IBM and the Holocaust

by Edwin Black

  Once the United States entered the war, Axis custodians would be appointed as titular directors of subsidiaries in occupied territory. But these enemy custodians never looted the IBM divisions. Rather, they zealously protected the assets, extended productivity, and increased profits. Existing IBM executives were kept in place as day-to-day managers and, in some instances, even appointed deputy enemy custodians. In France, for example, although SS Officer Heinz Westerholt was appointed enemy custodian of CEC, he, in turn, appointed Dehomag’s Oskar Hoermann as deputy custodian. CEC’s Roger Virgile continued as managing director to keep the company profitable and productive. In Belgium, Nazi custodian H. Garbrecht remained aloof, allowing IBM managers Louis Bosman and G. Walter Galland to remain in place and virtually in command. In Germany, Dehomag’s board of directors was superseded by custodian Hermann Fellinger. Fellinger replaced Heidinger, and then insisted that Rottke, Hummel, and all the other managers in Dehomag’s twenty offices continue producing record profits.7 Whether overseen by Nazi executives or Watson’s own, IBM Europe thrived.

  In the later war years, as the Allies moved across the western and eastern fronts, various liberated or about-to-be liberated territories emerged as exempt from prohibited trading under General Ruling 11. Sometimes the applicable regulations changed on an almost daily basis. IBM NY or IBM Geneva would tenaciously check with American authorities for permission to communicate or transact with previously proscribed subsidiaries. When direct contact was not possible, American legations passed the messages as a courtesy.8

  During IBM’s continuing wartime commerce, the world was always aware that the machinery of Nazi occupation was being wielded to exterminate as many Jews as possible as quickly as possible. After endless newspaper and newsreel reports, and once the Allies confirmed their own intelligence revelations in summer 1942, the conclusion became inescapable: Germany’s goal was nothing short of complete physical extermination of all European Jewry. On December 17, 1942, the Allies finally declared there would be “war crime” trials and punishment. The Allies warned that all who cooperated with Hitler’s genocide would be held responsible before the bar of international justice. In Parliament, members rose in awed silence as one MP rang out, “There are many today who… but for the grace of God… might have been in those ghettos, those concentration camps, those slaughterhouses.” The Allies’ joint declaration of war crimes for genocide was broadcast and published as the top news in more than twenty-three languages the world over.9

  A New York Times article was headlined “Allies Describe Outrages on Jews,” and sub-headlined “Extermination Is Feared.” It led: “What is happening to the 5,000,000 Jews of German-held Europe, all of whom face extermination.” The Allied report emphasized calculated starvation, group gassing, mass shooting, ghetto street scenes “beyond imagination,” and intense deportation campaigns by railroad.10

  IBM’s business was never about Nazism. It was never about anti-Semitism. It was always about the money. Before even one Jew was encased in a hard-coded Hollerith identity, it was only the money that mattered. And the money did accrue.

  Millions in blocked bank accounts scattered across Europe were waiting for IBM, as well as its newly acquired real estate, numerous Hitler-era factories and presses, and thousands of Hollerith machines. Much of the money and plant expansion was funded by a fundamentally bankrupt Third Reich, which financed its rapacious operations by slave labor, massive plunder, and cost-effective genocide. Where did Hitler’s Germany get the money to pay for all the services, cards, and leases? Nazi gold and currency was fungible—whether carted away from banks in Prague or pried from the teeth of Jewish carcasses at Treblinka. The Reich could afford the best. And it purchased the best with the assets it stole.

  Managing overseas branches and conducting commerce within the broken lines of changing wartime regulations was itself an intensive effort. Each IBM subsidiary in Europe spawned its own epic collection of bureaucratic correspondence, spanning months and even years. Life and death dramas became daily realities in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and elsewhere as IBM employees and Hollerith technology intersected with the victors and vanquished of Nazi Europe.

  World War II finally ended in Europe on May 8, 1945. Almost immediately, IBM rushed in to recover its machines and bank accounts from enemy territory. The wealth of stories could take many volumes to chronicle, but this much was clear: there was no realm where IBM would not trade, and none where they failed to collect—country by country.

