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L’IBM
E L'OLOCAUSTO
Edwin
Black
Rizzoli
Ed.
The
author opens this work with a sentence that sum up the whole book: “Reading
this book will prove very disturbing. Writing it was very disturbing
too.” This is undoubtedly true. It is necessary and right for it to
be so. Especially for the public at large, not for the insiders, but
for all those who have learnt and studied history only in its “official
version”. The one which dismisses the appalling tragedy of the holocaust
as the malignant game of a cruel ogre who, by casting a spell, obliged
his people to follow him into a nightmare where the role of the wicked
and of the good, of the victims and of the executioners, of the winners
and of the losers, were very clearly defined. In actual fact, mankind
outlined a much more contradictory picture, even more absurd, and Hitler
was not alone with his hatred in his massacre game. There were renowned
professionals, lawyers, doctors, scientists, statistics experts who
rationalised, theorised and set in motion the efficient and accurate
mechanism which led the Jews to the gas chambers. Edwin Black, whose
parents were Polish Jews, is a journalist with a craze for historic
investigation and has advanced along a relatively uncharted path by
reconstructing with documentary evidence and reliable data the procedure
which led Hitler to slaughter millions of people in a relatively short
period of time, with the aid of automation and technology. In 1993,
the computer era had not yet started, but there already was IBM, producing
a punch card capable of automatically taking a census of the Jews, according
to scheduled criteria. Deutsche Hollerith Machinen Gesellschaft or Dehomang,
the German subsidiary of IBM, designed, printed and sold thousands of
those cards, through a sales network made up of people who were very
well aware of the final destination of their product. The specially
configurated machinery designed for the production of such cards was
hired by the German subsidiary of IBM to Third Reich officers, who were
trained to used it. Thousands of these machines were distributed throughout
Germany and the countries under German rule. In short, a modern system
for the classification of the features of the Jewish population was
set up: an efficient and rapid sorting service in the concentration
camps, providing for the physical elimination of those whose personal
features proved unacceptable for the German system! The American parent
company, as clearly demonstrated by the extremely detailed evidence
produced by the author of this book, was perfectly aware of the German
affiliate’s trade, and handled the business with skill and supreme diplomacy.
Undoubtedly nobody is so innocent as to believe that the entire responsibility
for what happened to the Jews under Hitler lies on the automation offered
by the forerunners of our beloved computers. However, we are left with
the unpleasant feeling that the worship of money, of power and of technology
have cast a spell on the conscience of all the people who turned a blind
eye (or maybe two) in order not see or understand what was going on.
Our hope is that man will learn to study his own vicissitudes outside
deceptive historical categories and honestly questions what really happened
to discover that the disasters we fear today are already sadly included
in our store of recent memories. This is how the author ends his work:
never again!
TIENANMEN
a
cura di Andrew J. Nathan e Perry Link,
Rizzoli
Ed.
China
is a hermetic world, with such a separate way of life that it is regarded
more fit for a documentary or a sightseeing tour than as a political,
economical, and social reality, having an influence over the whole planet.
Chine is obviously superior in numbers, and the evolution which changes
the emotions, thoughts and hopes of such a multitude of people cannot
but force us to think. The Tienanmen students were the audacious and
reckless forefront of a process which is now under way, although the
rigid structure of the Chinese power has tried to gag, cage and suppress
it in order not to head for a rebellion of catastrophic proportions.
The political propaganda of the only Marxist-Leninist party in power
provided a version of the phenomenon that is hard to refute, owing to
the lack of reliable and independent sources of information. The Chinese
situation and the events taking place in Tienanmen Square in 1989 represent
a historical period which is difficult to report through the western
logics and perspective. Finding the documentation, going through the
material which the “anonymous writer” made available, filtering it and
checking it, was a human, as well as a professional, adventure which
really proved exceptional for the two American authors. We are left
with some uncertainty regarding the reliability of the chief Chinese
source, even though supported by Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link and Orville
Schell, who are among the most recognized experts of today’s China.
Through secret reports, confidential conversations and other material,
we are in any case able to perceive an overall picture of the intellectuals,
of the police, of the army, of the secret service and of the leading
political figures who decided to employ the tanks in Tienanmen Square.
(traduzione Interpres sas-Giussano)
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