Libération article on Edwin Black

[Michel Ryckx]

The Febr. 14 issue of the French paper Libération had an article on the
Edwin Black book, quoting the Polish historian Franciszek Piper,
described as 'reknown specialist, working for years now on
Auschwitz-Birkenau'.  He's managing the historical department of the
Auschwitz museum.

Mr. Piper says that the IBM technology "has never been used wholly
('globalement') in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.  [snip]  However,
one cannot exclude that information concerning the inmates has been
transferred to Berlin or Oranienburg where these data were put into the
system."

"We have about 3,000 reports of camp survivors; of those [inmates]
working on the Work Register Cell ('cellule des Registres de travail')
none of them has noticed the existence of that kind of installation".
In fact, the journalist Maja Zoltowska goes on, the camp register was
held up to date in a traditional way: manually or by type writer.  On
the other hand, there were about 30,000 data sheets with the inscription
"Hollerith Rfasst".  These were "data sheets of inmates transferred from
the Mauthausen camp (Austria) that used the [IBM] system."

Asked why the IBM system was not used in Auschwitz, this historian says:
"In order to identify the victims during the first phase of the
Holocaust, it was useful to make up lists of persons before they were
arrested, of inmates transported to the camps and in order to select the
workman.  Once in Auschwitz, there was no other thing but
extermination.  The quantity of victims exterminated daily was beyond
the capacity of the system to function properly.  It was in fact more
useful for the work camps, in order to select the prisoners according to
their age or their profession."

Do not forget this is an amateur translation.

Question: was the IBM system used in the Dora camp?

Michel.