  * * *

  ROMANIA’S ANTI-JEWISH campaign was in full force by fall 1940. Germany had already inspired a murderously anti-Semitic regime in Bucharest. Romanian strong man Marshal Ion Antonescu’s Fascist regime had replicated Reich anti-Semitic laws of professional ousters and property confiscation. Rapidly in 1940, Romania pauperized thousands of Jews in a highly publicized campaign. Soon forced Jewish labor decrees and sporadic pogroms across Romania were breeding the usual headlines.11

  For example, in January 1941, squads of vicious Iron Guard militants rampaged through Bucharest brutally massacring scores of Jewish residents. Some 120 Jews were beaten, mercilessly bullwhipped and bludgeoned with metal rods. Some were made to drink from bloody basins. At the local slaughterhouse, several Jews were fiendishly dismembered.12

  Carnage in Bucharest and in other areas was followed by waves of official banishment for many to various regions and internment in camps. More than 100,000 Jews were thought to have been brutally murdered in the riparian provinces during summer 1941. Yet Eichmann and other Nazis at times tried to restrain their Romanian allies because the Reich believed the random acts of violence were “planless and premature.”13 The Germans favored a more orderly, comprehensive, and scientific approach that would systematically annihilate all of Romanian Jewry.

  Population estimates in Romania were wildly exaggerated. The previous census, held in 1930, counted 756,930 individuals who routinely identified themselves as Jewish. The scheduled 1940 census lacked funding and was delayed. But by spring 1941, German experts estimated that as many as half of Romania’s Jewish citizens had already been murdered, deported, or had fled as refugees.14

  Nonetheless, hysterical speculation in the Romanian press suggested as many as 2 million Jews remained within the country. The speculation was based on a misreading of the prior census. The 1930 summaries reported that of the 756,930 practicing Jews, 728,000 considered themselves “ethnic Jews” even if not religious, and 519,000 primarily spoke Yiddish. Wrongly, those three numbers were added together by some Romanians to create a false total of 2 million. Only a proper, up-to-date census could answer what Nazi raceologists called “the Jewish question” in Romania.15

  Eventually, the new census was scheduled for April 1941. This would be no ordinary household count, but rather a comprehensive inventory of every individual, enterprise, farmland, animal, building, profession, and asset in Romania. The counting itself would span ten days. German statisticians and IBM would assist in every way. Friedrich Burgdorfer, President of the Bavarian Statistical Office, was invited to attend as an official observer, accompanied by Dehomag expert Ludwig Hummer.16

  W. C. Lier confirmed in a letter to Chauncey in New York, “As regards the Census… neither we nor the Dehomag have been able to obtain any precise information as regards the specifications of the machines which are needed in Bucharest. I agreed, exceptionally, to Mr. Hummer going to Bucharest together with a representative of the German Statistical Office in order to analyze the whole situation. The commercial side of these two subjects has been dealt with direct with Mr. Schotte and Mr. Milner.”17

  The Romanian business was not in Dehomag’s portfolio. It was an enterprise of IBM NY. Watson had been preparing for the Romanian census for years. “During 1940,” J. C. Milner wrote Headquarters in 1938, “the census will be taken in several countries, and we expect a number of orders.” Milner hoped Endicott could develop a special IBM census tabulator in time.18

  The population segm
ent of Romania’s sweeping ten-day count was scheduled for April 6, 1941. Article 2 of the census decree required a special Jewish census on April 11 and 12. The entire nation mobilized. Posters were prominently displayed in post offices, hotels, and public buildings. Radio programs, editorials, and presidential speeches encouraged everyone to cooperate. For accuracy’s sake, volunteers were shunned in favor of 29,000 paid census takers, each responsible for about 120 households. The women hired to punch the Hollerith cards were mainly high school graduates, which in itself was thought to increase the processing accuracy. One thousand inspectors would oversee the overall endeavor. Even Burgdorfer admitted in a journal article that Romania’s Central Statistical Institute was “unusually well-equipped.”19

