Any larger German company that was in business during and/or did business with the Hitler regime must face history—at some point. Some companies, such as Volkswagen, owned-up early on that they had used slave labor. Some, such as BMW’s owners Quandt, denied it. American companies, such as Ford and Opel, are amongst those guilty by association. Finally, a fund was set up, which probably benefited the lawyers more than the 25k survivors.
Now, history is catching up with German car parts supplier Schaeffler. According to the Independent, “the giant but debt-crippled Schaeffler car parts supplier was accused of using hair shorn from at least 40,000 Auschwitz death camp prisoners to make textiles at its factories in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The highly disturbing allegations were contained in new evidence unearthed by Polish historians at the Auschwitz museum, who said they had found rolls of fabric made from camp inmates’ hair at a former Schaeffler factory in Poland’s southern region of Silesia.” The company’s historian has dismissed the allegations.
He said there was no evidence to support the theory that Schaeffler processed death camp inmates’ hair industrially during the Second World War. According to the Independent, “hair was routinely shorn from prisoners, usually on arrival, at the death camps. The Nazi war machine used it to make army blankets and socks for U-boat crews.”
The allegations can’t come at a worse moment for the company.
As if being an auto parts manufacturer isn’t bad enough, Schaeffler wanted to “do a Porsche” and took over the much larger Continental group. They swallowed more than they could chew. Family-owned Schaeffler borrowed 16 billion euros to buy control of Continental, but the credit crunch left it struggling to service its debt.
The Schaeffler family is now being pressured to surrender control of its company to banks that financed the ill-fated deal, or face bankruptcy. Schaeffler has appealed for government help, but German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the company had to first do what it could on its own before hoping for support from the government.
Ironically—but not surprising to those with knowledge in German history—the textile factory where the hair is alleged to have been processed formerly belonged to the Jewish-owned Davistan AG. When the Nazis came to power, Ernst Frank, the enterprise’s Jewish owner, was compelled to flee Germany.
The firm came under the control of a consortium of banks, among them the Dresdner Bank. In October 1940, Wilhelm Schaeffler, an employee of the Dresdner Bank, acquired 67 percent of the shares at a price 30 percent below the rated value.
In 1942, the Davistan AG was renamed “Schaeffler AG.” The company made armaments for the Nazi war machine. After the Second World War it re-emerged as one of Germany’s main suppliers of parts to the car industry, specializing in needle roller bearings.
People familiar with those stories call the revelation too coincidental. There are skeletons of this kind in most German companies. Poland is reeling from a devastating banking crisis. They want their fledgling auto parts companies to be bailed out not some high rollers in Germany.
Lovely company
Poland is reeling from a devastating banking crisis.
Actually there is no banking crisis in Poland at the moment. At least not comparable to what has happened in US – no banks going bankrupt, no bail outs etc. The GDP is still growing so the recession hasn’t started.
But of course the auto industry in Poland is strongly affected by the crisis as Poland is among major European exporters and nobody is buying cars anywhere.
Everyday something new is learned… I’d like to complete the lesson
using hair shorn from at least 40,000 Auschwitz death camp prisoners to make textiles
Firstly: WTF? textiles from hair?
Then: What for?
Very poignant title! Great writing as always Mr. Schmitt.
Any larger German company that was in business during and/or did business with the Hitler regime must face history– at some point.
Indeed.
As its perfect logic that German producers produced for German government, like US companies are contracted by US government, every company should be all time held responsible being caught red-handed having worked with/for criminal regimes – not limited to boundaries or times.
But there is more to that very time-slot and events in history- history in that case should not be limited to “foreign” country borders or only focused on German Volkswagen because its so convenient for some to shield the much broader rest of the picture from viewing.
True history is showing a much broader spectrum.
I dont want to mention the most cruel, matching Guantanomo / retention to middle east torturing partners e.g. contractors CC style, bizarre cooperation:
The ZZ tattoos in the arms of the SS, as well as the advanced scientific mathematical logic numbering of the concentration camps inmates forcefully tattoos where specially developed & devised by american IBM – a contractor to the fascist criminals.
Dont accuse me of wandering thematically off – lets start right here at he transport business:
Henry Ford and GM were openly outspoken Nazi admirer /supporters even when WWII begone.
Documents discovered in German and American archives show that, American managers of both GM and Ford went along with the conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up military production in their plants at home.
The “Deutsche Luftschiff GmbH” was a commercially successful USA/German joint venture (the USA insisted commercial grounds against protests from german technicians on, as history has shown later, correct security reasons – the US counterparts did not know what else to do with the sitting & growing gas stock, sitting on flammable gas) until the cruise by LZ 129 “Graf Zeppelin” bearing the Nazi swatiska crashed in flames at Lakehurst / New York.
The virgin travel of the US/German Zeppelin with the Hakenkreuz proudly flying over New York is to be found in most photo galleries.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,856170,00.jpg
There is a huge spectrum of US companies having done healthy business with or aided Hitler Germany even when at war with the US.
If you dont know any, just ask – be my guest.
“The revenge of the journalist, is the archive.”
@ Stingray,
Firstly: WTF? textiles from hair?
Then: What for?
Padding in car seats.
No surprise. A corporation is a machine. Asking a company to have a moral sense is like asking your microwave to have one. Hypocrisy thus comes naturally to any corporation since it has to present a human like face to the public. This puts a lie at the very centre of any corporate culture. Where things go from there you can guess.
