Date Posted: 23:51:45 01/25/04 SunAuthor: porsche needs to return my domainSubject: Re: PORSCHE BUILT THEIR ENTIRE COMPANY ON CRIMINAL PROFITSIn reply to: and is still engaged in illegal conduct 's message, "Re: forced use of as many as 20,000 slave laborers" on 23:50:03 01/25/04 SunIn crisis-stricken Europe, the German Volkswagen group, which dates back to the 1930s, is the largest car manufacturer. Like those at the helm of IG Farben and the Deutsche Bank, its founder, Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951), came to personify the big business which placed itself at the service of the Nazi war machine, benefiting directly from the regime's generosity and its inhuman labour legislation. Among Ferdinand Porsche's close friends were, besides the Führer himself, Dr Robert Ley, leader of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Fritz Sauckel, who rejoiced in the pompous title of General Plenipotentiary for Manpower Allocation (Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz). In just over a thousand pages, two German researchers, Hans Mommsen and Manfred Grieger, describe the role played by Ferdinand Porsche and his firm in Third Reich Germany and the treatment meted out during that period to workers of all origins forced into working in the factories. Under the title "Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich" (Volkswagen and its workers during the Third Reich) (1), this book also lays the foundation stone for as yet unwritten history. It is a well-documented work, written in a clear, detached style far from the outraged passion which sometimes lies behind other material relating to this period (2). There are a number of gaps, attributable to the refusal of Ferdinand Piech, Porsche's direct descendant, to grant the authors access to the Volkswagen archives - as if lost honour could ever be recovered. The Peugeot dynasty also declined to open their archives for information on Peugeot's cooperation with Volkswagen during the period. Even more disturbing, the researchers came up against exactly the same attitude at the French ministry of the interior, which was unwilling, presumably out of concern for the "national interest", not to disclose information about cooperation with German Nazi business interests by the French bourgeoisie. In fact, most employers in both occupied and unoccupied Europe colluded in Hitler's crimes. It is well known, for instance, that Swiss and Swedish banks continued to finance German industry after the Nazis seized power in 1933.Statements taken from the U.S. Army War Crimes Investigation report about the VW hospital facilities: "In the opinion of this officer the function of this organization was nothing more than a death chamber for children of slave workers and veiled by the term 'maternity hospital.'" "The infants literally rotted away with the same sequence of symptoms, vomiting, diarrhea, emaciation, distended blueish colored abdomens and death. The nursery was loaded with bedbugs and flies. The infants cried all night while being bitten by the bedbugs. . . . One mother attempted to take her child from the nursery in a hand bag." http://mondediplo.com/1998/01/11volkswag