IBM and the Holocaust (31 page)

Personal data that could not be tabulated by an organization for lack of an on-site Hollerith system were assembled on simple handwritten cards, forms, or copied onto registries that were forwarded to race offices and security services for punching and sorting. Churches were among the leading sources of such information. Their antique, ornately bound church books were often bulky and difficult to work with so supply companies developed a variety of index cards in various sizes designed to facilitate the tracing of ancestry. Often the process was awkward and anything but fast.
⁷⁰

One small church office in Braunlage in the Harz Mountains was typical when it complained in a letter to the
Reichssippenamt,
the Reich's leading raceology agency, that the cards were too small and the data too large. "We have received samples of cards for the carding of church books," wrote Pastor Stich. "Once we started to work with these cards, we noticed that these are rather small. . . . For [those of] us who are doing the work and bearing the costs, it is important we record not just some of the data, but all of the data, so that each card gives complete information about ancestry. . . . we are not served well if we have to open and move the pages of the heavy and irreplaceable church books." Pastor Stich asked for larger index cards, making clear, "We are glad to serve the cause . . . and ready to do the job right."
⁷¹

The
Reichssippenamt
promptly replied, "The primary function of the carding of church books is that it makes the research easier and at the same time preserves the church book. . . . if you follow my guidelines for an alphabetical name index, then use of the church books itself should be reduced by a factor of fifty."
⁷²

Local NSDAP leadership in Dusseldorf debated whether cards should be filed phonetically or alphabetically. Either way, the office felt it wise to color code the cards. "Whenever full Jews or mixed Jews appear," a local official wrote, "the former are marked by a red line, the latter by a blue line. However, both also receive a tab. Without the tab, the red and blue lines could otherwise not be easily identified after the sorting and filing has taken place."
⁷³

Detailed instructions were developed for recording baptisms to make sure Jews could not hide their identity through conversion. "For every Jewish baptism," the instructions read, "two double cards are to be filled out in addition to the normal card. (One for the
Reichssippenamt
and one for the file of Persons of Foreign Descent in the Berlin central office). With name changes (for example, the Jew Israel receives the family name Leberecht through baptism), the Christian or Jewish name is to be entered in parentheses in the field for family name." The name was then coded R, and the Jew's occupation and address were to be written on the reverse side.
⁷⁴

To help standardize methods, the Publishing House of Registry Office Matters published a guide entitled
How Do I Card Church Books?
⁷⁵

So precise were the tabulations that, in some areas, the authorities had identified people considered "sixteenth Jews." The county of Bautzen, for example, summarized its extensive race tracking in a December 5, 1937 study, bragging that it had expanded the local Race Political Office from four employees to twenty-one during the previous two and a half years, with additional race experts deployed in local Party offices as well as women's associations. "For the entire county area," officials asserted, "there exists a file for Jews, Half-Jews, Quarter-Jews, Eighth-Jews, etc. with the following information: name, residence, occupation, date of birth, place of birth, citizenship, religion . . . spouse, children, ancestors." As a result, local officials had identified 92 [full] Jews, 40 half-Jews, 19 quarter-Jews, 5 eighth-Jews, and 4 sixteenth-Jews "whose connections are continuously observed."
⁷⁶

Race offices developed a mutual help network that constantly traded and updated their data. For example, Bautzen's information collection was helped by registries from the State Health Offices; those offices were tabulated by Hollerith systems. In June 1938, 339 local labor offices took a so-called "labor census" of 22,300,000 German workers employed in approximately 247 occupational groups and subsets; the labor agencies also exchanged information assembled by Dehomag. Eichmann's office
Referat
II 112, the Jewish Section of the Main Security Office, traded its synagogue and church sects lists with the
Reichssippenamt
; both offices used Hollerith systems.
⁷⁷

The exponential growth of demand for Dehomag services spurred Watson to push his entire organization to manufacture more German machines faster. He even pushed his German managers at Dehomag to break production records. In mid-June, Watson agreed to add equipment and work space if the German subsidiary could double its output. IBM managers in Paris monitored Dehomag's monthly progress, and asked for hard numbers. By the end of 1937, Rottke was able to report to IBM that monthly punch card production was at 74 million per month, production of horizontal sorters would double from 15 to 30 per month, tabulating machines would increase from 18 per month to 20 per month, multiplying punches would double from 5 to 10 per month, and counters would rise from 200 to 250 per month.
⁷⁸

To speed production, IBM approved the purchase of more machine tools for the assembly shops. Three inclinable presses, a jig bore, five 6- spindle drill presses, four vertical drill presses, five bench drills, and a variety of milling machines, saws, grinders, lathes, and screw presses.
⁷⁹

In early June 1938, IBM again pushed for greater productivity. Holt reminded IBM's Paris-based European Factory Manager J G. Johnston, "Mr. Watson states that you told him last year . . . it should be possible to produce twice the number of parts [at Sindelfingen] . . . Mr. Rottke informs us that only 60% of the parts are now being manufactured at Sindelfingen." Johnston traveled to Berlin immediately, and reported back in minute detail on proposed expansion plans, explaining on a veritable floor-by-floor basis which improvements had been approved by Watson, and which were still awaiting permission. Watson's consent was required for even the smallest change in factory layout. For example, wrote Johnston, "if we should obtain the authorization of Mr. Watson for the shaded part of the plan for the new building, we could expect an increase of 3 x 462 sq. meters or a total of 1,386 sq. meters space . . . which increase would be sufficient for our needs for some length of time."
⁸⁰

Johnston assured Holt, "The figure of 60 of the total output of parts now being manufactured in Sindelfingen will be greatly increased." He stressed that many of the new machine tools were just being delivered and would be brought on line soon.
⁸¹
More machines would be built—faster, better, cheaper.

