While Dachau was originally established for Germans, once the Reich conquered Europe, inmates from many countries were processed through its Hollerith machines. Middle-class Parisian prisoners were in abundance. Prisoner 072851, a French salesman, was taken by the Security Police in Paris; Hollerith operator number 8 processed his card. Prisoner 072850, a chef, was also taken by the Security Police in Paris; Hollerith operator number 8 also processed his card. Prisoner 072833 was a gardener, taken by Security Police in Paris; Hollerith operator 8 punched his information as well. The very next card in the sequence belonged to Prisoner 072834, a baker taken by Security Police in Paris; that card was punched by Hollerith operator 9.30
Dachau’s equipment was managed by several Hollerith experts and non-technical supervisors. Albert Bartels, head of the SS machine record agency, with no particular expertise, functioned as the senior official. Herbert Blaettel possessed the technical knowledge since he was a former Dehomag dealer and later worked in Dehomag’s training department. Blaettel was aided by Heiber, considered a virulent SS man. Busch, another technical expert, had been a Dehomag dealer since 1932 and finally joined the SS in 1943 to help the SS operate its machines. Because Dachau was just ten kilometers from Willy Heidinger’s hometown near Munich, and the well- established Dehomag branch office there, Dachau was always close to the epicenter of Hollerith automation development. For example, Dachau received Dehomag’s very first advanced alphabetizer, the DII-A.31
Flossenburg, coded 004, was another camp built in Germany before the war. The giant facility, built near the town of Floss, continuously worked inmates to death at a nearby granite quarry and Messerschmitt aircraft factory. When enfeebled prisoners by the thousands dropped dead from malnutrition and exhaustion, their bodies were quickly cremated.32
Because Flossenburg was primarily a slave labor camp, it relied heavily on Hollerith machines to coordinate the work battalions transferring in and out from other major camps or its own sub-camps. The camp’s well- developed Hollerith Department tracked its slaves by name and number. During September 1944, thousands of prisoners were transferred to Flossenburg proper from its smaller sub-camps. On September 1, 1944, for example, Flossenburg’s Hollerith Department received secret notice #1049/44, specifying that six of those sub-camps were transferring a total of 2,324 cards corresponding to the attached “Hollerith Transfer Lists.” From Camp Neurohlau: 561; from Camp Zwodau: 887; from Camp Graslitz: 150; from Holleischen: 603; and from Camp Helmbrechts: 100. Seventeen women were also transferred to a special Flossenburg detachment. The secret notice to Flossenburg’s Hollerith Department explained: “The inmates’ files have been kept in the records of the local camps up until and including August 31, as was already reported by telegram. The transfer lists for the Hollerith card file are attached as well.”33
Notice #1049/44 to Flossenburg also stressed that although 2,324 cards were accompanying the Hollerith transfer printouts, six women had escaped during the past few months. “The inmates’ files have been removed from the records of local camps, after their escape,” the notice instructed, “and their records have to be reinserted into the files upon their capture.” The six women were listed by name and Hollerith number:
Printouts from Flossenburg’s Hollerith Department were used to organize and accompany the transfer not only of large slave groups numbering more than 1,000, but small work gangs as well. On January 24, 1945, Flossenburg’s Arbeitseinsatz received notice from another camp’s Hollerith Department: “We are submitting inmate personal cards for 200 inmates transferred to work camp Helmbrechts and 200 inmates transferred to work camp Dresden… Hollerith lists are included.” Several months before, on September 1, 1944, Flossenburg’s Arbeitseinsatz received a similar order but for half as many inmates. “In the attachment,” the September 4, 1944, notice informed, “find enclosed the inmate personal cards for 100 inmates transferred to work camp Witt in Helmbrechts on August 31, 1944. The Hollerith transfer list is included.”35
Hollerith lists could be produced for as few persons as needed. On November 13, 1944, Flossenburg’s Arbeitseinsatz received orders involving just four women: “The inmate personal cards for 4 female inmates transferred to work camp Helmbrechts on November 9, 1944, as well as Hollerith transfer list Number 123 are submitted in the attachment. We are requesting the speediest delivery of personal file cards for the 4 transferred inmates.”36
Among the many punch card operations in concentration camps, perhaps the most active was the massive Hollerith Department at Mauthausen. The giant Austrian camp was really an extensive complex of slave labor quarries and factories, operated with a brutal furor calculated to quickly work inmates to death. Sadistic labor conditions amid unspeakable daily atrocities killed thousands. Numerous Mauthausen sub-camps functioned as satellites in a similar vein. Moreover, as camps consolidated late in the war, captives were continuously shipped into the camp so Mauthausen received many transfers from other facilities. Hollerith operators located in the Arbeitseinsatz, across from the Political Section, could see the entire parade grounds, including the arrival of every prisoner transport.37
A low-level SS officer supervised Mauthausen’s Hollerith Department. But day-to-day sorts and tabulations were undertaken by a Russian-born French army lieutenant POW named Jean-Frederic Veith. Veith arrived at Mauthausen on April 22, 1943, just days before his fortieth birthday. He was quickly assigned to the tabulators. Among Veith’s duties was processing the many Hollerith lists from other camps, not only transferred prisoners for new assignment, but also those the sorts had determined were misrouted.38
Veith compiled both the voluminous death lists and new arrival rosters, and then dispatched the daily “strength numbers” to Berlin. His section stamped each document Hollerith erfasst—“Hollerith registered”—and then incorporated the figures into the camp’s burgeoning database. Hence, the enormity of Mauthausen’s carnage was ever-present in his mind as he ran the machines.39
Mauthausen “Departure Lists” were fundamentally roll calls of the dead. A typical handwritten “Departure List” ran on for many pages, thirty lines per page. No names were used, just the inmate’s five- or six-digit Hollerith identity, listed on the left in numerical order for efficient punching into column 22 of the Dehomag cards printed for camp death tallying. The victim’s birth date was penned into the next table for punching into section 5. Death dates were scrawled in the right field set aside for section 25.40
Cause of death was recorded for column 24. Generally, the murdered inmate itemized on the top line was coded C-3, the Hollerith designation for “natural causes.” For convenience, ditto marks signifying “natural causes” would then be dashed next to every inmate number. But these death citations were faked. For amusement, Mauthausen guards might force an inmate to jump off the quarry cliff at a spot called “the Parachute Jump.” Exhausted laborers might be crowded into the tiled gas chamber below the sick bay where carbon monoxide billows would suffocate their lives. Undesirables might be terminated in “Operation K” actions—a bullet administered at close range. Or special cases might be hoisted by their arms tied behind their backs until they died from the socket-wrenching excruciation. All these murders were almost always dittoed C-3, “natural causes.”41