IBM and the Holocaust tells the story of the involvement of this major US corporation in the establishment of Hitler's Third Reich and the destruction of European Jewry.
Author Edwin Black shows how technology developed in America by Herman Hollerith?a punch card and punch card sorting system?enabled the Nazis to organise their war machine and carry through the efficient and systematic genocide of the Jews. At the time of the Nazi dictatorship, IBM had a near worldwide monopoly over the technology and the production of its vital ingredient?the punch cards.
Edwin Black is not new to the subject of the Holocaust. His parents were both Jews of European decent and survivors of the Holocaust. Black first encountered the punch card technology at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where he saw a Hollerith card sorting machine on exhibition. He explains that it was then that questions started to nag at him?what role did this machine play for the Nazis? What was the role of IBM? This became the starting point for his investigation. In 1998, he began to pursue these questions vigorously, recruiting a team of researchers, interns, translators and assistants, until it comprised more than 100 people.
In his introduction, Black explains "I was fortunate to have an understanding of Reich economics and multi-national commerce from my earlier book, The Transfer Agreement, [which dealt with the secret pre-war agreement between Zionism and the Nazis that enabled a limited number of Jews to leave Germany for Palestine] as well as a background in the computer industry, and years of experience as an investigative journalist specialising in corporate misconduct. I approached this project as a typical if not grandiose investigation of corporate conduct with one dramatic d ...