Absolution for a Pittance

By Steve Rodan

Volkswagen was Hitler's favorite automobile. His regime regarded the five-passenger KdF-Wagen as a "a symbol of the National Socialist people's community." In 1938, the fuhrer attended the laying of the foundation for Volkswagen Works.

During World War II, Volkswagen turned to military production and became a partner in the Final Solution. The company's massive plant at Fallersleben deployed forced labor, including Jews from Auschwitz. In April 1942, the Third Reich established a concentration camp, the first of eight in the complex. The Jews and others were slaves, many of whom were worked to death.

Like many German conglomerates, Volkswagen escaped justice after World War II. For decades, the company denied responsibility for the killing of thousands. In 1991, Volkswagen agreed to pay compensation to the survivors. The amount: 12 million German marks. Later, the company built factories where the forced labor camps had operated.

Volkswagen managed to put the Holocaust behind it, mostly by paying off Israel. The main beneficiary has been Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, itself built by German reparations in the early 1950s. The money paid by Volkswagen and other German industry giants ensured that at the very least they would be regarded as a benign observer during the war.

Even a pittance will do

In Yad Vashem's books, even a pittance can revise the narrative of the Holocaust. In 2019, Volkswagen contributed one million euro to expand the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Volkswagen was joined by the soccer club Borussia Dortmund, Daimler, Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Bank. In all, the companies donated five million euro. That was enough for Yad Vashem to trumpet their checks as a "sign of their solidarity with Holocaust victims, and their responsibility for past and future and in combatting racism and anti-Semitism." [1]

“Commemoration, documentation, research and education are the pillars on which Yad Vashem was founded," the five companies said in a statement. "It is our honour and obligation to reinforce them. Future generations need to know the extent of suffering human beings are capable of inflicting on others. We are therefore promoting intercultural understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence." [2]

To many, the eagerness of Yad Vashem to solicit players in the Holocaust has been more than grotesque. It has served to erase the very past that Yad Vashem claims to honor and perpetuate. This has allowed Volkswagen, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz a policy of impunity regarding their alliance with Hitler. If Yad Vashem and the State of Israel do not demand a genuine accounting, then nobody else, particularly the German people, will. [3]

Shaping the narrative

Yad Vashem has invested heavily in wooing Hitler's favorite German companies. Since its inception in 1954, the German government and related institutions have been the leading contributors to Yad Vashem. They have been allowed to shape Yad Vashem's narrative that the Holocaust was the work of Hitler and his aides, rather a nationwide crusade to rob and then kill the Jewish people.

Every one of the five companies that donated to Yad Vashem carries a sordid history of Jew-hatred. Like Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz worked out a deal with the SS for slave labor. Many of them, particularly the Jews, were under SS supervision and underwent "inhumane conditions." In 1944, nearly half of the company's 63,610 workers were comprised of slave labor. [4]

Full fare for Auschwitz

During World War II, Deutsche Bahn, then Deutsche Reichsbahn, ran the railway system that brought hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian Jews to Auschwitz and other death camps. The company even charged the Jews full fare for the trip to the gas chambers.

For decades, Borussia Dortmund was regarded as one of the most violent and anti-Semitic soccer clubs in Europe. The German team attracted Holocaust deniers, ex-Nazis and just thugs looking for a Jew to pummel.

But for Yad Vashem, the goal has been money -- from anybody, at any price. The institution's German Circle of Friends of Yad Vashem, based in Berlin, has for decades been soliciting German companies for money that often stemmed from Jewish loot and the bodies of dead laborers.

"Yad Vashem needs the support of many to enable it to fulfil the duties related to this role," Kai Diekmann, chairman of the German Circle, said. [5]

'At a remarkable rate'

Indeed, Germany is by far the biggest partner of Yad Vashem in such areas as finance, research, education and exchange. The German government has facilitated the entry of Yad Vashem seminars in schools since 2005 "and this number is growing at a remarkable rate." Yad Vashem has educational agreements with virtually all 16 German states. [6]

All this has been done on a shoestring budget. Since 2012, Germany has been giving Yad Vashem a mere one million euro a year to help the institution. Yad Vashem said the German aid furthers commemoration, documentation and education of the Holocaust. [7]

Although the agreement was renewed in 2022, there is little evidence that Berlin has ushered any change in policy. The government, amid cooperation with Yad Vashem, has concealed or limited access to tens of thousands of SS documents, particularly the file of Adolf Eichmann, regarded as the main operator of the Holocaust. [8]

No explanation

The money received by Yad Vashem has also made the entire issue of slave labor by the five German companies disappear. A search on Yad Vashem's website for such terms as "Volkswagen," "Daimler-Benz," "Deutsche Reichsbahn" or "Deutsche Bank." yields no explanation of their roles in the Holocaust, rather correspondence or directives. In contrast, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, like Yad Vashem state supported while based on outside funding, features an entire article on Volkswagen's activities during and after the Final Solution. [9]

For all its hype, Yad Vashem's embrace of Germany has failed to reduce anti-Semitism or increase awareness of the Holocaust. In 2018, a survey by the U.S.-based cable network CNN found that 40 percent of Germans between the ages of 18 and 34 "know little to nothing about the Holocaust." [10]

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Yad Vashem's whitewash has been BMW. Through donations and promises, this industrial giant has avoided a Nazi past that is bloodier than most of its German competitors. BMW stems from Gunther Quandt, who joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and regarded as one of Hitler's top financiers. In the 1930s, he was enriched by the confiscation of Jewish businesses. During World War II, Quandt, connected to Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels, received more than 60,000 slaves, 80 percent of whom died. In Quandt's Hanover factory, the SS set up an execution ground.

No responsibility

Quandt, protected by the United States, was rescued from the hangman's noose at Nuremberg, where he was deemed a "fellow traveler," or a mere party member who did not take part in Nazi crimes. His empire was saved; BMW never provided compensation to survivors or their families.

In 1999, major German companies, including Volkswagen, agreed to establish a 10 billion euro fund -- half provided by the government -- for survivors of slave labor. The survivors received a maximum one-time payment of 7,600 euro for working 12 hours of back-breaking duties seven days a week. Under a clause in the agreement, none of the companies were forced to assume any responsibility for the past.

"They paid money, but they never had to take any moral responsibility for history," David de Jong, who in 2022 wrote Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties, said. "With that release clause, German business could pretend that nothing had happened." [11]

Sick and tired

In the end, Yad Vashem's behavior has fostered a deep resentment by the very German intellectuals wooed by Israel. At a ceremony in October 1998, Martin Walser told 1,200 members of the German elite that he was sick and tired of the exploitation of the Holocaust. Walser, an author and former Nazi Party member who now received a peace prize from German publishers, dismissed the sincerity of those who call on Germans to remember their Nazi past.

"When I notice that something within me is opposing it," Walser said, "I try to hear the motives of this reproach of our shame, and I am almost glad when I think I can discover that more often not the remembrance, the not-allowed-to-forget, is the motive, but the exploitation of our shame for current goals. Auschwitz is not suitable for becoming a routine of threat, an always available intimidation or moral club or also just an obligation. What is produced by ritualization has the quality of lip service."

With the exception of two Jews, everybody in the Frankfurt church rose from their seats and applauded. [12]

Notes

1. Yad Vashem. April 2, 2019

2. ibid

3. "German Auto Corporations and the Holocaust: Why are Porche, BMW, Mercedez-Benz and Volkswagen Suppressing Accountability for their Nazi Pasts?" Noam Schimmel. Berkley News. Dec. 12, 2022. German Auto Corporations and the Holocaust: Why are Porsche, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen Suppressing Accountability for their Nazi Pasts? | Berkeley

4. "Daimler-Benz in the Nazi Era 1933-1945. Mercedes-Benz Group. Daimler-Benz in the Nazi Era (1933 - 1945) | Mercedes-Benz Group > Company > Tradition > Company History

5. Yad Vashem. April 2, 2019

6. Yad Vashem. June 4, 2018

7. Yad Vashem. Feb. 1, 2012

8. "Adolf Eichmann files can remain classified, German court rules." World Jewish Congress. June 28, 2013

9. "Volkswagen: The People's Car and the Nazi State." U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Volkswagen | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)

10. "Borussia Dortmund to make $1.1 million donation to Holocaust memorial museum." James Masters, CNN. April 2, 2019. [Borussia Dortmund to make $1.1 million donation to Holocaust memorial museum | CNN]

11. "The Legacy of Nazi Billionaires: A Conversation with David de Jong." November 2023. The Legacy of Nazi Billionaires: A Conversation with David de Jong (youtube.com)

12. Martin Walser speech, October 11, 1998. Martin Walser, October 11, 1998 (ghi-dc.org)

Below: Hitler marvels over the Volkswagen Type 32 in 1938.