Y Net

OSWIECIM, Poland — Car part supplier Schaeffler, one of the pillars of the German industry, used hair shaven from prisoners at the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp to make textiles during World War II, historians working at the Auschwitz museum in Poland said Monday.

The researchers said they found rolls of fabric at one of the company's former factories in southern Poland made of the hair of over 40,000 inmates.

Report: German Car Firm Used Human Hair from Auschwitz

Y Net

OSWIECIM, Poland — Car part supplier Schaeffler, one of the pillars of the German industry, used hair shaven from prisoners at the Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp to make textiles during World War II, historians working at the Auschwitz museum in Poland said Monday.

The researchers said they found rolls of fabric at one of the company’s former factories in southern Poland made of the hair of over 40,000 inmates.

The Schaeffler concern rejected the allegations and the company’s historian said that there was no evidence to support the theory.

Dr Jacek Lachendro, a historian at the Auschwitz museum, told Germany’s Der Spiegel television channel on Monday that 1.95 tons of cloth made from inmates’ hair had been discovered at a former Schaeffler textile and army tank parts factory in the town of Kiertz (formerly Katscher) after the Germans withdrew at the end of the war.

According to Lachendro, samples taken from the fabric contained traces of the Zyklon B gas used by the Nazis to murder millions in the death camps. Former workers at the factory in Kiertz who were interviewed by Der Spiegel said that they remembered two wagon-loads of human hair being delivered to the company in 1943.

Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was opened on April 27 1940. some 1,300,000 Jews, 100,00 Polish inmates, 17,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 23,000 gypsies had been murdered at the camps until its liberation by the Red Army on January 27 1945.

In 1967, Poland turned the site into a museum commemorating the crimes of the Nazis.

Monday’s report dealt yet another blow to the German company that is currently facing bankruptcy after accumulating a $14 billion debt. The concern’s owner, Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, recently admitted that the company used forced labor in its factories during World War II. However, the firm refuses to disclose details of its operations during the war.

12 Comments

  • rivka

    sick sick sick I always say i would not buy german products and ppl say oh cmon so many years later no jew should ever support anything made in germany even if they have the best quality cars or whatever they make

  • heavy 411

    It is so horrific I believe some of the story hasn’t been told
    Like why did the enslavement of human beings that belonged to jewish faith and gypsies and all the human beings that suffered and died during the 1930’s and 1940’s
    Life wasn’t seen as valuable as property and money

    The industrial revolution spawned by ???? polluted nature and the brown shirts symbolized jacob/tiferes working for the man black red and white The state of Israel was unborn
    Bshivili Nivreh Haolam What/Who is Bshivili ?

    Heavy 411

  • just looking

    “In 1967, Poland turned the site into a museum commemorating the crimes of the Nazis”
    to use the words commemorate in this article is in poor taste, commemorate usually goes to honor something or someone or to make honorable mention of something,

  • angry yid

    This is from Forbes.com list of richest people in the world:

    #79 Maria-Elisabeth & Georg Schaeffler

    Age: NA
    Fortune: inherited
    Source: Ball bearings

    Net Worth: 6.8

    Country Of Citizenship: Germany
    Residence: Herzogenaurach, Germany, Europe & Russia
    Industry: Manufacturing
    Marital Status: , no children
    Ball bearings make this mother and son high rollers. They jointly own one the world’s largest producers of roller bearings, $7.2 billion (revenues) INA Waelzlager Schaeffler KG. Son Georg has left the running of the company in the competent hands of his mother, preferring to practice international business law at Haynes and Boone in Dallas. A well-known figure in Bavaria where she lives, Maria Elizabeth has been awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit for her commitment to social issues and the German Cross of Merit for her entrepreneurial achievements. Opera fan rumored to have named her two dogs Fidelio and Tosca.

  • angry yid

    For all those who were curios, as I was, as to what a car company would need hair for- it is for the padding in the seats.

  • angry yid

    The ZZ tattoos in the arms of the SS, as well as the advanced scientific mathematical logic numbering of the concentration camps inmates forcefully tattoos where specially developed & devised by american IBM – a contractor to the fascist criminals.

    Dont accuse me of wandering thematically off – lets start right here at he transport business:

    Henry Ford and GM were openly outspoken Nazi admirer /supporters even when WWII begone.

    Documents discovered in German and American archives show that, American managers of both GM and Ford went along with the conversion of their German plants to military production at a time when U.S. government documents show they were still resisting calls by the Roosevelt administration to step up military production in their plants at home.

    The “Deutsche Luftschiff GmbH” was a commercially successful USA/German joint venture (the USA insisted commercial grounds against protests from german technicians on, as history has shown later, correct security reasons – the US counterparts did not know what else to do with the sitting & growing gas stock, sitting on flammable gas) until the cruise by LZ 129 “Graf Zeppelin” bearing the Nazi swatiska crashed in flames at Lakehurst / New York.

    The virgin travel of the US/German Zeppelin with the Hakenkreuz proudly flying over New York is to be found in most photo galleries.

    http://www.spiegel.de/img/0

    There is a huge spectrum of US companies having done healthy business with or aided Hitler Germany even when at war with the US.

  • angry yid

    Ironically – but not surprising to those with knowledge in German history – the textile factory where the hair is alleged to have been processed formerly belonged to the Jewish-owned Davistan AG. When the Nazis came to power, Ernst Frank, the enterprise’s Jewish owner, was compelled to flee Germany.

    The firm came under the control of a consortium of banks, among them the Dresdner Bank. In October 1940, Wilhelm Schaeffler, an employee of the Dresdner Bank acquired 67 Percent of the shares at a price 30 percent below the rated value.

    In 1942, the Davistan AG was renamed “Schaeffler AG.” The company made armaments for the Nazi war machine. After the Second World War it re-emerged as one of Germany’s main suppliers of parts to the car industry, specializing in needle roller bearings.

  • Trevor

    Textiles made of human hair? Please explain to me how this works. I find this highly unlikely, especially for antisemites, who found Jews dirty.
    Human hair cannot be drawn into fabric the say that wool or cotton can–it simply doesn’t work.
    Reporting like this is baseless, careless, dangerous and, at worst, sensational.
    Pass.

  • The Professor

    If you are to boycott German products as a Jew then you should also boycott Egyptian… Italian… Middle Eastern (excluding Israel)… French… (thanks to the Gauls)… and many more that I don’t have time to type. The persecution of Semites has been made by just about all walks of human life that have encountered them. Following the Second World War the U.N. was established and they attempted to find a location for the Jews to settle to evade persecution and none could be found thus introducing the Sychs-Pichot agreement and U.N. Resolution 241, which established their own state in Israel, which has had nothing but bloodshed and war since its establishment. I am just a historian making a comment whom has researched all avenues of history in hopes to seek the truth, and my studies have found that incompetence/lack of education of history is what causes strifes to linger on. All facets of history are shrouded in guilt stricken moments if you look hard enough. It wasn’t the German people that are to blame. It was a regime of tyrannical national socialists that saught to rid their country of what they saw as an infestation. We as people should avoid generalizations such as this. For example, one may not agree with the vietnam conflict or Iraq however being born of this country history tells us that people will oneday associate me and every other citizen as proponents of the wars. Food for thought.