IBM

[Richard Romeo]

thx, doug.  Makes one think of that Pynchon/Sale musical Minstral Island
where IBM is ruling the world.  hmm...

Rich
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Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 13:49:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug Millison <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
Subject: automating Auschwitz:  IBM,  I.G. Farben

[...] Thanks to the new discoveries, researchers can
now trace how Hollerith numbers assigned to inmates
evolved into the horrific tattooed numbers so symbolic
of the Nazi era. (Herman Hollerith was the German
American who first automated U.S. census information
in the late 19th century and founded the company that
became IBM. Hollerith's name became synonymous with
the machines and the Nazi "departments" that operated
them.) In one case, records show, a timber merchant
from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz in August
1943 and was assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM
Hollerith number, 44673. The number was part of a
custom punch-card system devised by IBM to track
prisoners in all Nazi concentration camps, including
the slave labor at Auschwitz. Later in the summer of
1943, the Polish timber merchant's same five-digit
Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm.
Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans
at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.