  Questions designed to pinpoint so-called “race Jews” were included in both the Jewish and general census questionnaires. The religion question not only asked for an individual’s current faith, but also his religion at birth; the same information was solicited about the person’s father and mother. Under the ethnicity and mother tongue categories, similar questions were posed for both the individual and again for his parents. Ethnicity questions were also asked in the agricultural census and job census. Even the commercial ownership survey solicited responses from businessmen about their Jewish partners and employees. The mass of overlapping data would enable IBM tabulators to triangulate on the intended target: anyone of Jewish ancestry—even if the person were unaware of it.20

  Specially trained enumerators worked one-on-one to evoke true ethnic responses from the population. One report indicated that when a Gypsy declined to admit his ethnicity, the suspicious census taker finally said, “Now, write: Gypsy.”21

  Romania’s census was intended to identify all the nation’s Jews, even if they were refugees or interned in concentration camps. So IBM’s punch card was designed to record such designations as “temporarily absent” for refugees and “concentrated” (that is, located in a concentration camp). Summing up in a journal article, Burgdorfer praised the census as “an extraordinarily extensive (maybe too vast) program of registration… the Jewish question is treated in great detail.”22

  Because the Romanian census involved not just individuals, but livestock, property, professions, businesses, and virtually every other aspect of Romanian life, more IBM machines would be needed. In fall 1941, shortly after Chauncey left Germany at the height of Dehomag’s revolt, Lier arrived in Berlin to represent IBM NY’s interest. He wanted to make sure that Rottke and Hummel could be relied upon to carry out IBM projects elsewhere in Europe. Previously, when Chauncey had inquired whether tabulators had been dispatched to Romania, Hummel responded with what might seem a lack of initiative. “We have not furnished any to Romania,” replied Hummel. He seemed to be waiting for direct orders, saying, “If Geneva gives us an order for Romania, we will fill it.”23

  For Lier, Romania was clearly a priority. “One of the first matters discussed with them,” Lier reported to Chauncey on October 10, 1941, “was that of the Romanian census and the machines destined for this business, which are actually blocked in Poland.” The day before, Lier had sent a more formal letter to Watson to allay any concerns: “On the occasion of my visit to Berlin,” Lier wrote, “I also settled a few pending matters, such as the machines blocked in Poland [and] the Romanian census… I am addressing separate reports to the executives concerned in New York.”24

  Lier felt that if only he could contact the Romanian Embassy, diplomats could use their connection with Reich offices in occupied Poland to forward the machines through the war zone. He called IBM’s best contact in Berlin, U.S. Commercial Attache, Sam Woods. “Thanks to Mr. Woods,” Lier reported to IBM NY, “I obtained an interview with the Romanian Commercial Attache who immediately endeavored to obtain the freeing of approximately seventeen machines at present blocked in Poland from the Devisenstelle [Foreign Currency Office] and the German Authorities… I have been given every assurance as to the satisfactory outcome of this demand.” Shortly thereafter, Lier did effect the transfer of Dehomag machines to IBM’s Romanian subsidiary.25

  A few days before Romania entered the war on June 22, 1941, Marshal Antonescu demanded lists of “all Jews, Communists and sympathizers in each region.” In addition, all Jews aged sixteen to sixty in towns between the Siret and Prut rivers were to be rounded up and immediately shipped to a concentration camp on already scheduled trains. It was all to be done in forty-eight hours. Half the eastern city of Iasi’s 100,000 population was Jewish. Identifying the victims in a lightning operation could have been an impossibility. But Antonescu’s Second Section intelligence unit, which monitored ethnic groups, relied on three statistical offices, including one in Iasi. The Romanians generated the names and addresses. An intelligence officer recalled that the Second Section was crucial “in paving the groundwork for the Iasi pogrom [in that] Junius Lecca, SSI station chief [of Iasi] had played a major role by supplying intelligence concerning Jewish residences and centers.”26

  Thousands of Iasi Jews were dragged from their homes, many still in their sleeping clothes. For several days, German and Romanian policemen and soldiers, as well as wild citizen mobs, perpetrated unspeakable violence on the identified. Corpses began piling onto the street as Jews were mercilessly clubbed to death with metal bars, rifles, and rocks, and then ceremoniously spat upon. Infants were not spared. Thousands more were loaded onto death trains where they would be viciously murdered in boxcars en route. As many as 13,000 painfully lost their lives.27

