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New IBM correspondence about the Holocaust revealed by Edwin Black

Edwin Black has announced that after 1.2 million copies of IBM and the Holocaust have sold worldwide, the book is completely out of print. However, on the anniversary of the book's original publication in 2001, a new “Expanded Edition” will be released which will include some 32 pages of never-before-published internal IBM correspondence, State and Justice Department memos and concentration camp documents that will graphically chronicle exactly what IBM did and what they knew during the twelve-year Hitler regime. IBM has never denied any of the information in the book and for years has claimed that it has no information about its Hitler-era activities involving the Third Reich.

The new edition will be released on February 26, 2011, 3 PM at a special Live Global Streaming Event at Yeshiva University’s Furst Hall in New York. The event is sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and co-sponsored by Yeshiva University’s Office of Pre-Law Advisement, Jacob Hecht Pre-Law Society, Beren and Wilf campuses, in partnership with StandWithUs, and in association with NAHOS--National Association of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, Generations of the Shoah International, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the State of California Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance, The Auto Channel, History Network News, The Cutting Edge News, Spero Forum, the Jewish Virtual Library, and many other groups.

Among the newly-released documents and archival materials are the secret 1941 correspondence setting up Dutch subsidiary of IBM to work in tandem with the Nazis that would result in the extermination of the majority of Dutch Jews, company President Thomas Watson's personal approval for the 1939 release of special IBM alphabetizing machines to help organize the rape of Poland and the deportation of Polish Jews, as well as the IBM Camp Codes including the code for Gas Chambers. Among the newly published punch cards, are the cards developed for the SS Race Office, and the IBM card developed for the statistician who reported directly to Himmler and Eichmann.

“The world will now be able to see some of the actual correspondence, Justice Department memos, State Department cables and concentration camp documents,” said author Edwin Black. The newly-published documents constitute a fraction of the author's 20,000 documents on this topic. At least a dozen organizations cooperated in the effort to provide high-quality reproductions, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Dutch National Archives, the Dachau Bavarian police, and many others.

At the Live Global Streaming Launch for the IBM and the Holocaust Expanded Edition, the author will take questions for an international audience that has both submitted them in advance or will submit them live during the event. The Event can be seen at www.ibmandtheholocaust.com and right here.


Read entire article at Press Release