To those who think that there is no need for unions in the auto plants, read up and think about the human hair bit. The hair came off the death camp inmates, was collected, sorted and otherwise handled as any other “material” and then made it’s way to the use point where the managers knew what it was but went ahead anyway. No doubt after the war they said that they only did what they were told.
It was that same morally corrupt atmosphere in the US car plants during the 1930s that produced the inmate rebellion that became the UAW. There were more than a few plant managers, superintendents et al. who would have liked to drag some of “their” workers out into the loading dock and shoot them.
Has anything fundamentally changed? No.The UAW may be also corrupt and guilty of various union fat cat crimes but for the rank and file it has one very necessary quality. It is not part of the auto company corporate structure.
Terrible posting.
The title even suggests, what then is being confirmed as wrong: that allegedly Schaeffler used hair for production. Basically, Bertel’s posting answers also one other question from Robert Farago of today: is TTAC too negative? Sometimes I have the feeling: YES. And when an article about Schaeffler is started with a photo of Auschwitz and an allegation which has proven untrue, this is for me in “BILD” league.
As your story itself shows, Schaeffler himself was not involved in the old company being nationalized. Further, as the report of the historian says, there are no allegations whatsoever from the labourers that they were treated badly during such times. Altogether, this is an unnecessary posting. But I know, Bertel always likes to make Hitler stories or allegations. Is this really needed at a website claiming just to tell the Truth? And by the way: this posting is NO flaming against Bertel.
Bigsby :
March 4th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
There are limits for free roaming immorality & cruelty
– set by international standards e.g. the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
For instance, Alcolac International, a U.S. company then based in Baltimore, Maryland, pleaded guilty to illicit sales of the mustard-gas precursor thiodiglycol to Iraq during the 1980s.
On October 22, 2007, Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to indict the suppliers of chemical weapons precursors and equipment to Saddam Hussein’s regime: “Tehran requests the ICJ to take legal action against 400 companies which were involved in supplying Saddam regime [sic] with chemical weapons in 1980s
ALCOLAC INTERNATIONAL, INC formerly located in Baltimore, Maryland. Company was restructured as Alcolac, Inc., and it’s currently listed as an active Georgia corporation with U.S. operations based in Cranberry, New Jersey.
Any larger … company that was in business during and/or did business with the … regime must face history– at some point.
I second TireGuy :
March 4th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
this is an terrible and unnecessary posting.
and add – including (my) contributions unnecessary on TTAC.
If I would be the admin I would delete the whole stuff
I find the post ok, and am not frightened by the negative.
I do think Mr. Frankfurter needs to tighten-up his facts:
– It was not the Graf Zeppelin, but rather the Hindenberg, which went down in flames at NAS Lakehurst;
– Ford and Opel were semi-autonomus entites, Henry Ford I progressively degenerated with age from a progressive, to jew-baiter, senile crank.
In the last 10 years, academic research (at least that which I saw) did not seem to hold the parent compaines in Detroit responsible for the actions of their subsidiaries;
– I don’t know if Schaeffler ever looked into, or took ownership of its past, but as mentioned above, Quandt never did (unlike Acolac, which pled guilty, under criminal prosecution.) The actions of Quandt’s holdings (Varta Batterie et al.) under the NS regime were continually swept under the rug, until about a year ago when one of the cousins outed Herbert’s family. The Family, in damage control mode, announced the establishment of a foundation to study the issue (presumably until even the descendents of the aggreived have passed away.)
Finally, to those that wondered about the uses of hair, one of the uses, was as a sound-attenuation material in U-boats.
And food for thought, in some of the camps that processed hair for industrial uses, there was also the processing of human flesh for tallow to be used the making of soap.
And, in rebuke to Mr. Frankfurter, aside from the wholesale murder, enslavement, and forced work of the innocent, the likewise processing of their living flesh and human remains for industrial purposes can hardly be equated with the goings-on at Gitmo.
To paraphras the movie Magnolia: “I was done with the past, but the past was not yet done with me.”
@Robert.Walter :
March 4th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
And, in rebuke to Mr. Frankfurter, aside from the wholesale murder, enslavement, and forced work of the innocent, the likewise processing of their living flesh and human remains for industrial purposes can hardly be equated with the goings-on at Gitmo.
You cannot compare the holocaust, the industrial extermination of unwanted by a fascist regime to anything going on today as this, and I fight for that, would illegally relatives the historically outstanding Nazi crime to which is no match.
This I want to clarify without any fine-print or reservation.
The Nazis where the worst of the worst – last slime.
And the Nazis are in developed countries of historic interest only – besides in the USA where the Nazis are allowed to march in speepgoose step and can show the swatiska proudly on the open without being thrown in in the slammer in a second – the Nazis shown in Europe by US media are produced and paid for from elsewhere, often by religious fanatics from the other side of the river, they send the printed material swapping over as brown dirt from the US to Europe.
We have a saying ” be aware – never let that happen again – never forget”
True – we have not to voice it, talk is cheap, but to live by it.
And that leads to a big…
Butt…
and thats a very, very big but…
…that historic lesson does not lessens other crimes going on today in Gitmo, AbuGraib, thousands of known or unknown locations on land (think Diego Garcia) or US military vessels or friendly dictators countries to which the US either outsourced torture to show clean hands or does it in undisclosed locations in clandestine mode.