peter_n
Veteran
^^ exactly
Leica and the Holocaust
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Of the story as written in the first post: yes, quite possibly.
Of the facts behind the story (for want of a better words than 'facts'), I heard something similar twenty or more years before that. More than 'one or two', but hardly a 'freedom train'.
Joining the Nazi Party was not always something people did willingly: it was just that it was often better than the alternative. I've met a number of ex-Nazis (including at least one ex-SS man). Understandably, the way in which they explained their membership, and degree to which they admitted understanding why they joined, varied considerably.
An interesting explanation came from an ex-communist friend, though (joined the Party in the UK in the 30s, left it in the 60s, rejoined for the pleasure of being thrown out): "I was young; I was gullible. If I'd been a German I'd probably have been a Nazi. The uniforms.... the girls...." Young men do not always thing with their brains. Sure, this is no excuse for the head of a major company. But as someone else said, how far can the industrial half of the military-industrial complex dissociate itself from the military half?
Cheers,
R.
N
Nikon Bob
Guest
I suspect that for many Germans in pre war Nazi Germany joining the Nazi party was a matter of economic survival. Without being a member you might be excluded/dismissed from the good jobs and/or limit your upward mobility. As the owner of a company you might have had it taken completely out of your hands with little or no compensation. If you joined at least you might be also able to mitigate some of the extremes of Nazi policy which you could not do if you had your company taken away from you. This was at a time of a world wide depression to boot. Anyway as Roger has said there are many varying reasons. I will bet that today not all people would be willing to fall on their own sword and take a hit in the wallet. In short you only have as many high moral standards/values as you think you can afford.
Bob
Bob
sig
Well-known
That might be true, of course the tread over there started with the same story as this one, word for word. So I guess it is ok to question its authenticity after all....😀
Martti K.
Ethnologist
"During the 1930s and 1940s, Ernst Leitz II and his daughter Dr. Elsie Kuehn-Leitz, both Protestant Christians, arranged for hundreds of Jewish employees and their families to get out of Germany, thus escaping the Holocaust."
http://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/emuseumdev/code/emuseum.asp?action=advsearch&newsearch=1&profile=people&rawsearch=constituentid/,/is/,/238/,/false/,/true&style=single&searchdesc=Ernst+Leitz+%28company%29
If some forum on the internet isn't exactly best place to get historically accurate knowledge, webpages of Harvard university might be better. Well, they don't tell their references either...
I did some relatively quick searching on the internet, but instead of wikipedia on some so called real scientific sources. I didn't find any reference to that story, but some other interesting things I did find. For example Hutchinson Chronology of World History compact edition has chosen introduction of first Leica to be so important moment in history that it is mentioned among some other things happened in 1924. But the truth about Leica freedom train stays mystery.
I apologize if my english writing skills are not so fluent... I do read very much but write much less in english.
ianstamatic
Well-known
This story didnt exist until Leica got hit with slave labour reparations payment lawsuits.
Then comes out the year following and only from one source ..
And he was a Nazi but a 'good' Nazi ?
ok yeah right i'm really convinced. not
Then comes out the year following and only from one source ..
And he was a Nazi but a 'good' Nazi ?
ok yeah right i'm really convinced. not
Roger Hicks
Veteran
When was this?
(All I'm trying to find out is whether it was before or after I first heard this story).)
Cheers,
R.
sig
Well-known
Roger Hicks
Veteran
sig
Well-known
So with the power of google and a partly belief that some of the things on the big intranet is partly true I have found some more info.
The article/book: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/discus_e/messages/2/52762.html
I've just learned that several people are trying to find the booklet about the 'leitz Freedom Train'.
Sadly, I had to disassosiate myself from that publication because the editor introduced, without my approval, serious innacurracies into the text.
I attach to this message a correct version of my article.
Frank Dabba Smith
Financial Times article: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ee05b91e-b0f6-11db-b901-0000779e2340.html#axzz1axCpaIxY
ADL Award for saving 'an estimated 200 to 300 employees and their families from the Nazis' - http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/4975_52.htm
Interesting reading all of it....
The term 'Freedom Train' is not used by Smith or Financial Times (the Editor added it?).
Slave Labour
Smith: As Leitz was supplying equipment to the military and had lost a great number of workers to the war, approximately 700-800 Ukrainian women were attached to the factory as forced labourers beginning in 1942.
FT: In Leica’s case, the allegations were never proven. Nevertheless, in 1999 the German government and more than 100 German companies, including Leica, agreed to a compensation fund totalling $7.5bn
Number of saved people:
Smith: Provides no numbers, but some examples of saved persons
FT: At least 41 + 23
ADL: an estimated 200 - 300 employees
The article/book: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/discus_e/messages/2/52762.html
I've just learned that several people are trying to find the booklet about the 'leitz Freedom Train'.
Sadly, I had to disassosiate myself from that publication because the editor introduced, without my approval, serious innacurracies into the text.
I attach to this message a correct version of my article.
Frank Dabba Smith
Financial Times article: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ee05b91e-b0f6-11db-b901-0000779e2340.html#axzz1axCpaIxY
ADL Award for saving 'an estimated 200 to 300 employees and their families from the Nazis' - http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/4975_52.htm
Interesting reading all of it....
The term 'Freedom Train' is not used by Smith or Financial Times (the Editor added it?).
Slave Labour
Smith: As Leitz was supplying equipment to the military and had lost a great number of workers to the war, approximately 700-800 Ukrainian women were attached to the factory as forced labourers beginning in 1942.
