IBM and the Holocaust (39 page)

Block-Brun's sales on behalf of IBM were often wrongly listed as "consignments," which meant IBM would have owned the devices until sale, paid tax immediately, and assumed all risk for war damage. IBM refused to honor any appearance of consignment. For example, in 1939, a shipment worth $12,134 was severely damaged. Block-Brun negotiated with IBM for years before IBM finally agreed to take the machines back via Sweden. Due to war conditions, the machines never made it back.
⁹⁹

After the Nazis invaded Poland, IBM maintained its punch card printing operation at Rymarska Street 6. Three printing machines and one card cutter employed just two people, using paper brought in from Germany. Ultimately, during the occupation years, the shop at Rymarska produced as many as 10 million cards per year.
¹⁰⁰

In 1939, Rymarska Street 6 stood along a very short, tree-lined lane, opposite a plaza fountain, just yards from the Jewish district that in 1940 would become the walled-in Warsaw Ghetto. The street itself had long possessed a Jewish character. In 1928, before IBM inhabited it, Rymarska 6 housed the Salon for Jewish Art. The property had been owned, at one point, by the Hirszfeld brothers. In addition to a gallery, the street had become known for print shops. Rymarska 8 housed the Pospieszna printer and the "Union" printer was a few doors down. But after the Nazis arrived, Jews lost their property to Aryan or Polish concerns. When, in 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was walled in, the often-adjusted perimeter cut right through Rymarska Street, oddly circumventing the print shops in an almost U-shaped deviation. Rymarska 1-5 and Rymarska 11-20 ended up within the Ghetto. Rymarska 6 and a few other shops remained outside the ghetto. Thus, most of the printing operations continued undisturbed.
¹⁰¹

Statistical operations resembling the Warsaw census were established in ghettos all across Poland. Although the incessant counts and voluminous card files were implemented and maintained by the
Judenrate
under merciless Nazi coercion, the vital statistics were not certified as final until they were approved by the fully equipped city statistical offices outside the ghetto walls. Ultimately, the ghettos developed elaborate statistical bureaus. In some cases, they were required to publish their own statistical yearbooks. The Czestochowa Ghetto's three statistical bulletins in 1940 totaled some 400 pages of detailed demographic and subsistence analysis.
¹⁰²

Poland was not the only focal point for Reich statistical action. A Statistical Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was opened in Prague in 1939. Data services were also opened in Upper Silesia and the Warthe region where IBM had transferred the territory to Dehomag.
¹⁰³

After the 1939 invasion, Heydrich of the Security Service, the official who had sent out the all-defining September 21 Express Letter, sent a follow-up cable to his occupying forces in Poland, Upper Silesia, and Czechoslovakia. This cable outlined how a new census scheduled for December 17, 1939, would escalate the process from mere identification and cataloging to deportation and execution as people were rapidly moved into Polish ghettos to await the next step.
¹⁰⁴

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. . . . It is projected that the census will take place on December 17, 1939."
¹⁰⁵

More than a half-million people were to be deported from the Warthe region alone, based on "Statistical information (census lists, etc.) from German and Polish sources, investigative results of the Security Police and the Security Service, and surveys . . . [which would] constitute the foundation."
¹⁰⁶

How long would it take to quantify and organize the deportation of millions from various regions across Eastern Europe based upon a December 17 census? Relying upon the lightning speed of Hollerith machines, Heydrich was able to assert, "That means the large-scale evacuation can begin no sooner than around January 1, 1940."
¹⁰⁷

Ultimately, the late December census took place over several days, from December 17 to December 23, 1939. Each person over the age of twelve was required to fill out census and registration in duplicate, and was then 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.
¹⁰⁸

December was a busy month for IBM's German subsidiary—and extremely profitable. Throughout Germany and the conquered territories, Dehomag frantically tried to keep up with the pace of unending censuses, registrations, and analyses of people, property, and military operations that required its equipment, repair services, and card processing. Millions of cards were printed each week just to meet the demand. Understandably, whereas Rottke had been incensed at Watson's initial refusal to transfer the alphabetizers as requested, all the hard feelings were now gone.

