IBM is bracing itself against charges raised in a new book and lawsuit that the firm's tabulating machinery and its German business unit were instrumental in helping Hitler systematically identify and select victims of the Holocaust.
The book, entitled "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation," was written by Holocaust investigator Edwin Black, who was aided by a far-flung team of 100 researchers.
Historians have known for decades of Nazi use of Hollerith tabulators - the mainframe computer of its era - but the book sheds light on IBM business dealings and the lengths to which it may have tailored its machines to meet Nazi requirements.
IBM, the world's largest computer company, responded on Friday to general issues that may be raised by the book in a letter posted on the firm's internal computer bulletin board that is read by its more than 307,000 employees.
"A book will be published shortly stating that Hollerith tabulating machines were used by the Nazi regime and apparently speculating on the activities of IBM's subsidiary in Germany at the time," IBM said in the statement.
"We recognize that its (the book's) very subject is an important and highly painful one for many IBMers, their families and the world community at large," it said.
IBM spokeswoman Carol Makovich declined to comment beyond the employee statement, saying the company had not yet seen the book. However, IBM is prepared to respond should new evidence of its historical actions come to light, she said.
The controversy over IBM's alleged Nazi connections takes place as numerous European companies - from industrial manufacturers to insurers to Swiss banks - have faced lawsuits by Holocaust victims and their descendants in recent years.
Lawsuit filed
IBM was named in a lawsuit filed on behalf of five Holocaust victims on Friday in a US federal court, according to Michael Hausfeld, an attorney with Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll.
Hausfeld was one of a team of attorneys who forced Germany last year to create a nearly US$5 billion reparations fund for Nazi-era slaves.
The suit - timed to coincide with the publication of Black's book - asserts that IBM knowingly supplied technology used to catalogue death camp victims and aided in the "persecution, suffering and genocide" before and during the Second World War.
"Hitler could not have so quickly and efficiently identified and rounded up Jews and other minorities, used them as slave laborers and ultimately exterminated them, without IBM's assistance," Hausfeld said in a statement.
The plaintiffs' lawsuit also asserted that IBM had refused to permit historians and others access to archival records that would demonstrate the company's complicit role in the Holocaust.
However, large chunks of the new book were based on corporate correspondence that IBM said it has made available through academic research libraries, a move of uncommon openness among US corporations said to have had ties to Nazi Germany.
