This was the IBM sorting machine used to sift the vast catalog of Germans for those with “Jewish” ancestry.
“Hollerith erafBt” was a stamp on concentration camp forms indicating that the information on a prisoner’s card had been entered into the official IBM database.
These were not computers per se, but they automated the sorting of enormous quantities of data that would have been virtually impossible to do by hand.
Thus, had it not been for IBM’s powerful sorting technology, there never would have been a Holocaust, because the Germans would not have been able to identify each German’s degree of Jewishness.
Mind you, Jews were not defined by race. That would have been relatively easy to do with a simple genealogy search back a generation or two.
The Nazis defined “Jewishness” as a religious characteristic. A “Jew” was a practicing, faithful, devoted disciple of the Torah and regular patron of the local synagogue.
Most of the larger synagogues in Germany were burned to the ground in the Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” in November 1939. Gone were all their official records of births, baptisms, marriages, bar and bat mitzvahs, and attendance at services, Hebrew school, and Torah study classes.
It takes far more data points to establish German standards of “Jewish religious person” than “Jewish person by race.” Thus, more than ever, the Holocaust was IBM’s baby.
Given all the anti-Semitic Nazi rhetoric of the day, it must have been quite clear to IBM what their machines were being used for. The U.S. government must have known as well.
Yet, IBM did what the Nazis asked throughout the war, even in the concentration camps, and the U.S. government had no thought about classifying the IBM computing machines as top secret or restricted technology – on par with radar and code-cracking machines.
Of course, that’s all ancient history now, and we’re mature enough these days to realize that business is just business.
I’m sure IBM is a large, thriving, and immensely profitable presence in modern-day Israel.