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When interest economic blows a moral and humanitarian issues: the case of IG Farben.

far should understand that private companies cooperated with the massacre of millions of human beings in Nazi Germany? Have also been victims of the system, no choice but to join the killing machine of the Third Reich? Were opportunistic or immoral? And their employees? Guilty or innocent? Those who have completed the sentence imposed by the Nuremberg Tribunal after the war, their names cleared in society or forever carry the mark of infamy? All these questions are difficult to answer. Some German companies have to live with these dilemmas in their history.

Industries chemical Germans at the end of World War II had reached appalling levels of inhumanity. Among them, IG Farben, a conglomerate of German companies at that time was the fourth largest company in the world. During WWII, she went on to produce synthetic rubber to meet the demand of the Nazi army - and for that, not failed to use slave labor of prisoners from concentration camps.

Plant of IG Farben, 1941

The installation of the plant in the region where he was also one of the largest fields seated Nazi concentration in Auschwitz, Poland, was the result of a stroke of luck. Heinrich Himmler, the SS commander, wanted to found a German colony in Poland to take advantage of the large supply of manpower of prisoners, while Dr. Otto Ambros (pictured right), an executive in charge of rubber in IG Farben, no namely, the map showed the same location as ideal for the new plant, by getting close to rivers and have a good rail connection. Since then Ambros and Himmler joined interests in a symbiotic relationship: Auschwitz provide manpower for the slave factory, and IG Farben would bring money and building materials for the German colony.

The report of maltreatment, barbaric conditions of life and murder are chilling. When we become aware of the testimony of a worker named Rolf Vrba, transported to Auschwitz in June 1942, we have an idea:

The men ran and fell, was kicked and shot, Kapos eyes opened a bloody insane way among prisoners laggards, while the SS men were shooting without aiming (...) silent men in spotless clothes, spent amid corpses did not want to see, measuring timber with showy yellow scales, taking accurate notinhas books in black leather, indifferent to the bath of blood.

With the end of the war, 24 members of the Board of IG Farben were denounced by the United States and brought to trial in August 1947, at Nuremberg. They were accused of looting and plunder, slavery and mass murder. Of the 300,000 slave laborers of the factory, more than 30 000 died. The sentences, however, were mild for those convicted. Eight years in prison was the more severe penalty (if Otto Ambros) and one and a half the most common.

Nuremberg Tribunal

The U.S. General Eisenhower was determined to dismantle IG Farben after the war, it was a symbol of corruption and inhumanity of the Nazi regime. The Allied Control Council was responsible for this process, but did nothing until he is replaced by the Western Allied High Commission in 1949. Thereafter, the process of disintegration of IG Farben was completely frustrated by economic interests. IG Farben survived and consolidated three of its former companies: Bayer, BASF and Hoechst. Worse, in 1955, Friedrich Jaehne, sentenced to one year and a half in Nuremberg, was elected president of Hoechst. The following year, Fritz Tues Meer (photo), convicted of plunder and slavery, was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bayer.

The Buna plant at Auschwitz, survived the war and is in full operation today.

Source:

CORNWELL, John. Scientists Hitler. Science, War and the Pact with the Devil . Imago Ed. Rio de Janeiro: 2003