IBM and the Holocaust (Edwin Black) pp196-7
196 IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST .
… mechanisms at Block-Brun’s own risk, requiring the Polish agency to pay the import freight to Warsaw. These parts were not sold into Poland by Dehomag, , but directly by IBM either in New York or Europe. Watson required Block-Brun to pay the import fees. All sales were final with Block-Brun immediately assuming ownership once the apparatuses were ordered. But IBM’s term often allowed the agency to pay into the Bank Handlowy account only after the merchandise was sold, generally six to fifteen months after receipt. IBM was receiving the money for years after the invasion.
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.
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.
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 point, by the Hirszfeld brothers. In addition to a gallery, the street 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.
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 totalled some 400 pages of demographic and subsistence analysis.
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.
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 cataloguing to deportation and execution as people were rapidly moved into Polish ghettos to await the next step.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 finger-printed. 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.
December was a busy month for IBM’s German subsidiary – and …
Tgk1946's Blog 