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Nazi atrocities at Ford-Werke studied Thursday, 6 December 2001 14:36 (ET) Nazi atrocities at Ford-Werke studied DEARBORN, Mich., Dec. 6 (UPI) -- More than 45 historians, researchers, archivists and translators spent 3-1/2 years combing through more than 98,000 pages of documents on the operations of Ford-Werke, Ford's German subsidiary, under Hitler's Nazi regime. They found Ford Motor Co. did not profit from the factory run by the Nazi war machine during World War II. Ford Thursday released an exhaustive 208-page report on Ford-Werke and donated $4 million for studies on forced and slave labor and humanitarian relief. The Cologne plant, like most foreign-owned industries in Germany, were nationalized after the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. Historical records confirm Ford-Werke used more than 2,000 forced and slave laborers -- Poles, Jews, French, Italian, Russian and Eastern Europeans -- at any given time, but the total number exploited during the war could not be determined. Ford began the inquiry in 1998 as German companies were being pressured to make financial restitution to hundreds of thousands of forced and slave laborers of World War II. Ford-Germany contributed about $13 million to a reparations fund for surviving slave laborers. "The use of forced and slave labor in Germany, including at Ford-Werke, was wrong and cannot be justified," Ford Motor Co. chief of staff John Rintamaki said. Information gathered from more than 30 archives, he said, "didn't find anything substantial that hasn't been known before, but we did add a great deal of detail on this subject." "In looking back, it must be remembered that all companies operating in Germany at that time had to use labor provided by the German government, and that the Nazi regime chose to provide forced and slave laborers to industry," Rintamaki said. "By being open and honest about the past, even when we find the subject reprehensible, we hope to contribute toward a better understanding of this period of history." The report "Research Findings About Ford-Werke Under the Nazi Regime," was overseen by Lawrence Dowler, a former librarian and archivist at both Harvard and Yale universities, and written by Simon Reich, a noted scholar on the German auto industry between 1939 and 1945. The more than 98,000 documents and other historic materials gathered for the report will be added to the permanent collection of Ford archives at the Benson Ford Research Center at Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. The research will be available on a searchable database at the center's new 66,000-square-foot facility scheduled to open March 4. Ford will fund a $2 million endowment at a major university to establish a center for the study of human rights issues and donate another $2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship, which funds international organizations that help survivors of the Nazi regime. -- Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved. -- Message: WWN-UPI-1-20011206-14212100-bc-us-ford-nazis-crn-Text Content: SRV_INTNEWS SRV_USNEWS SRV_UPIWASH SRV_USBUS Content: ECON POL Content: 04011000 11007000 ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
