Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties, by David De Jong. 2022. Mariner Books, New York, Boston
German Industrialist Unrepentance: German Corporations Dodge Responsibility
This Jewish author (p. 9) focuses on the Nazi German use of concentration camp laborers and forced laborers, especially those that were forced to serve large German corporations. De Jong realizes that overall some 12 million foreigners toiled in the Third Reich, and that death claimed some 2.5 million of them. (p. 156).
GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST UNREPENTANCE FOR THE CRIMES AGAINST FORCED LABORERS IN THE THIRD REICH
The forced laborers worked grueling 12-hour days, in German factories, with no safety equipment (p. 158, 162, 173), with inadequate clothing, with meager feeding (pp. 162-163), with little or no medical care when ill (p. 157, 170, 174), and with minimal sanitation facilities (p. 174). The laborers were wantonly tortured in order to increase their production, or for no reason at all. (p. 158, 163, 165, 171, 174). The remuneration of the laborers was token, and the kapos usually stole even these wages. (p. 157). When not toiling, the forced laborers were housed overnight under very crowded conditions. (p. 163, 165, 174).
All the forced laborers were under constant threat of death. (p. 171). They were even forced to build gallows that would be used to hang any laborer that tried to escape and was re-captured. (p. 158). Children were among the forced laborers. (p. 171). Forced laborers giving birth were required to give up their babies to a “Nursery for Foreign Children” where the babies were tormented by insects, and usually died, if only from deliberate neglect. (p. 165).
GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST UNREPENTANCE: GERMAN CORPORATIONS TRY TO EVADE PAST CRIMINALITY
Germany is nowadays portrayed as a stellar example of repentance for past wrongdoing. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Author De Jong, referring to the dynasties that governed German industry, leaves nothing to the imagination as he asks these tough questions, “How did the patriarchs of these families rise to greater heights of power under Hitler’s rule? Why were almost all of them allowed to walk free after Nazi Germany fell? And why, after so many decades, are many of the heirs still doing so little to acknowledge their forebears’ crimes, projecting a view of history that keeps these matters opaque? Why are their charitable foundations, media prizes, and corporate headquarters still named for their Nazi-collaborator patriarchs?” (pp. 10-11).
Excellent questions! So much for the myth about the exemplary German repentance for Nazism that we hear so much about.
GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST UNREPENTANCE: PHONY GERMAN REPENTANCE IN ACTION
Belatedly (over 50 years after the war), Germany put on an act of paying reparations to some of the forced laborers (at a time when most of them were already conveniently dead). De Jong comments, “In August 2000, a foundation named Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future (EVZ) was established in Berlin by German state and German companies…As one historian put it: ‘In this way, the German government and German industry together developed a rhetoric of responsibility with, again, no explicit or individual admission of legal liability…the German government occupied the moral high ground, while significant perpetrators conveniently disappeared behind a veil of apparent responsibility without actual guilt.’” (p. 281).
In no sense was this EVZ foundation some kind of groundswell of German accountability for past German crimes. In reality, the German companies that contributed to the paltry reparation fund did so in an exceedingly lopsided manner, and most German companies paid hardly at all. De Jong writes, “In all, the state of Germany and German businesses contributed equally to the 5.2 billion euros (almost $7 billion) that the foundation had at its disposal. But more than 60 percent of that money had been contributed by just 17 firms out of the 6,500 German companies paying into the EVZ fund.” (pp. 281-283).
The reparations, per victim, once finally paid out, were a pittance. The highest possible compensation per person, for those in concentration camps and ghettos, was 7,670 euros (about $10,000). The highest payout, for an individual “ordinary” forced laborer, was a jocular 2,560 euros (about $3,500). (p. 281).
GERMANY ONCE AGAIN FAVORS THE JEWS OVER THE POLES BIG TIME
Not mentioned by De Jong, these reparations monies heavily favored the Jews over the Poles and other goyim. For instance, the Jewish forced laborer got 3 times the reparations monies of the Polish forced laborer. See:
