IBM and the Holocaust

A revised 2002 paperback edition provides additional evidence that IBM New York established a special subsidiary in Poland called Watson Business Machines to deal with railway traffic in the General Government. Edwin Black asserts that IBM did so after the Sept 1, 1939 Nazi Invasion of Poland, and continued this business relationship during the Holocaust in Poland. Watson Business Machines operated a punch card printing shop near the Warsaw Ghetto.[5]

In a 2002 editorial in the SFGate, Black maintains that this Polish subsidiary reported to IBM Geneva which in turn reported to IBM New York. Black further states that IBM's European general manager reported directly to Thomas Watson, Sr., that some machines in Poland were sent to Romania to assist in the Jewish census there, and that these Polish machines were later replaced.[6]

In his book, Black quotes Leon Krzemieniecki, the last surviving person involved in the Polish administration of the rail transportation to Auschwitz and Treblinka, as stating he knew the punched card machines were not German machines, because the labels were in English. Black claims that income from the machines leased in Poland was sent through Geneva to IBM in New York.[5][6]

Edwin Black claims that IBM not only leased Nazi Germany the machines, but then provided continuous maintenance service, and sold the spare parts and the special paper needed for the customized punch cards.[9]

No machines were sold – only leased. IBM was the sole source of all punch cards and spare parts. It serviced the machines on site either directly or through its authorized dealer network or field trainees. There were no universal punch cards. Each series of cards was custom-designed by IBM engineers to capture information going in and to tabulate information the Nazis wanted to extract.

— Edwin Black, on updates in 2002[6]

After the publication of Black's 2012 expanded edition, he wrote for the Huffington Post, "The punch cards, machinery, training, servicing, and special project work, such as population census and identification, was managed directly by IBM headquarters in New York, and later through its subsidiaries in Germany, known as Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG), Poland, Holland, France, Switzerland, and other European countries." He added that the punch cards bore the indicia of the German subsidiary Dehomag.[10]

While IBM has never directly denied any of the evidence posed by the book, it has criticized Black's research methodology and accusatory conclusions.[11] IBM claimed it does not have any other information about the company during its World War II period or the operations of Dehomag, as it argued most documents were destroyed or lost during the war.[12]

IBM also claimed that an earlier dismissed lawsuit, initiated by lawyers representing concentration camp survivors, was filed in 2001 to coincide with Black's book launch.[12] Lawyers for the Holocaust victims acknowledged the timing of the lawsuit to coincide with Black's book release, explaining their public relations strategies played an important role in their record of achieving Nazi-era settlements totaling more than $7 billion without winning a judgment.[13]

After the publication of Black's updated 2002 paperback edition, IBM responded by stating they weren't convinced there were any new findings and there was no proof IBM had enabled the Holocaust.[5][7] IBM rejected Black's claim that IBM was hiding information and records regarding its World War II era.[14] Several years previously IBM had given its corporate records of the period to academic archives in New York and Stuttgart, Germany, for review by independent scholars.[7]

In 2010 Black reported on unidentified Wikipedia editors marginalizing his research on IBM's role in the Holocaust.[15] It is not clear whether the editors involved were IBM employees, but Black states that, "[they were] openly fortified by official IBM corporate archivist Paul Lasewicz using his real name, and others"; Black nevertheless calls Lasewicz a "man of integrity" and points out that he deferred taking the lead because of potential conflict of interest and then recused himself entirely.[16][17]

Newsweek called the book "explosive", adding, "backed by exhaustive research, Black's case is simple and stunning".[18] 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.[19]

Richard Bernstein, writing for The New York Times Book Review on the original 2001 first edition, 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".[20] IBM quoted this claim in a March 2002 press release "Addendum to IBM Statement on Nazi-era Book and Lawsuit".[14]

However, after the publication of the updated paperback edition in 2002, Oliver Burkeman wrote for The Guardian, "The paperback provides the first evidence that the company's dealings with the Nazis were controlled from its New York headquarters throughout the second world war."[5]

In a 2015 article, the Electronic Frontier Foundation described Black's book as "well-researched and well-regarded".[21]

Social economist and professor Ross Honeywill wrote about Black's investigative research for a 2015 book, citing Black's 2012 expanded edition. Honeywill described how Black revealed IBM's Hollerith system was used to identify, sort, assign, and transport millions in Europe during the Holocaust, particularly in the death camps.[22]

Several reviews of the 2001 first edition made the criticism that Black made valid points, but also overstated at times.

In a 2001 review in the Los Angeles Times, historian and UCLA professor Saul Friedlander wrote, "The author convincingly shows the relentless efforts made by IBM to maximize profit by selling its machines and its punch cards to a country whose criminal record would soon be widely recognized. Indeed, Black demonstrates with great precision that the godlike owner of the corporation, Thomas Watson, was impervious to the moral dimension of his dealings with Hitler's Germany and for years even had a soft spot for the Nazi regime."[23] However, Friedlander pointed to the fact of the near total deportation of foreign Jews from France as contrasted with the majority of French Jews surviving the Holocaust, and made the point that if IBM's role was so essential, this may not have been the case. He was also critical of Black's claim that IBM continued to engage in illegal transactions all through WWII by using Geneva as a base of operations, because Black only provided two New York Times articles to buttress this claim.[23]

In another review of the first edition, David Cesarani of Southampton University stated that Black made valid points but also overstated at times. He agreed that Black provided "shocking evidence" that IBM in America continued to provide punch cards and other services to the Nazis "in defiance of Allied regulations against trading with the enemy." Yet Cesarani also thought Black de-emphasized other important facts.[24]

In a 2001 review of the first edition in The Atlantic, Jack Beatty wrote, "I have read four other negative reviews of this book, and they all share what to me is a surprising feature: they are more critical of Edwin Black (with The Times pointing out that he has written for Redbook magazine and another reviewer that he is not a college graduate) who wrote a book, than of Thomas Watson, who made the damnable choices recorded in that book." Beatty did, however, criticize the subtitle of Black's book "The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation", pointing out that in the 1930s and 1940s, IBM was nowhere near the most powerful corporation in the United States.[9] On the other hand, Beatty stated that Black did provide evidence to qualify his claim that IBM punch card technology made a large difference between Holland and France. Holland had long included religion in census information, whereas France did not. In addition, Holland had an energetic bureaucrat doing their census, and France, in contrast had a moral hero who obstructed the Nazis, and in fact ended up losing his life for this effort. Beatty says that Black was honest in including these facts.[9]

Oliver Burkeman's 2002 review for The Guardian, published after the updated paperback edition, stated that the earlier first edition of Black's book was more sketchy in tracing the connection between the U.S. headquarters of IBM and its European operations, but that the updated edition resolved some of those criticisms.[5]

Reuters reported in 2002 that historians on Black's research team stated the paperback edition had used newly discovered Nazi documents and Polish eyewitness testimony to link IBM's U.S. operations directly to the Third Reich operations in Poland. The updated paperback edition was published after Black's first edition opened up debate on how central IBM technology may have been during the Holocaust. The paperback edition pieced together the previously fragmented story.[7]