27. IBM’s Role in the Administrative Management of the Holocaust Covered All Phases of That Great Atrocity
Thomas J. Watson’s IBM made the Holocaust administratively manageable for the Nazis by furnishing them with the means to oversee that great crime against humanity. Thanks to IBM, the Germans could keep track of millions of their targeted victims from their home and work addresses, through arrest, transportation, and their ultimate fate in the concentration or extermination camps.
IBM’s role continued within the death camps, for which it set up special codes such as Camp Code 001 for Auschwitz, and 002 was Buchenwald. Prisoner Code 8 was for Jews, and 11 was for Gypsies. Status Code 5 meant execution by order, and Status Code 6 was for death by gas chamber. The archives include punch cards developed for the statistician who reported to SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the Holocaust’s logistics.
Related: 10 Famous Companies That Collaborated With Nazi Germany.