[fuser]

http://www.11points.com/News-Politics/11_Companies_That_Surprisingly_Collaborated_With_the_Nazis

I stumbled to this article and found quite interesting, I will like to mention two companies specifically....

Siemens : At the height of the Nazi terror during the 1940s, it was not atypical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning and be snuffed out in a Siemens-made gas chamber in the afternoon.

IBM : Back in those days, the only way to keep track of huge databases was with an extremely complicated system involving punch cards, and IBM was the best at constructing and maintaining those databases. IBM's punch card databases could keep track of anything: financial ledgers, medical records, Jews..... as soon as the Nazis invaded a country, they would overhaul the census system using IBM punch cards. Then they'd track down every Jew, Gypsy and any other non-Aryan until they were all rounded up onto cattle carts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkoM8RB-kJ0&feature=player_embedded

Now a days it seems no one remembers the crimes of these big corporate monsters for whom the only thing that matter is Profit Profit and profit at any cost including human lives....

[killim]

This has been researched extensively.

[JohnRawls]

As our german friend said , this topic has been raped so many times that it is not interesting anymore .

[Tailz]

I agree. Books like "IBM: Counting the Holocaust" cover this in detail, and American firms did business with Germany right up until war was declaired, if I remember right, the phrase was "The Deutsche Mark is just as good as the Pound."

[fuser]

researched extensively.

So, has anything been done about it??

[Tailz]

So, has anything been done about it??

Oh yes indeed. Big companies have paid out millions, Swiss Banks have had to pay out money to survivors, etc. The sad thing is, the people who actually should get the money (the survivors) usually get stiffed by the steep fees the claims lawyers ask for. Norman Finkelstein has written about it if my memory serves me correctly - I think even War Angel would agree with Finkelstein about the greed of Holocaust Lawyers. Although I suspect, that would be the only thing Warry would agree with him on (before attempting to cut his googlies off).

[killim]

Don't blame all on the lawyers, the organizations and additionally the administration of Israel didn't make a good job too.

[Tailz]

What does Israel have to do with the price of eggs in this matter, this is holocaust survivors being compensated, not the Israeli state.

Although the Israeli state may become a tool of inter-government distribution of large amounts of funds to those who should be getting the money.

[killim]

Yeah and thats what happend. Israel got some bn for the pensions, wages, health insurances etc. of the work from the slave workers. Guess what happend in the process of "distribution"...

[Cookie Monster]

Often in the international context, and sometimes in the national context, reparations are a tool to settle the political dispute rather than solve the social economic effects of the dispute.