A prominent English investment bank founded by emigre German Jews has pulled out of purchasing shares in I.G. Farben, the German company notorious for having helped supply the gas used at Auschwitz.
The turnabout is credited to pressure from British Jewish groups, particularly the European office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, following disclosure about the stock purchase by the S.G. Warburg bank in the July 29 edition of the Sunday Times of London.
“Four non-Jewish employees were having some fun and invested in Farben without the official O.K. of company heads,” said Shimon Samuels, European director of the Wiesenthal Center, who spoke with Warburg spokesmen.
S.G. Warburg had reportedly just bought a “significant stake” in Farben, as had a number of other British banking houses who thought that with the reunification of the Germanys, the company will have claim to more than $4 billion in assets, which had been seized by East Germany after the war.
The large-scale buying raised the share value of Farben stock from 20 to 30 Deutschmarks, or from about $12.50 to nearly $19.00 per share.
The East German shares of Farben have been put on sale as East and West Germany make final plans to unite. The two Germanys unified their currency and economic systems on July 1.
SUPPORTERS OF NAZI REGIME
Farben, the largest industrial company in the world at the onset of World War II, was one of the most powerful supporters of the Nazi regime.
Its rubber factories were staffed by the SS, and factory labor was supplied by the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp. Some 25,000 slave laborers lost their lives in this work.
Farben was also involved in share holding of the firms that produced Zyklon B gas, and in taking over Jewish-owned businesses.
Farben officials were later tried at Nuremberg for war crimes. Eleven were acquitted.
After the war, the company was divided first by East and West Germany. The four Western allies divided up the West German half of the company, leaving only a “shell” for the purposes of paying reparations to its Jewish slave laborers.
Such was not the case in East Germany, however, which refused to accept joint responsibility for Nazi war crimes, and to issue compensation payments to Jewish victims.
The Wiesenthal Center and other English Jewish groups are demanding that the East German half of the Farben company pay its share of its reparations responsibility as the West German branch has done.
The grievance was brought to the British delegates of the European Jewish Congress, in the hope that it would be brought up at next month’s meeting in Paris.
According to the London Jewish Chronicle, the Board of Deputies of British Jews rejected the suggestion, saying it would not be appropriate for the British delegates to raise the matter.
“I am concerned with the restructure of German industry,” Eric Moonman, senior vice president of the Board of Deputies, told the Chronicle. “There are a number of shell organizations in Germany that have been dormant, and now, with the help of the West, are being rebuilt.
“Many of them were involved in the Nazi war effort, producing some of the most sinister and horrific weapons.”
However, British Holocaust survivor Ben Helfgott took a different view.
“One has to be realistic,” he was quoted as saying. “The fact is that East Germany is in a very bad state, with antiquated industries, and they cannot make a start without investment from the West.”
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