  In late 1941, the statistics on Jews yielded a total of 375,422 Jews still surviving in Romania. In January 1942, the Wannsee Conference Protocol listed the number as 342,000 including Bessarabia, but not including certain other regions.28

  A spring 1942 Jewish census showed that 300,000 Romanian Jews were still alive. On August 31, 1942, Antonescu reviewed not the spring data, but the late 1941 statistics. When he saw the number 375,422 Jews, he wrote, “a very large number.” Next to Bessarabia’s 6,900 Jews, he wrote, “Impossible! My order was to have all the Jews deported.” Even though the Bukovina figure of 60,708 Jews was about a year old, he scribbled in a rage, “Impossible. Please verify. My order stated that only ten thousand Jews should remain in Bukovina. Please check. This is fantastic! Judaized cities, simply, purely Judaized.”29

  By September 1942, Eichmann had readied a schedule for Romanian Railroads to transport some 280,000 of those Jews to Belzec’s gas chambers. But by now, Romania’s Antonescu was reluctant to cooperate further. Like other Nazi surrogates in Eastern Europe, Antonescu feared the onslaught of the Russians, and rumors circulated of a forthcoming war crimes announcement. Jewish bribes—including 100 million lei to Antonescu’s personal physician—also helped. The trains did not roll.30

  On November 17, 1943, Antonescu again reviewed census data with his generals. “According to the latest statistics we have now in Transnistria a little over 50,000 Jews,” said Antonescu. Adding 10,000 Jews from the Dorohoi area and others, Antonescu tallied “70,000 to 80,000.” General Constantin Vasilu objected, “There was some mistake. We have talked with Colonel Radulescu, who has carried out a census. There are now exactly 61,000.”31

  By the end of the war, after a bloody series of Romanian-German executions and deprivations, more than 270,000 Jews had been brutally killed or starved. Hundreds of thousands more died in bordering regions under Romania’s jurisdiction.32

  IBM’s subsidiary in Bucharest was incorporated on March 4, 1938, as Compania Electrocontabila Watson with approximately $240,000 in equipment, punch cards, and leaseable machines. Quickly, the unit became profitable. The subsidiary’s main clients were the Communications Ministry, census bureaus, statistical offices, and railroads. Watson’s decision to incorporate coincided with Romania embarking on an enhanced war footing. This martial program would include massive orders of Hollerith equipment and punch cards. IBM Europe was unable to fill all the leases requested by Bucharest, but it ramped up production to meet the need. IBM NY w
as kept apprised of the progress.33

  Company executives had worked with Romanian military committees early in the war to scrutinize each commercial installation in the country, identifying which could be requisitioned by the Ministry of War. These machines were to be relocated to secure sites in the countryside when fighting broke out. Special arrangements with the Romanian Ministry of War exempted IBM supervisors and engineers from the draft to assure continuity of service.34

  A few months after Lier arranged the shipment of seventeen additional machines from Poland to Bucharest, America declared war. Shortly thereafter, Romania was deemed enemy territory under General Ruling 11. But IBM needed to finalize commissions owed to the Italian bank in Bucharest that covered delivery guarantees. Writing on corporate letterhead co-equally displaying the name of IBM in New York and IBM Europe in Geneva, on June 18, 1942, Lier tried to secure from the American Commercial Attache in Bern a special license to pay the bank commissions. Lier wrote, “In the middle of last year, our Romanian company contracted a large order with the Romanian census authorities for the execution of the census of the population of Romania. Prior to giving that order to our Romanian company, the Romanian Government required a bank guarantee to be filed with the Banque Commerciale Italienne et Roumaine in Bucharest to cover the delivery of the equipment foreseen by the order… May we therefore request you to issue a license which would authorize us to cover the amount of Lei 111,348 by remitting this amount in Swiss Francs to the Societe de Banque Suisse in Geneva.”35