Gypsy groups plan to demand billions of dollars from US computer giant IBM in a lawsuit alleging the company's machines helped Nazi Germany in the mass slaughter of Gypsies.
At least 600,000 gypsies are believed to have died at the hands of National Socialists before and during World War II--either murdered outright by the Nazis or killed in concentration camps and slave-labor factories.
According to Romany--or Gypsy--groups, IBM's Hollerith tabulating machinery, the mainframe computer of its era, was crucial to Nazi efforts to track people and identify victims.
"The spontaneous, unceasing, self-willed delivery to Germany of IBM machines...is a conscious and deliberate act of participation in an administrative organization dedicated to...racial destruction," the groups' lawyer, Henri-Philippe Sambuc, told a news conference.
Sambuc said the suit, which the groups hope to file by September, will demand some US$10,000 each for the approximately 1.2 million Gypsies believed to have been orphaned by the Nazi slaughter.
But he said identifying all those people would be difficult and time-consuming, not least because of the high illiteracy rate among Gypsies.
But the action will be launched as soon as the groups have succeeded in identifying 1,000 victims.
Sambuc said the Gypsies were now seeking to raise some US$4 million to finance the court case.
