Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by watwut 3098 days ago
Nope, there is quite detailed book on that. They were on place, in Germany and occupied territories. Installing machines, designing punch cards with cooperation of users and training users. Some machines were directly in concentration camps and some on railways used to transport Jews. If you got there to maintain, you seen them. Some were used to sort people by race on occupied territories - and even if you not knew about holocaust you knew it is about finding and mistreating Jews. That much was clear to contemporaries.

Bosses were aware and managed operation. That is true.

> It's hard for many techies, by nature idealists, to fully grasp how the world truly works

Not all techies are idealists and it is not necessary to be idealist to have good hard skills. Also, idealists tend to be focused a bit less on those hard skills then pragmatics (being attracted to ideals). While some techies (on the spectrum) have hard time to grasp world, many many don't. Those who do were less likely to get goodies.

1 comments

Do you have any references for that? I'm quite incredulous that American IBM employees were on place, in Germany and occupied territories, during a time that America was engaged in war with Germany.
"IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black.

IBM had child company in Germany Dehomag, but transported machines and cards from outside too (including during war through not whole of it). The book however deals more with management and non-German citizens guilt which is harder to show. That people of all sorts in the Germany, including technologistics, were contributing to Nazi plans is easier to believe. It was just first example that came to my mind.