D
ECEMBER 6, 1939
Mr. Thomas J. Watson, President
International Business Machines Corporation
590 Madison Ave.
New York NY USA

Dear Mr. Watson:

As Christmas is approaching I feel an urgent desire to express to you and your family my most sincere and best wishes for a joyful Yule-tide. Mrs. Rottke and my two sons add their good wishes hereto. I take this opportunity to thank you again most heartily for the understanding by you in regard to my requests during the past year. I hope that the difficult times, which have come over the European nations once more, will not last too long. My family and I are enjoying good health, which I sincerely trust is also the case with yourself and your family.

With very kindest regards, I am
Very sincerely yours,
Herman Rottke
¹⁰⁹

In early 1940, IBM Geneva sent Watson a statement of Dehomag's 1939 profits. The numbers were almost double the previous year, totaling RM 3,953,721 even after all the royalty income and other disguised revenue. The Dehomag profit statement to Watson also explained that somehow almost half the 1939 profit, RM 1,800,000, was suddenly recorded in December 1939.
¹¹⁰

The strategic alliance with Hitler continued to pay off in the cities and in the ghettos. But now IBM machines would demonstrate their special value along the railways and in the concentration camps of Europe. Soon the Jews would become Hollerith numbers.

VIII WITH BLITZKRIEG EFFICIENCY

HITLER'S ARMIES SWARMED OVER EUROPE THROUGHOUT
the first months of 1940. The forces of the Reich slaughtered all opposition with a military machine unparalleled in human history.
Blitzkrieg
—lightning war—was more than a new word. Its very utterance signified coordinated death under the murderous onslaught of Hitler's massive air, sea, and 100,000-troop ground assaults. Nothing could stop Germany.

Nazi Europe—and Berlin's new world order—was becoming a reality.
Austria
: annexed in March 1938.
Sudetenland
: seized October 1938.
Czechoslovakia
: dismembered March 1939, and the Memel region ceded from Lithuania that same month.
Poland
: invaded September 1939. By January 1940, nearly 42 million people had come under brutal German subjugation. Disease, starvation, shattered lives, and fear became the desolate truth across the Continent.

The Jews were running out of refuges. One overrun sanctuary after another slid back into the familiar nightmare of registration, confiscation, and ghettoization. No sooner did the Swastika flag of occupation unfurl, than the anti-Semitic decrees rolled out. Eastern European countries not yet conquered emulated the pattern as German sympathizers and surrogates in Romania, Hungary, and Italy undertook Berlin's bidding to destroy local Jewish populations.

As the winter receded, the Reich prepared for further aggression. By spring 1940, Nazi Germany began dismembering Scandinavia and the Low Countries. April 9, the
Wehrmacht
invaded Denmark and Norway. Several days later, tiny Luxembourg was taken. May 15, Germany crushed Holland into complete submission. May 28, Belgium capitulated to German forces. During April and May, Germany's enslavement jurisdiction grew to 65 million Europeans.
¹

Cities across Europe smoldered in ruin. Warsaw was pulverized into a shambles. Rotterdam was mercilessly bombed even after its surrender on May 14 because, as Berlin propagandists explained, Dutch officials exceeded the ultimatum deadline by some twenty minutes. An elaborate Nazi newsreel, filmed by parachuting cameramen, showed Rotterdam almost completely aflame. Airports at Brussels and Antwerp were bombed and strafed by hundreds of
Luftwaffe
planes.
²

Nazi-commandeered trains crisscrossed the continent hauling into Germany looted coal, scrap metal, foodstuffs, machinery, and the other essentials Berlin craved. When they weren't carrying raw materials, or transporting troops, the railroad cars freighted conscripted labor en route to work projects as well as expelled Jews destined for concentration camps.
³

