June 22,
2004 Posted: 7:36 AM EDT (1136 GMT)
GENEVA,
Switzerland (AP) -- A Swiss court has cleared the way for
Gypsy campaigners to sue IBM over allegations that the
computer company's expertise helped the Nazis commit mass
murder more efficiently, the plaintiffs' lawyer said
Tuesday.
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Nazis
allegedly used IBM punch-card machines to codify
information about people sent to concentration
camps.
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The Geneva appeals court threw out an earlier decision by
a lower tribunal which last year said it lacked
jurisdiction, said the Gypsies' lawyer, Henri-Philippe
Sambuc.
The
Gypsies filed the lawsuit in Geneva because IBM's wartime
European headquarters was in the city. They claim the
office was the information technology multinational's hub
for trade with the Nazis.
"IBM's
complicity through material or intellectual assistance to
the criminal acts of the Nazis during World War II via
its Geneva office cannot be ruled out," said the appeals
court ruling. It cited "a significant body of evidence
indicating that the Geneva office could have been aware
that it was assisting these acts."
In June
2003, the lower court said IBM only had an "antenna" in
the Swiss city, but the Geneva official archives contain
documents showing that in 1936 IBM opened an office under
the name "International Business Machines Corporation New
York, European Headquarters."
No
immediate reaction to the ruling was available from IBM's
Geneva lawyers, who have previously referred requests for
comment to the company's U.S. headquarters. The news of
the ruling came before business hours at the IBM's New
York base.
The
company has said its German subsidiary, Deutsche
Hollerith Maschinen GmbH -- or Dehomag -- was taken over
by the Nazis before World War II, and it had no control
over operations there or how IBM machines were used by
the Nazis.
Sambuc
maintains that the company's Geneva office continued to
coordinate Europe-wide trade with the Nazis, acting on
clear instructions from world headquarters in New
York.
The group
represented by Sambuc -- Gypsy International Recognition
and Compensation Action -- sued IBM for "moral
reparation" and US$20,000 each in damages on behalf of
four Gypsies from Germany and France and one Polish-born
Swedish Gypsy. All five plaintiffs were orphaned in the
Holocaust.
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Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler meets IBM founder Thomas
J. Watson in 1937.
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The campaigners began planning the lawsuit after U.S.
author Edwin Black claimed in a book published in
February 2001 that IBM punch-card machines enabled the
Nazis to make their killing operations more
efficient.
Black
said the punch-card machines were used to codify
information about people sent to concentration camps. The
number 12 represented a Gypsy inmate, while Jews were
recorded with the number 8. The code D4 meant a prisoner
had been killed.
The Nazis
are believed to have killed around 600,000 Gypsies along
with 6 million Jews. Although Gypsy groups say the number
of Gypsies killed could have been as high as 1.5
million.
"It does
not appear inconsistent to conclude that the respondent
(IBM) facilitated the task of the Nazis in their
committing of crimes against humanity -- acts which were
counted and codified by IBM machines," said the court
ruling.
IBM's
German division has paid into Germany's
government-industry initiative to compensate people
forced to work for the Nazis during the war.
In April
2001, a class action lawsuit against IBM in New York was
dropped after lawyers said they feared it would slow down
payments from the German Holocaust fund. German companies
had sought freedom from legal actions before committing
to the fund.
The
Geneva case is the first Holocaust-related action against
IBM in Europe, said Sambuc. A city court will likely hear
the lawsuit in the fall, unless IBM lodges an appeal at
the Federal Tribunal, Switzerland's supreme
court.