The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/german/farben.ig//farben.003


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - I.G. Farben: The Nuremberg Indictment
Summary: The I.G. Farben Indictment summarized
Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.org
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Farben

Archive/File: orgs/german/farben.ig farben.003
Last-modified: 1993/06/01

   The indictment brought against the I.G. Farben defendants at
   Nuremberg "...was a catalogue of Nazi inhumanities in which the I.G.
   defendents played a part, particularly in the most notorious of all
   extermination centers, Auschwitz."

   "All of the defendents, acting through the instrumentality of I.G...
   participated in ...the enslavement of concentration camp
   inmates...the use of prisoners of war in war operations...and the
   mistreatment, terrorization, torture, and murder of enslaved persons.
   In the course of these activities, millions of persons were uprooted
   from their homes, deported, enslaved, ill-treated, terrorized,
   tortured, and murdered.

   ...

   Farben, in complete defiance of all decency and human considerations,
   abused its slave workers by subjecting them, among other things, to
   excessively long, arduous, and exhausting work, utterly disregarding
   their health or physical condition. The sole criterion of the right
   to live or die was the production efficiency of said inmates. By
   virtue of inadequate rest, inadequate food, (which was given to
   inmates while in bed at the barracks), and because of inadequate
   quarters (which consisted of a bed of polluted straw, shared by from
   two to four inmates), many died at their work or collapsed from
   serious illness there contracted. With the first signs of a decline
   in the production of any such workers, although caused by illness or
   exhaustion, such workers would be subjected to the well-known
   'Selektion.' 'Selektion,' in its simplest definition, meant that if,
   upon a cursory examination, it appeared that the inmate would not be
   restored within a few days to full productive capacity, he was
   considered expendable and was sent to the 'Birkenau' camp of
   Auschwitz for the customary extermination. The meaning of 'Selektion'
   and 'Birkenau' was known to everyone at Auschwitz and became a matter
   of common knowledge.

   The working conditions at the Farben Buna plant were so severe and
   unendurable that very often inmates were driven to suicide by either
   dashing through the guards and provoking death by rifle shot, or
   hurling themselves into the high-tension electrically-charged barbed
   wire fences. As a result of these conditions, the labor turnover in
   the Buna plant in one year amounted to at least 300 percent. Besides
   those who were exterminated and committed suicide, up to and
   sometimes over 100 persons died at their work every day from sheer
   exhaustion. All depletions occasioned by extermination and other
   means of death were balanced by replacement with new inmates. Thus,
   Farben secured a continuous supply of fresh inmates in order to
   maintain full production.

   Farben's conduct at Auschwitz can be best described by a remark of
   Hitler [sic; should be Himmler]: 'What does it matter to us? Look
   away if it makes you sick.'" (Borkin, 138-139)

                            Work Cited

   Borkin, Joseph. The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben. New York: 
   The Free Press, 1978, and London: Macmillan Publishing Company. 


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