For the Allies, IBM assistance came at a crucial point. But for the Jews of Europe it was too late. Hitler’s Holleriths had been deployed against them for almost a decade and were continuing without abatement. Millions of Jews would now suffer the consequences of being identified and processed by IBM technologies.
After nearly a decade of incremental solutions the Third Reich was ready to launch the last stage. In January 1942, a conference was held in Wannsee outside Berlin. This conference, supported by Reich statisticians and Hollerith experts, would outline the Final Solution of the Jewish problem in Europe. Once more, Holleriths would be used, but this time the Jews would not be sent away from their offices or congregated into ghettos. Germany was now ready for mass shooting pits, gas chambers, crematoria, and an ambitious Hollerith-driven program known as “extermination by labor” where Jews were systematically worked to death like spent matches.
For the Jews of Europe, it was their final encounter with German automation.
XIII. EXTERMINATION
NEARLY EVERY NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP OPERATED A Hollerith Department known as the Hollerith Abteilung. The three-part Hollerith system of paper forms, punch cards, and tabulators varied from camp to camp and from year to year, depending upon conditions.
In some camps, such as Dachau and Storkow, as many as two dozen IBM sorters, tabulators, and printers were installed.1 Other facilities operated punches only and submitted their cards to central locations such as Mauthausen or Berlin; in some camps, the plain paper forms were coded and processed elsewhere.2 Hollerith activity—whether paper, punching, or processing, was frequently located within the camp itself, consigned to a special bureau called the Labor Assignment Office, known in German as the Arbeitseinsatz.3 The Arbeitseinsatz issued the all-important daily work assignments, and processed all inmate cards and labor transfer rosters. This necessitated a constant traffic of lists, punch cards, and encodeable documents as every step of the prisoner’s existence was regimented and tracked.4
Hitler’s Reich established camps all over Europe, but they were not all alike. Some, such as Flossenburg in Germany, were labor camps where inmates were worked to death. Several, such as Westerbork in Holland, were transit camps, that is, staging sites en route to other destinations. A number of camps, such as Treblinka in Poland, were operated for the sole purpose of immediate extermination by gas chamber. Some camps, such as Auschwitz, combined elements of all three.5
Without IBM’s machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler’s camps could have never managed the numbers they did.
The major camps were assigned Hollerith code numbers for their paperwork: Auschwitz … 001; Buchenwald … 002; Dachau … 003; Flossenburg … 004; Gross-Rosen … 005; Herzogenbusch … 006; Mauthausen … 007; Natzweiler … 008; Neuengamme … 009; Ravensbruck … 010; Sachsenhausen … 011; Stutthof … 012.6
Auschwitz, coded 001, was not a single camp, but a sprawling complex, comprised of transit facilities, slave factories and farms, gas chambers, and crematoria. In most camps, the Arbeitseinsatz tabulated not only work assignments, but also the camp hospital index and the general death and inmate statistics for the Political Section. But at Auschwitz, paper data was probably shipped off-site, perhaps to another camp, such as Mathausen, for processing.7
In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews. First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record for the “camp hospital index.” Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third, his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special cruelty. Finally, he was registered by Hollerith method in the labor index for the Arbeitseinsatz and assigned a characteristic five-digit Hollerith number, 44673.8 This five-digit number would follow the Polish merchant from labor assignment to assignment as Hollerith systems tracked him and his availability for work, and reported it to the central inmate file kept at Department DII. Department DII of the SS Economics Administration in Oranienburg over saw all camp slave labor assignments.9
Later in the summer of 1943, the timber merchant’s same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.10
Tattoos, however, quickly evolved at Auschwitz. Soon, they bore no further relation to Hollerith compatibility for one reason: the Hollerith number was designed to track a working inmate—not a dead one. Once the daily death rate at Auschwitz climbed, Hollerith-based numbering simply became outmoded. Clothes would be quickly removed from any cadaver, making identification for the Hollerith-maintained death lists difficult. So camp numbers were inked onto a prisoner’s chest. But as the chest became obscured amidst growing mounds of dead bodies, the forearm was preferred as a more visible appendage. Soon, ad hoc numbering systems were inaugurated at Auschwitz. Various number ranges, often with letters attached, were assigned to prisoners in ascending sequence. Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed bizarre experiments, tattooed his own distinct number series on patients. Tattoo numbering ultimately took on a chaotic incongruity all its own as an internal Auschwitz-specific identification system.11
But Hollerith numbers remained the chief method Berlin employed to centrally identify and track prisoners at Auschwitz. For example, in late 1943, some 6,500 healthy, working Jews were ordered to the gas chamber by the SS. But their murder was delayed for two days as the Political Section meticulously checked each of their numbers against the Section’s own card index. The Section was under orders to temporarily reprieve any Jews with traces of Aryan parentage.12
Sigismund Gajda was processed by the three-step Hollerith system. Born in Kielce, Poland, Gajda was about forty years of age when on May 18, 1943, he arrived at Auschwitz. A paper form, labeled “Personal Inmate Card,” recorded all of Gajda’s personal information. He professed Roman Catholicism, had two children, and his work skill was marked “mechanic.” The reverse side of his Personal Inmate Card listed nine previous work assignments. At the bottom of the card’s front panel was a column to list any physical punishments meted out, such as flogging, tree-binding, or beating. Once Gajda’s card was processed, a large indicia in typical Nazi Gothic script letters was rubber-stamped at the bottom: Hollerith erfasst, or “Hollerith registered.” That designation was stamped in large letters on hundreds of thousands of processed Personal Inmate Cards at camps all across Europe.13
Auschwitz’s print shops produced the empty plain paper Personal Inmate Cards for Hollerith operations at most other concentration camps. Sometimes the Auschwitz presses simply could not keep up with demand. In one instance, on October 14, 1944, the leader of Ravensbruck’s Hollerith Department sent a letter to his counterpart at Flossenburg’s Hollerith Department confirming that a work gang of 200 females had been dispatched for slave labor at the Witt Company in Helmbrechts. “The inmates’ personal cards as well as the Hollerith transfer lists are being submitted,” the Ravensbruck officer leader wrote. But, he added, “Since at the moment, no [Inmate] Cards can be obtained from the Auschwitz printers, temporary cards had to be made for that part of the transport.”14