[IP] more on Gypsies win right to sue IBM over role in Holocaust
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Bernard A. Galler" <galler@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 23, 2004 8:15:30 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: i-p@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Gypsies win right to sue IBM over role in Holocaust
** We published two articles on this in the Annals. Here are the
summaries, as found on the Annals web site
(http://www.computer.org/annals/).
Fall 1994 (Vol. 16, No. 3)
pp. 25-39 Locating the Victim: An Overview of Census-Taking, Tabulation
Technology, and Persecution in Nazi Germany
David Martin Luebke, Sybil Milton
Nazi persecution of racial victim groups presupposed not only precise
legal definitions and close cooperation among multiple governmental
agencies, but also sophisticated technical procedures for locating
those groups according to complex age, occupational, and racial
criteria. This article shows how a variety of administrative tools -
including two national censuses, a system of resident registration, and
several special racial databases - were used to locate groups
eventually slated for deportation and death, as well as the possible
role played in this process by Hollerith tabulation technology.
Patterns in the expulsion of Jews from Germany suggest that aggregate
census data may have been used to guide this process as well. The
precise role played by punched-card tabulation technology remains a
matter of speculation. However, it is certain that as early as 1933,
Nazi officials and statisticians envisioned a future in which the
racial characteristics and vital statistics of every resident would be
monitored through tabulation technology in a system of comprehensive
surveillance. While the' "final solution" was in no sense caused by the
availability of sophisticated census-taking and tabulation
technologies, concrete evidence suggests that Hollerith machines
rationalized the management of concentration camp labor, an important
element in the Nazi program of "extermination through work."
========================================================================
=
April-June 1997 (Vol. 19, No. 2)
pp. 31-45 Locating the Victims: The Nonrole of Punched Card Technology
and Census Work
Friedrich W. Kistermann
This article is designed to provide information regarding the
development of punched card technology for use in both census and
commercial applications. After describing the different types of
technology and how they were used, this article provides a detailed
description of census requirements-and, in particular, the German
censuses of 1925, 1933, and 1939-in an effort to counter arguments that
German authorities used the results of these censuses during the
Holocaust period. Extensive references are provided to enable others to
have access to information from that era.
Begin forwarded message:
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 23, 2004 3:38:37 AM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Gypsies win right to sue IBM over role in Holocaust
Hi Dave:
I don't know whether this has yet been carried in the US media, but if
not thought you might want it for IP.
Cheers
Brian
From today's (UK) Guardian:
Gypsies win right to sue IBM over role in Holocaust
Ian Traynor
Wednesday June 23, 2004
The Guardian
A Swiss appeals court yesterday ruled that the US computer giant IBM
may have helped Adolf Hitler pursue mass murder more quickly and more
efficiently than would otherwise have been possible, opening up the
prospect of a $12bn lawsuit against the company by Gypsy organisations.
In the first case of its kind, the Geneva-based Girca organisation -
Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action, representing
around 600 Roma associations - won an appeal and the right to sue IBM
after a lower court last year dismissed the case on the grounds that
Switzerland did not have jurisdiction on the matter.
IBM's pioneering punch cards and prototype computer systems were used
by the Nazis to systematise and collate information on the Jewish
population and others under the Third Reich from the 1930s, an
operation that oiled the wheels of the Holocaust.
At least 600,000 Gypsies as well as six million Jews were ultimately
murdered.
A book published three years ago documented how the model capitalist
firm was implicated in mass murder.
The book, by Edwin Black, the son of Polish Holocaust survivors who
has also written that Hitler's extermination policy was partly inspired
by American eugenicists of the early 20th century, was the trigger for
the initial lawsuit in Switzerland, launched in January 2002 and
dismissed last year.
News of the appeal court ruling came yesterday from the Gypsies'
lawyer, Henri-Philippe Sambuc, who argues that Geneva was the nerve
centre of IBM's European operations in the 1930s. He told the
Associated Press news agency that IBM's Geneva office organised
business between the Nazis and IBM operations across Europe.
The litigation is being pursued on behalf of five European Gypsies who
were orphaned in the Holocaust. Each is claiming $20,000 (£11,000) in
"moral" compensation from IBM.
. . .
Full story at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1245090,00.html
--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon
Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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--
Bernard A. Galler
E-mail: galler@xxxxxxxxx
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Fax: 734-668-9998
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