FT: In Leica’s case, the allegations were never proven. Nevertheless, in 1999 the German government and more than 100 German companies, including Leica, agreed to a compensation fund totalling $7.5bn
Number of saved people:
Smith: Provides no numbers, but some examples of saved persons
FT: At least 41 + 23
ADL: an estimated 200 - 300 employees
Olsen
Well-known
A few figures around slave labour and holocaust: Some 30 - 40.000 German jews managed to escape holocaust. With the help of German friends, neighbors, colleagues etc. Some 220.000 German jews were exterminated, though. So, it is obvious that 'thousands' of Germans helped ten thousands of Jews to flee Germany.
The huge figures of holocaust comes from the 3.000.000 Polish jews that were gassed, jews from Sovjet Union, the Baltic states etc. The large volume of them were poor jews from the countryside. The rich and prominent, like a few bus loads of nuclear physicists of the later American Manhattan Project (making of the atom bomb), Albert Einstein etc. had left already in the 30'.
My grandfather (my father's father) ran a 'export organisation' for the British SIS. He 'exported' people like Eric Welsh (later commander within SIS) and com. Frank N Stagg (who have written several books about Norway) who had organised a British spy ring in Norway just before the German attack on the 9th of April 1940. My grandfather was awarded George Medal. But he never saved a jew. I don't know why. He died in the 60'.
My mother's uncle (my mother's father's brother) was a prominent nazi. He participated with Franco in the civil war in Spain, in Finland in 39' and on the Eastern Front in WWII. He was even a close friend of the no. 1 nazi in Norway; Vidkun Quisling. He was a colonel in the Waffen SS. No less. Most likely, he participated in pogroms when advancing up through the Baltics, but was never tried for this.
But he helped a prominent Norwegian jewish family (the Levins) of musicians, by helping them getting passports and travel documents out of Norway, to neutral Sweden. Why? May be he liked their music. I don't know. In 45' he was flown from the 'Kurland Pocket' in the Baltics to fight in Berlin, where he was captured by the Russians. He spent the next 9 years in USSSR captivity in Siberia, together with several hundred thousand German POWs. He was duly sentenced to two years jailtime when arriving home. For treason. Despite that the 'old Levin' held a 'spirited speach' to his defense. - We, the Norwegians, don't take easy on our traitors.
So, the world is not all black and white.
This slave labour thing with Leica is bad enough. The German company Blom & Voss admitted to having 400 slave workers. Closer research revealed 40.000! The death figures of the slave workers reach holocaustic proportions too. Like the 2 - 3 million Russian POWs that died in the custody of the Germans. Add the 2 million civil Poles. Etc.
Some 890 Norwegian jews perished in the death camps. But some 30.000 Russian and Serbian POWs, most of them slave workers, are burried on Norewgian soil. - That is more dead than the losses of both German and Norwegian fighters combined in and around Norway, at sea and on land.
But there is nothing we can do about that today. It's history.
What we can do is to do something about the time we live in today. We can urge our politicians to close the consentration camps and call our troops home.
The huge figures of holocaust comes from the 3.000.000 Polish jews that were gassed, jews from Sovjet Union, the Baltic states etc. The large volume of them were poor jews from the countryside. The rich and prominent, like a few bus loads of nuclear physicists of the later American Manhattan Project (making of the atom bomb), Albert Einstein etc. had left already in the 30'.
My grandfather (my father's father) ran a 'export organisation' for the British SIS. He 'exported' people like Eric Welsh (later commander within SIS) and com. Frank N Stagg (who have written several books about Norway) who had organised a British spy ring in Norway just before the German attack on the 9th of April 1940. My grandfather was awarded George Medal. But he never saved a jew. I don't know why. He died in the 60'.
My mother's uncle (my mother's father's brother) was a prominent nazi. He participated with Franco in the civil war in Spain, in Finland in 39' and on the Eastern Front in WWII. He was even a close friend of the no. 1 nazi in Norway; Vidkun Quisling. He was a colonel in the Waffen SS. No less. Most likely, he participated in pogroms when advancing up through the Baltics, but was never tried for this.
But he helped a prominent Norwegian jewish family (the Levins) of musicians, by helping them getting passports and travel documents out of Norway, to neutral Sweden. Why? May be he liked their music. I don't know. In 45' he was flown from the 'Kurland Pocket' in the Baltics to fight in Berlin, where he was captured by the Russians. He spent the next 9 years in USSSR captivity in Siberia, together with several hundred thousand German POWs. He was duly sentenced to two years jailtime when arriving home. For treason. Despite that the 'old Levin' held a 'spirited speach' to his defense. - We, the Norwegians, don't take easy on our traitors.
So, the world is not all black and white.
This slave labour thing with Leica is bad enough. The German company Blom & Voss admitted to having 400 slave workers. Closer research revealed 40.000! The death figures of the slave workers reach holocaustic proportions too. Like the 2 - 3 million Russian POWs that died in the custody of the Germans. Add the 2 million civil Poles. Etc.
Some 890 Norwegian jews perished in the death camps. But some 30.000 Russian and Serbian POWs, most of them slave workers, are burried on Norewgian soil. - That is more dead than the losses of both German and Norwegian fighters combined in and around Norway, at sea and on land.
But there is nothing we can do about that today. It's history.
What we can do is to do something about the time we live in today. We can urge our politicians to close the consentration camps and call our troops home.
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