Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but why would they even need a machine to count the prisoners? If they didn’t feed their victims and were planning to murder them anyways I’m having trouble understanding why they wouldn’t be okay with just a loose head count. Was it really just for counting?
I hope I’m not coming across as insensitive, I’ve just never heard about this and it sounds so ominous.
Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM’s punchcard technology.[2]: 351 In his book, Black charges that “without IBM’s machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler’s camps could have never managed the numbers they did.”[2]: 352
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but why would they even need a machine to count the prisoners? If they didn’t feed their victims and were planning to murder them anyways I’m having trouble understanding why they wouldn’t be okay with just a loose head count. Was it really just for counting?
I hope I’m not coming across as insensitive, I’ve just never heard about this and it sounds so ominous.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust