Trendevents: Why Not Put Institutions and the Economic System on Trial?

Clyde Wilson

1995

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletters, Dec. 1995, No. 142

I.G. Farben industries, a company that evokes outrage for the thousands it worked and put to death at Auschwitz, still exists, much to the revulsion of its victims who survived the holocaust.

At I.G. Farben's recent meeting there ensued shouting matches between company managers and several protesters who demanded that I.G. Farben be liquidated immediately and the assets and proceeds of the company be paid to the survivors of its inhuman treatment.

Demonstrators outside of the meeting displayed placards that depicted the atrocities committed by I.G. Farben industries during World War II. Of the many signs, Peter Gingold wore a sandwich board that read, ``My brother and sister were murdered with poison gas from I.G. Farben.'' Gingold has been protesting at the company's annual meeting for the past ten years. He said, ``The existence of this company makes a mockery of its victims. Their shares are stained with blood.''

While a number of big corporations and banks, including the Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest private bank that recently helped publish a history describing the bank's role in stripping Jews of their property in the 1930s, have shown a willingness to face up to their fascist past and have made some financial restitution, the role of I.G. Farben in the holocaust and its existence still remains an insult to the victims and survivors of its notorious synthetic rubber plant at Auschwitz and the production of the Zyklon-B cyanide tablets used to gas hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates.

The management of I.G. Farben has stated that it has paid its debt to the victims, and that its first duty now is to its creditors and stockholders, pointing out that the company paid out $8 million in 1957 to the U.S. based Jewish Claims Conference, which compensated an estimated 10,000 western European, Israeli and U.S. Jews. It did not pay eastern European Jews and non-Jewish victims, including thousands of Poles. (Associated Press, The Evansville Courier, 8-10-95)

At the Nuremberg Trials (site of international trials, 1945-46), a number of fascist leaders of Germany of World War II were tried, convicted and sentenced for war crimes. But those institutions--industry, financial and businesses such as I.G. Farben, Krupp, the Deutsche Bank, etc. were not tried, yet without their support and backing before and during World War II, it would have been impossible for fascism to come into being and mount the largest devastation and carnage in the history of humankind. When profits are to be made, business knows no enemies. Even during World War II it was not unfashionable or unpatriotic to deal and trade with the enemy, directly or indirectly. The price and financial system is never put on trial for its devious acts. After all wars, it is back to business as usual, and maximizing profits and keeping the system intact takes precedence over everything else.