happened years later was at time unknown.

gizmo555 wrote: »

"We were only following orders" . . . that defence went down well at Nuremberg. Indeed, many of the industrialists you refer to were tried there. Of course, they didn't have the protection of a US owner.

What a glib response. If you had been a dehomag service technician (who was not drafted into the army due to your profession) would you (in Germany in 1944) knowing what you would have known at that time (not much), would you have put yourself into a firing squad or guillotine execution ?

As a form of protest against things which you would not have had much knowledge about ? As for example, a man with a family would you have done any different personally speaking to the germans working for dehomag who serviced the tabulating machines ?

marcsignal

It has to be said, on reflection, that many institutions had their part to play in the Holocaust, whether they were directly linked, or indirectly part of a chain.

Chase Manhattan Bank were also recently exposed for expropriating money from Jewish refugees trying to get into the U.S. from Europe. The Allies were also more than aware of the concentration camps. They were bombing targets around, and including, Auschwitz Monowitz, because the Germans were making synthetic fuel extracted from coal there.

Jewish groups in England pleaded with the powers that be, to do something, and on more than one occasion, junior officials, who were being canvassed by these groups, were told 'not to make any further requests of this nature' by their superiors.

It would seem that Holocaust complicity has cast a very very long and embarrassing shadow reaching far beyond Nazi Germanys borders.


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