IBM and the Holocaust (63 page)

WHEN GERMAN
requisition teams began pilfering Hollerith machines in August 1940, Rene Carmille, a mysterious French military technocrat, rescued his tabulators. Under cover of night, he moved the precious devices from his military finance office to a hiding place in a garage. In so doing, the French military's punch card capability was preserved. A few months later, on November 14, 1940, Carmille single-handedly created France's Demographic Service in Vichy. It was just a few weeks after the first Jewish census in the Occupied Zone, and from the Nazi viewpoint, the new agency was wholly compatible with Berlin's labor recruitment and racial agenda. The Vichy government entrusted his agency with the responsibility for all social statistics projects. It operated at least twenty offices on both sides of the zone boundary.
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Once established, Carmille carefully began strengthening his small arsenal of tabulators. Not only did he work with Holleriths, but he also had access to a Bull and even a Powers machine. In 1941, Carmille signed a 36-million-francs contract with Bull for new machines, even though the chance of delivery from their new plant in Lyon was in great doubt. He also signed a multi-million-franc contract with CEC calling for a series of powerful machines to be delivered on a strict schedule; millions of francs in fines and penalties were to be paid by CEC if they could not maintain the delivery regimen.
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When Carmille began the Demographic Service, he was not allied with the General Commission on Jewish Questions, the anti-Semitic Vichy agency coordinating Jewish registrations. But he was certainly hoping to attract the agency's attention. In March 1941, he made a point of informing GCJQ Director Vallat that his statistics for Jewish students were incorrect.
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Carmille had been working for months on a national Personal Identification Number, a number that would not only be sequential, but descriptive. The thirteen-digit PIN number would be a manual "bar code" of sorts describing an individual's complete personal profile as well as professional skills in great detail. For example, one number would be assigned for metal workers, with a second modifying number for brass, and then a third modifying number for curtain rods. Tabulators could then be set to whisk through millions of cards until it located French metal workers, specializing in brass with experience in curtain rods. Those metal workers could also be pinpointed in any district. The system mimicked a concurrent Reich codification system that assigned a descriptive bar code-like number to every product and component in Germany. Carmille's number would ultimately evolve into France's social security number.
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In spring 1941, Carmille was readying the professional July 1941 census of all French citizens aged 14 to 65. Question 11 asked Jews to identify themselves not only by their professed religion but also by their grand-parents. The program was highly publicized. An article in the
New York Times
several weeks later reported, "Special registering machines are being used in this census. By a system of perforations—every citizen will receive a number composed of thirteen digits—information will be obtainable . . . county by county." An interesting emphasis in the questionnaire was on agricultural skills. A second
New York Times
article on the census actually identified the program as tied to an agricultural drive.
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Any Vichy official or Nazi representative in France would surely approve of such a census. It would not only identify the workers, including farm laborers, but the Jews among them.

In mid-June 1941, Vichy launched the second major census of Jews, this one in both zones. The question was how would the questionnaires be processed, through manual methods with paper files, or with the dynamic capabilities of Holleriths?

L
YON
, J
UNE 18, 1941
To Xavier Vallat
General Commissioner for Jewish Questions
Object: Census of the Jews

The June 2, 1941 law, published in the
Journal Officiel
on June 14, 1941, orders a census of all persons who are considered Jewish in the eyes of the law of that same date regarding the status of Jews.

The inquiry that . . . your General Commissariat is going to undertake greatly interests the Demographics Department, which was given responsibility for all statistical operations regarding the population of France. . . .

This Service just organized, in the unoccupied zone, the first census about professional activities of all persons 14 to 65 years old. The information gathered, as well as all information coming from further inquiries conducted in both the occupied and unoccupied zones, will be used to create and maintain an updated file on each individual summing up their activities. This will be used to produce, at any given moment, the general demographic profile of the nation.

It seems to me that in these conditions, the special [June 14] census of the Jews could possibly bring complementary information that is even more interesting given that the inquiries cover not only people, but their belongings as well. These considerations lead me to ask you to please tell me right now how your inquiry will be conducted, details about the questions asked, and later on, the results you will have obtained.

In case the model of Jewish census forms is not definitively established, I am at your service to study . . . a form that should permit your General Commissariat, as well as the Demographics Department, to unify all useful information about the Jews. This will allow us to discover those [Jews] who have not yet made their declaration, so we can organize an inquiry as to the status of their belongings and their potential transfer . . . and definitively clarify the Jewish problem.

I am sending an Administrator of the Demographics Department to explain to you the organization of the Service, its work methods, and the results obtained by using tabulation processes to manage individual files. He will also examine with you the conditions in which collaboration between the Services concerned would be advantageous to you.

René Carmille
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Like many French bureaucrats, Vallat was resistant to Carmille's contraptions. He worried that commencing a punching operation from scratch would delay the reports. Vallat trusted the Tulard system, even though it was manual—and probably because it was manual. So on June 21, Vallat wrote back to Carmille, "I have thought about integrating this census with the operations your department handles, but it did not seem possible to me, first to prolong the process, given the economic urgency of the census of Jewish persons and belongings, and second, given the particular nature of the information that I need. And I decided to immediately order a [Tulard] file which has proved valuable in the occupied zone and which I will distribute to prefects and mayors in the coming week. I will always be happy to provide you with any information thus obtained."
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Only when Vallat's people were confronted with the mountains of forms to be assimilated did they realize that Carmille presented the only hope of efficiently identifying the Jews. Vallat transferred the processing assignment to him. On October 11, 1941, Carmille formed the National Statistical Service, which subsumed the General Statistics Office of France and merged it with the Demographic Service. Carmille stated, "The new statistical service would have a different point of departure, namely to establish files for individuals." He added, "We are no longer dealing with general censuses, but we are really following individuals." Carmille made clear, "the new organization must now be envisioned in such a way that the information be obtained continuously, which means that the updating of information must be carefully regulated."
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Carmille was now France's great Hollerith hope.