Mass executions, organized plunder, and ruthless invasion—these blared across the front pages of the newspapers, the frames of newsreels, and the broadcasts of radio news. Germany was portrayed in emotional headlines and feature articles as a savage, murderous nation bent on destroying and dominating all of Europe no matter how many people died. On April 2, Poland's exile government declared that in addition to a million prisoners and forced laborers transported to German work sites, an estimated 2.5 million had died as a result of military action, executions, starvation, or frigid homelessness. Headlines continued as the
New York Times
grossly exaggerated the five days of Germany's invasion of the Netherlands which commenced May 10; the newspaper claimed a quarter of the Dutch army was killed—more than 100,000 (even though the number was 2,200).
⁴

Moreover, millions of Jews were now clearly earmarked for death by virtue of Hitler's oppressive measures. In November 1939, the
New York
Times
published reports from Paris declaring that 1.5 million Jews trapped in Poland were in danger of starving to death. On January 21, 1940, World Jewish Congress Chairman Nahum Goldmann warned a Chicago crowd of 1,000, as well as wire service reporters, that if the war continued for another year 1 million Polish Jews would die of calculated starvation or outright murder. Such dire predictions only capped years of saturation media coverage about inhumane Jewish persecution and horrifying concentration camps.
⁵

Indeed, whenever Jewish persecution was reported, the media invariably reported the incessant registrations and censuses as Nazidom's initial step. The methodology, technology, and the connection to IBM were still far below public awareness. But some specifics were beginning to appear. For example, a March 2, 1940,
New York Times
article, entitled "Jews in Cracow Move to Ghettos," described how 80,000 Jews had been herded into overcrowded flats in a squalid urban district devoid of resources. "A common sight," the report asserted, "is the white armband with the blue Star of David, which all Jews must wear by government decree . . . [signifying] their registration in the government card file."
⁶

Only with great caution could Watson now publicly defend the Hitler agenda, even through euphemisms and code words. Most Americans would not tolerate anyone who even appeared to be a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator. So, as he had done since
Kristallnacht
in late 1938, Watson continued to insert corporate distance between himself and all involvement in the affairs of his subsidiaries in Nazi Europe—even as he micro-managed their day-to-day operations. More than ever, he now channeled his communications to Nazi Europe through trusted intermediaries in Geneva and elsewhere on the Continent. He controlled subsidiary operations through attorneys and employees acting as nominee owners, following the pattern set in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
⁷

In May 1940, as American society prepared for an inevitable war with Hitler, Watson worked to secure the underpinnings of his public image. He intensified his advocacy for peace, and against all war.

"Universal peace is one of the most desirable, most worthwhile ideals in the world today," Watson insisted in a May 4 speech to reporters. "It cannot be sold by a few people working in widely scattered communities. The project requires a worldwide organization of enthusiastic, hard-working individuals selling the gospel of peace."
⁸
Watson advertised IBM as such an organization.

Four days later, on May 8, Watson told reporters that the company's latest course held in Endicott, New York, for IBM sales representatives from twenty-four countries was to "enable the students . . . to make greater contributions to the cause of world peace through world trade."
⁹

Watson's advocacy for peace was limitless. May 13, 1940, was proclaimed IBM Day at the World's Fair being held that month in New York. IBM Day was nothing less than an extravaganza of orchestrated adulation for the company. A dozen chartered trains brought in 7,000 IBM employees and their wives from company facilities across the nation to visit the architectonic IBM Pavilion. Each IBMer wore a red ribbon of solidarity with the company. Two thousand lucky ones were chosen to be feted at a massive Waldorf-Astoria dinner. Special congratulations to IBM, as usual, were issued by leading politicians from President Roosevelt to the Mayor of New York. To underscore the drama, Watson commissioned an original orchestral work,
The IBM Symphony,
a bombastic composition dedicated to the uplifting spirit of the firm.
¹⁰