Europe was hurtling toward all-out war. Dehomag would be ready.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA WAS NEXT.

Hitler, in 1938, demanded the largely Germanic Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia be handed to the Reich. Not only were there 3 million German-speaking residents in the Sudetenland, but Czechoslovakia possessed the raw materials that Hitler coveted. German generals had already drawn up invasion plans. But hoping to avert war, Britain and France, in tandem with Italy, negotiated with Hitler for a compromise.
⁸²

After dramatic ups and downs, the last-minute Munich Pact of September 30, 1938, ceded the Sudetenland to Germany as of the next day. The deal was called appeasement and was foisted upon Czechoslovakia by the European powers without regard for the Czech nation.
⁸³

On October 1, 1938, German forces moved in according to a prearranged takeover schedule. Within hours of entering any town, it was transformed. Streets and buildings were bedecked with Nazi bunting and swastika flags. For months, highly organized Sudeten Nazis functioned as a vanguard for the oppression to come, burning Jewish homes and boycotting Jewish stores. Now they ensured that Jewish shops were smeared with white paint.
⁸⁴
No one doubted what would come next.

By October 2, thousands of Jews flooded across the new border by car, train, and on foot into what remained of Czechoslovakia.
⁸⁵

Jews remaining behind found themselves identified, in spite of their highly assimilated Czech national character. Nazi contingents would systematically appear on their streets, drag families from their homes, herd them into trucks, and either deliver them to concentration camps or dump them penniless on the border with remnant Czechoslovakia. Many women and children, already beaten and bloody, were forced to cross the frontier crawling on their hands and knees, some on their bellies. Soon, their overwhelming numbers—as many as 40,000 had either fled or been expelled—were too much for the Czechs. Nor were the Czechs willing to provoke the Germans by seeming to create a refuge for deported Jews. The Czechs refused them entry.
⁸⁶

Ousted from the Sudetenland, and barred from the reduced Czechoslovakia, thousands of expelled Jews were now stranded in slender tracts of no-man's land between border crossings. Dispossessed of everything, hundreds dwelled in roadside ditches, completely exposed to the elements without food, water, sanitation, or an understanding of how they had been identified or why they were suffering this fate. South of Bruenn, 150 huddled beneath hedges. Near Kostitz: 52 people. Outside Reigern: 51 people. Food shipments sent by relief committees were blocked by Czech guards, German soldiers, or Party stalwarts. Then came rains to magnify their misery and muddy their nightmare.
⁸⁷

The agony of these ditch people became an on-going spectacle for the world's media. They survived from moment to moment only on the morsels of food thrown in pity by passersby transiting the borders and disregarding prohibitions on aid. When the trapped Jews were finally forced back to the German side, vicious mobs of jeering Nazis brutalized them.
⁸⁸

But the Sudetenland was not enough for Hitler. In early 1939, the Third Reich pressured Czechoslovakia to commence its own anti-Jewish ousters, including those Jews who had fled Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia complied, hoping to forestall an invasion. At 6
A.M.
on March 15, 1939, the Reich invaded anyway. German troops pushed into all of Moravia and Bohemia. Hitler declared the whole of Czechoslovakia a Reich Protectorate under the iron-handed rule of appointed Governors. Now all of Czech Jewry would be decimated. A staccato of anti-Semitic registrations, expulsions, and confiscations soon descended upon all of what was once known as Czechoslovakia.
⁸⁹

Within days, newspapers were reporting the same sorrowful fate for Czech Jewry as experienced elsewhere. Doctors and merchants were expelled from their posts and professional associations. Synagogues were burned. Signs forbidding Jews at cafes and other stores appeared.
⁹⁰

The suicides began. Thirty per day in Prague. In Chicago, a number of Czech refugees who had been admitted on temporary visas formed a "suicide colony." One member of the colony was Mrs. Karel Langer, who ended her family's life in the Congress Hotel. First she hurled her two young boys, six and four years of age, out of the window of the thirteenth floor. She leapt after them just seconds later. Police recovered all three bodies from the Michigan Avenue sidewalk.
⁹¹

Registration of property and family members was extended not only to those who outwardly practiced Judaism, but those defined by the Nuremberg Laws as having three and in some cases, two, Jewish grandparents. An estimated 200,000 would be involved.
⁹²

IBM was already in Czechoslovakia. Shortly after Hitler came to power, IBM NY had established a service bureau in Prague. The first school for Czech salesmen was opened in 1935 about the time the Nuremberg Laws were passed. In November 1936, Watson approved a card printing plant in a small town near Prague, where sixteen printers and two cutting machines were installed. Some months later, as IBM ramped up operations, the company protested when Czech Customs changed the company's tariff classification from simplistic mechanical punches to statistical machines.
⁹³

In 1937, Georg Schneider was hired as an additional salesman for Prague. Within about a year, Schneider was transferred to Dehomag in Berlin "as a salesman and studying the German organization." He met Watson in Berlin, as well as the company's leading Swiss-based supervisors. By that time, Czechoslovakian State Railways was utilizing 52.2 million punch cards per year. In 1939, IBM Geneva and Dehomag agreed that Schneider should return to Prague, where about sixty employees worked, as the new co-manager working with Director Emil Kuzcek. At about that time, the Reich opened the Statistical Office for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, located in Prague. IBM did not list itself in Czech commercial registries as owning its own subsidiary. Instead, the subsidiary's 200,000 Korunas value was held 102,000 by IBM's attorney in Prague, Stefan Schmid, and 98,000 by IBM's European General Manager John Holt, both men acting as nominees for IBM NY.
⁹⁴