On December 2, 1941, Vallat notified Carmille, "The Jewish census operations in the occupied zone, as ordered by the law of 2 June 1941, is finished; we collected approximately 140,000 declarations."
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On December 19, a seemingly impatient Vallat complained to the Ministry of the Interior, "The file would normally be established by your Police service. But it has become apparent from several conversations with your offices that it has neither the personnel required nor the equipment necessary for this operation. Due to this situation we have thought to ask the help of the designated Demographic Service to ensure the completion of this task for which they are equitably suited. They have agreed and they have offered to forward this task to their tabulating workshops in Clermont-Ferrand and Limoges."
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Vallat later asked the Ministry to pay the considerable cost of the tabulation services, 400,000 francs, and to arrange for transportation of materials to Carmille offices. That was approved.
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Now the Jewish forms were all in the possession of Carmille.

But the numbers were just not matching up. Vallat was to have sent 140,000 personal declarations. But on June 3, 1942, Carmille's office confirmed it had "received to date 109,066 declarations, of which 20% (exactly 17,980 declarations) were not received until 4 May 1942."
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Things were going much slower than anyone expected.

To further delay the operation, CEC was now defaulting on its rigid delivery schedule. CEC just could not manufacture machines as required while Dehomag was usurping all its resources. In early 1943, the subsidiary in Paris informed IBM NY, "A certain number of transactions with the National Statistical Service have . . . caused the application of penalties. . . . The amount of these penalties might reach a figure of 4 million [francs] in view of the size and importance of the deals, and because of the company's inability to deliver machines according to contract schedules. . . . A one year delay and waving of penalties was requested."
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In the meantime, Berlin would not wait. Using the less efficient Tulard cards, it began organizing round-ups of Jews in Paris. In early May 1941, 6,494 summonses were left at presumed Jewish residences, mainly foreign Jews. They were instructed to report on May 14 to one of seven centers with their identification in hand. Nazi-allied officials could not be certain exactly which addresses were accurate and up-to-date. With Carmille's tabulations not yet ready, the Germans, in essence, relied on the Jews to turn themselves in. The results yielded only half what the Nazis had hoped for. On the appointed day, May 14, 1941, an estimated 3,400 to 3,700 Jews, mainly of Polish origin, did report as requested. They were immediately sent to camps.
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A second raid was conducted on August 20, 1941. This time, French agitators, including many professionals, in Paris' 11th Arrondissement were targeted. The Tulard files offered precise lists of names and addresses and even stairwells of many Jews. But the numbers again fell short. Police units cordoned off major intersections—and even blocked the subway exits, grabbing any Jewish man be tween the ages of 18 and 50. But only 3,022 Jews were arrested. For three more days, the authorities tried to locate more Jews. The inefficient operation only netted 609 on August 21. Then on August 22, they located 325 more. On August 23, as the word spread and Jews everywhere in the District tried to disappear, only 122 Jews were nabbed. The total for the four days was 4,078. The men were sent to the Drancy transit concentration camp. Paris was shocked and outraged because the raids seized both foreign and French-born Jews.
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But for the Germans, it meant the updated data from Tulard was profoundly inefficient.

A third major raid on December 12, 1941, hoped to snare 1,000 Parisian professionals. The obsolete Tulard files only yielded 743 correct addresses. To round out the numbers, foreign Jews were picked up at random on Paris streets.
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Where was Carmille? Where were his Holleriths?

By the end of 1941, numerous Vichy officials had concluded the elaborate census of June 1941 conducted in both zones was completely nonfunctional. A new one was needed.
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On January 13, 1942, the Vichy Finance Minister, conscious of the extraordinary expense, bitterly objected to the Interior Ministry. "A general census of the Jews has already been done," the Finance Minister complained. "If all the desired information had been requested at the time, it would be superfluous to undertake a new census a few months later. I ask you please do not proceed with the projected census or with other measures of this nature without consulting the National Statistics Service. Their experience in this matter could be helpful in avoiding gaps or repeated information that could present serious problems from a technical as well as a financial point of view."
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Again, where was Carmille?

By February 1942, Eichmann's office in Paris reported that the prefecture lists were completely insufficient, asserting, "our offices are constantly demanding corrections."
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Something needed to be done.

German officials began turning to the French Jewish Council for names. The Union Generale des Israelites en France, the so-called UGIF, became a prime source for the Gestapo. The UGIF was vested with the sole authority for all Jewish welfare and any other communication between the Jews in Occupied France and the German authorities. Therefore, Jews invariably came to the UGIF offices to sign up for welfare services and submit inquiries about interned loved ones. French Jews even paid special communal assessments to the UGIF. The Germans granted the UGIF unprecedented access to all Vichy census lists and allowed the organization to manually update them. These were then turned over to the Nazis by the UGIF. In fact, the UGIF maintained a whole department for providing lists to the authorities. They called it Service 14.
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