The Hollerith installations at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen were only part of an extensive network of camp punching and tabulating services that stretched across Europe. At Stutthof camp in subjugated Poland, coded 012, the Hollerith Department used six-digit registrations beginning with zero. At the nightmarish Gusen camps, the Hollerith cards were not only set up to record personal biographical and work assignments, they also recorded the gruesome details of painful punishments administered to prisoners, such as floggings and hanging from a tree with arms bound in back. At Westerbork transfer camp in Holland, Hitler’s Holleriths were used to schedule efficient trainfuls of prisoners destined for Auschwitz gas chambers, and then report the numbers back to the registration office.42
At Bergen-Belsen, where surviving prisoners were described by liberators as “emaciated apathetic scarecrows huddled together in wooden huts,” the Hollerith cards were maintained in a barracks dubbed “the lion’s den,” located in the Arbeitseinsatz. To obliterate all evidence of the mass murders documented by the Hollerith records, Himmler ordered all camp card indices to be destroyed before the Allies arrived.43
At Ravensbruck woman’s camp, coded 010, the busy Hollerith Department used its own “Ravensbruck” rubber stamp to save time writing. Punch card operators at Ravensbruck often identified their work by letter, rather than number. A stream of Hollerith transfer lists always accompanied Ravensbruck slave women transported to various factory sites and camps. One could live as long as one could work. Ravensbruck women always knew fellow prisoners were about to be exterminated when a trusty abruptly retrieved their cards. One British inmate recalled in a secret letter written at the time, “The selected ones have to wait in front of the Block… while the [trusty]… who has noted their numbers goes to the Arbeitseinsatz and gets their cards (which are only removed if the prisoner is dead). An hour later she returns with the cards and a lorry and they go—never to return.”44
The SS Economics Administration, under the leadership of Gruppenfuhrer Oswald Pohl, utilized Hollerith systems for more than specific prisoner tracking. IBM machinery helped the SS manage the massive logistics of the entire camp system. Although millions, representing many nationalities and religions, were imprisoned at various times in hundreds of installations, the total camp capacity on any given day was between 500,000 and 700,000.45 That required population management. Jews from across Europe were being continuously transported into the camps. At the same time, slaves within camp confines died or reached the limits of their utility to the Reich. The prodigious task of efficiently scheduling deportation from cities and ghettos in many countries, the daily work assignments, and outright extermination timetables would have been impossible without the daily strength reports. When the camps reached the maximum of even their inhumane overcrowded capacity, orders went out from Berlin to reduce the density. Those periodic orders issued by the SS Economics Administration were based on the well-honed statistics provided by the Holleriths both in the camps and at camp administration headquarters.46
In fact, a special statistical bureau was eventually established in January 1944 to coordinate and tabulate all new registrations, death lists, daily strength reports, and transfers from site to site. This virtually unknown secret punch card facility was simply called Zentral Institut, that is, the “Central Institute.” Each day, camps would forward copies of their strength reports to Zentral Institut, located on a quiet, residential street in Block F at 129 Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.47
Although the location was tranquil, the traffic in and out was constant. Couriers delivered weekly “Departure Lists” from the various camps. For example, Mauthausen’s list for week 37 of 1944 was six pages long—virtually all deceased. For week 40, the list was seven pages long. For week 41, it was six pages, recording 325 deaths. For week 44, seven pages listed 369 prisoners. An October 17, 1944, delivery of prisoner cards from Mauthausen’s Hollerith Department included data on 6,969 males and 399 females.48
Zentral Institut, at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse, was able to render the big picture only because it processed the most individualized details. For instance, on January 2, 1944, the SS officer in charge of Mauthausen’s Hollerith Department informed his counterparts at Flossenburg’s Hollerith Department about three named and numbered prisoners who had recently transferred in. One died in transport and two others were utilized in an unspecified secret project. Since they were never actually registered at Mauthausen, the Hollerith Department suggested their names just be sent to Zentral Institut as “departures.”49
Zentral Institut’s elaborate Hollerith banks at Block F, 129 Friedrichstrasse were expensive Dehomag systems. But the SS could more than justify the cost because slave labor was sold by the SS Economics Administration and managed as a profit center. Enterprises as large as the heavy industries of I.G. Farben, as delicate as Hotel Glasstuben, and as small as a local business, routinely contracted for slave labor with Department DII, which governed all slave labor assignments. For instance, in late July 1942, farmer Adam Bar of Wurzelbrunn, short on farmhands for his beet fields, applied to DII for two farm slaves from Flossenburg.50
The SS Economics Administration, which had total operational control of all camps, could supply exactly the skilled workers required and transfer people from camp to camp, and factory to factory, by setting the dials of their Hollerith systems that had stored the details of all inmate cards. Two important inmate cards were utilized. The Personal Inmate Card was used for on-site camp registration and stayed with the individual in the field. DII’s centralized version was simply called “Inmate Card.” Every Inmate Card held in DII’s Central Inmate File listed the prisoner’s profession in a field to be punched into column 10 of the IBM card. For example, Spanish inmate 30543 was listed as a lumberman. That qualified 30543 to be assigned by the Neuengamme concentration camp as a “helper” in any slave enterprise. Occupational details for column 10 were provided by the top line of the reverse side of the Personal Inmate Card.51
Maschinelles Berichtwesen, the Reich’s central punch card agency, had helped develop the slave labor punch card in conjunction with Dehomag engineers. These cards listed inmates by nationality and trade. After matching any of the millions of slaves and conscripted workers, both in camps and incoming foreign labor battalions, to the numerous requests by both private companies and public works, DII could promptly deploy workers where they were needed, when they were needed.52 In this sense, DII acted like any worker placement agency.
Charges for DII’s workers could be easily tabulated on Dehomag’s well-established hourly wage cards, thereby generating instant slave billings. A typical monthly charge to Messerschmitt airplane works for Flossenburg slaves was the one itemized on DII’s invoice #FLO 680, which was issued December 1, 1944:
• 50,778 full-time skilled slaves at RM 5 per day
• 5,157 part-time skilled slaves at RM 2.50 per day
• 53,071 full-time helpers at RM 3 daily
• 5,600 part-time helpers at just RM 1.50 daily