My Grandmother
28 Jan 2016
my grandmother was always vibrant and full of life. but now she lays still in the ground.
this year’s international holocaust memorial day coincides with the 30th day to her burial (“Shloshim”), when it is customary to visit the grave and unveil the tombstone.
in my childhood, we used to play Rummikub as she told us stories of her grandiose life before the war, followed by the many survival stories in the camps. how she used to rub salt on her face to make her ‘blush’, so that she would pass as just vibrant enough to stay alive. she had lost her entire family there, had nothing left to lose or plan for, but she carried on fighting just the same.
my grandma had a rich life even though it wasn’t always easy. more than anything she taught us to live each moment to the fullest. now she lays to rest and so does her IBM barcode. that which was tattooed on her arm in Auschwitz is history at last. the memory of her Holocaust is now embedded with their memory of the Nakba, in the blossoming fields of ethnically cleansed Kafr Saba.
Originally posted here: https://www.facebook.com/ronnie.barkan/posts/10153524568187054
More about IBM and the Holocaust
the number on my grandma’s arm — that’s the IBM barcode that was tattooed on the arm of every prisoner— transforming them into a person-object, as was my grandmother’s case in Auschwitz concentration camp.
IBM had its computers in every concentration camp and every major train station, all of which had to be serviced monthly by IBM personnel. the millions of punch cards, at least one per prisoner, were solely printed by IBM. the phone number for the IBM Hollerith office in Auschwitz extermination camp was #4496, as can be seen in the the camp’s phone book.
See here for more information on the way in which IBM Hollerith machines have been used for storing a comprehensive database of prisoners data, managing that enormous database and retrieving prisoners based on the tabulated data: https://eguide.arolsen-archives.org/en/archive/details/hollerith-preparatory-worksheet-card/
“Central to the Nazi effort was a massive 500-man Hollerith Gruppe, installed in a looming brown building at 24 Murnerstrasse in Krakow, Poland. The Hollerith Gruppe of the Nazi Statistical Office crunched all the numbers of plunder and genocide that allowed the Nazis to systematically starve the Jews, meter them out of the ghettos, and then transport them to either work camps or death camps.
The trains running to Auschwitz were tracked by a specially guarded IBM customer site facility at 22 Pawia in Krakow. The millions of punch cards the Nazis in Poland required were obtained exclusively from IBM, including from one company print shop at 6 Rymarska Street across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto. The entire Polish subsidiary was overseen by an IBM administrative facility at 24 Kreuz in Warsaw.”
https://www.villagevoice.com/2002/10/08/the-ibm-link-to-auschwitz/
