Language:
German
Year of publication:
1989
Titel der Quelle:
Geschichte und Gesellschaft; Zeitschrift für historische Sozialwissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
15, 2 (1989) 227-247
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Industrialists History
;
World War, 1939-1945 Collaborationists
Abstract:
A paper delivered at a seminar in Berlin, March 1987. Surveys the cooperation of German businessmen and industrialists in Nazi anti-Jewish measures. Middle-sized Jewish businesses, hard hit by boycotts, were forced to close or sell at a loss soon after the Nazi takeover. "Gau economic advisers" cooperated with local chambers of commerce in their Aryanization. Large firms held out longer. After the occupation of Poland, German industrialists competed to exploit Jewish forced labor. Emphasizes the number of small factories and workshops set up in the ghettos, in addition to industrial complexes built by major companies in or near the concentration camps. Although these activities were not forced on the companies involved, only a few industrialists were tried and sentenced to prison terms after the war, and all were pardoned in 1951. Profits alone cannot explain this collaboration; it was rooted in a long tradition of antisemitism, in which these actions appeared as the redemption of the German economy from alien exploitation.
Note:
Appeared also in "Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich" (1992) 207-229. An English version appeared in "Yad Vashem Studies" 21 (1991) 125-153, and in Hebrew in "Yad Vashem" 21 (1991) 103-124.
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