Leitz and the Holocaust

[VinceC]

It appears Leica owners can carry their cameras with a little more pride.

Guenther Leitz and other Leitz executives appear to have played a significant role in helping hundreds of Jews eimigrate from Germany in the late 1930s under the pretext of claiming they were company employees being transferred overseas. The "employees" were provided with photo training, then transferred to the New York office, where Leitz representatives helped them find jobs (Lest we forget, the United States and other countries in those days actively resisted refugee immigrants, allowing them to enter the country only if they were were sponsored and employed). It's not well known because Guenther Letiz wouldn't talk about it during his lifetime. I caught the very tail end -- literally the last few seconds -- of a show on PBS "History Detectives" last night in the States. A little Internet digging uncovered some of the story.

Keppler in a recent Popular Photography article

and

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

I thought it was fascinating.

 

[Ash]

I think a few companies did this, but they are largely forgotten due to the popularity of Schindler.

 

[Ducky]

I saw that show as well. Very interesting. They also stated that thousands of Leicas were given to the Nazi army and press. I wonder if they were specially marked. That would be an interesting camera to own. Most of the personal photos of atrocities were shot with Leicas. A sad part of the history of a great camera. True, Leitz and others should be recognized for their humanity in those times.

 

[jaapv]

Yes - the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe Leica's are highly sought after. What Leica did is known in Jewish circles that are interested in that part of history and is all the more impressive if we realize that the German industrial complex was at the time, in line with the Fascist philosophy, organised in into one vast machine. Stiil, the way a number of individual German industrialists reacted , compare this with for instance IG Farben or Bayer, speaks eloquently for their humanitarian compassion.

 

[wlewisiii]

This story comes up with increasing regularity. This is a good thing, in our current world, to remind us of what we should be rather that what we all too often are.

William

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I saw the show... and, in the beginning of the segment, I was a bit concerned about the phrasing "Leica supplied the German army with camera equipment" (or something of that sort), because it'd give the impression that it wasn't sold but given. However, I did like the way they presented the Leitz rescue story.

Now... what will the Leica management do about this kind of exposure? Promote Leicas by saying "Purchase a piece of history"? 😕

 

[jaapv]

I don't think there was a single firm in occupied Europe that did not do business with Nazi-controlled interests and survive. How could they not - especially with a war on - without closing down?

 

[sircarl]

I would imagine that before the war, Leica was mainly, if not exclusively, a consumer products company. Did the government lean on them to supply optics for Panzer tanks or provide the Luftwaffe Leica? I don't know the answer, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just saw a nice profit opportunity and raised their hand to volunteer, as did most German companies. And so helped the Nazi war effort, in however small a way, in the process. After all, they could have said, Sorry, let Zeiss do it....right? Or even, Jaap, decided that was not what they were in business for and, yes, closed down, for the duration of the war.

 

[RdEoSg]

I'm working on a photo project of Auschwitz and I have to admit that the thought of showing up next time with a leica slightly unnerves me, but I don't think the company did anything wrong really. You can argue that they helped the nazi party in one way or another by default, but at the same time you can agrue that by staying in operation they also helped thousands of workers and their families by keeping them employed, keeping them fed, etc.. Had they closed down they wouldn't have been able to send some of the Jews to the US and they most likely would have been killed in a camp eventually.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Wait, my concern is not about what WE may think. After all, we're partial and biased, but not a whole lot of people know about these things and the bits and pieces they may pick probably come from war movies. I do understand Leica and other companies had to remain in business... it's simply that the phrasing sounded otherwise. All in all, it's the photographer, not the camera what counts.

And, in this case, the noble gesture of the camera maker.

 

[dexdog]

From what I have read, the National Socialist government exercised a lot of control over German industry prior to and during WW2. I think that the choices were either agree to do what the government wanted, or have your company seized by the state. Don't believe that the camera/optics industry was unique in this respect- war production was priority of the government.

 

[payasam]

It seems reasonable to suppose that every firm with expertise in optics, whether in Germany or in the US, supplied what was needed for tanks, snipers' rifles, battleships' rangefinders and so on -- just as makers of motor cars and lorries and motorcycles geared their production to the needs of the war machines of their respective countries. This is of course a compulsion of the profit motive, though there may be a small bit of nationalism involved. For a business concern to dabble in humanity, though, is unusual and commendable.
[Edit] In WW2 Germany, if I remember, Goering was placed in overall charge of war production; and industrial empires like Krupp, enormous compared with Leitz, had perforce to do what they were told.

 

[Will]

Leica Freedom Train

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=86006

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=002hQY

 

[Socke]

I don't think there was a single firm in occupied Europe that did not do business with Nazi-controlled interests and survive. How could they not - especially with a war on - without closing down?

Do have big companies morals?

I don't think so, after all, it's money that counts.

As far as I know both sides in WW2 used proximity fuses invented by SEL. In business they call this as a win-win situation.

 

[traveller]

I don't think there was a single firm in occupied Europe that did not do business with Nazi-controlled interests and survive. How could they not - especially with a war on - without closing down?

If the company was important for war production, and that was nearly every one, in case of resistance the Ministry for Arms and War Production or the SS (they had their own industrial empire) would have taken over and the owners would have been lucky not to get imprisoned or shot at the spot. But the difference was that some owners or managements followed the conscience and helped the people, and a lot helped the regime.

 

[xayraa33]

Zeiss did a similar thing with Emanual Goldberg, the designer of the Contax shutter, they first posted him to Paris, and when most of France capitulated, they managed to let him find his way into the USA.
some other Zeiss employees were not so lucky as Herr Goldberg.
What a shameful part of world history.

 

[jaapv]

I seem to remember that the British armed forces managed to get hold of some Leica's as well.

 

[xayraa33]

there was a program in war time Britain to get the public to lend their Contax and Leica cameras for use by the armed forces.

 

[VinceC]

Americans -- military and photojournalists -- also used German cameras, Contax and Leica.

 

[rxmd]

I would imagine that before the war, Leica was mainly, if not exclusively, a consumer products company.

No, it wasn't exclusively. Microscopes and the like aren't exactly consumer goods.

Do have big companies morals?

I don't think so, after all, it's money that counts.

As far as I know both sides in WW2 used proximity fuses invented by SEL. In business they call this as a win-win situation.

Yes. The IBM story is also quite famous.

I guess financially Leica did profit during the war quite significantly. They suffered a blow from the loss of their patents, but kept up their business practices wrt/patents after the war anyway (as the case of the Steinheil Casca shows). The loss also forced them to innovate and create newly patentable technical solutions in the form of the M system.

Some businesses in Germany made tremendous money during WWII, most of it from stolen property all over Europe; the German general public also benefited from this. There is a recent book on how the Nazis did this: Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat. Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus ("Hitler's State of the People. Robbery, Racial War and National Socialism"; No English edition yet AFAIK, but that can't be long. The book is currently under scholarly discussion in Germany for a number of reasons.)