I am looking for a simple explanation and background to the claim that the holocaust happening was proved due to the Germans using an IBM punch card system to record data etc.
I recall some mentions a long time back about IBM and punch cards but would like a for-and-against for this claim please.
Can anyone please oblige?
IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
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- borjastick
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IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
Of the four million jews under German control, six million died and five million survived!
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Eye of Zyclone
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Re: IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
They didn't claim that the Holocaust happening was proved due to the Germans using an IBM punch card system to record data etc. They claimed that the Germans using an IBM punch card system "help[ed] automate the genocide of Europe's Jews," as Sam Jaffe once put it in Businessweek. As usually, Holohoaxers used, in this case, their dear double trick of an a priori conclusion (which can be summarized as follows : The Holocaust is a real event. Period.) and a much-widened definition of the Holocaust (meaning anything bad that happened to some Jews in Europe and North Africa before and during WW2) to fool their credulous audience.
"Holocaust deniers are very slick people. They justify everything they say with facts and figures."
Re: IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
I don't see any substance to this idea. Whoever believes it should articulate their case.
As I understand it, these IBM punchcards are just computerized versions of paper documents, so whatever proof is alleged to exist should exist also on paper.
Some activists have gone after IBM for selling punchcard systems to the Nazis because those punchcards were used to register Jews. However, the U.S. also implemented a punchcard system for its interned Japanese-Americans, and that also involved IBM. What's the difference?
As I understand it, these IBM punchcards are just computerized versions of paper documents, so whatever proof is alleged to exist should exist also on paper.
Some activists have gone after IBM for selling punchcard systems to the Nazis because those punchcards were used to register Jews. However, the U.S. also implemented a punchcard system for its interned Japanese-Americans, and that also involved IBM. What's the difference?
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Eye of Zyclone
- Posts: 484
- Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2025 3:12 pm
Re: IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
The false belief that horrific pictures of the big health disaster caused by the victors' "obliteration bombing" policy in the last operational concentration camps of the collapsing 3rd Reich have undoubtedly proven the truth of the victors' "gas chambers" atrocity propaganda ?Wetzelrad wrote: ↑Fri May 29, 2026 6:08 pm Some activists have gone after IBM for selling punchcard systems to the Nazis because those punchcards were used to register Jews. However, the U.S. also implemented a punchcard system for its interned Japanese-Americans, and that also involved IBM. What's the difference?
https://historicaltribune.wordpress.com ... ef-kramer/
"Holocaust deniers are very slick people. They justify everything they say with facts and figures."
Re: IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
I've prepared a longer post, but here is a summary to save you some time.
Summary
The camp inmate punch card system was only implemented beginning in July 1944, rather late to have much relevance to the Holocaust. Where it is claimed to be relevant is in punch cards which supposedly indicate "Sonderbehandlung" as a cause of death, but this claim is spurious, based purely on one document removed from context, distorted, and painfully misinterpreted. No known punchcard or associated document supports the claim of gassings or mass executions. (I leave aside witnesses.)
If anything, the punch card system is exculpatory. Its purpose was economic, and its existence proves that the Germans needed Jewish labor. It could not exist if there was a real extermination program. Also, included amongst the cards are countless cases of Jewish prisoners being moved out of camps like Auschwitz and not being murdered. This is hardly news to anyone here, but it remains a solid and simple proof that the extermination story is not right.
Edwin Black's Claims
In researching this, it's apparent that nearly all material about IBM's alleged participation in the Holocaust was written by Edwin Black. I think Black is a sensationalist prone to making false statements. In fact even the Auschwitz Museum felt compelled to deny some of them, but I will focus here just on his punchcard -> gas chamber claim.
In a piece for Huffington Post, Black claims that among "the IBM Concentration Camp Codes" is "IBM's code for death by Gas Chamber".
In a piece for JVL, he likewise claims the code for "death in the gas chambers [w]as 6".
He wrote more about this in his book, IBM and the Holocaust:
Analysis
Maliciously, Black asserts that "Sonderbehandlung" was a "death code". He leaves out that this category of punch was labelled "manner of departure" and was primarily used to indicate transfers. In reproducing the list of these codes, he excludes "released", "transferred", and "escaped". These are clearly not "death codes".
It is worth comparing this key to other surviving documents, particularly those analyzed by Carlo Mattogno in Healthcare in Auschwitz. Most relevant are the reports titled "Summary of Numbers and Deployment of the Female Prisoners". Mattogno writes (p.184):
It hardly needs to be stated, but the presence of an explicit "executions" column in the key also precludes the possibility that the "Sonderbehandlung" column could refer to executions. No Holocaust historian has ever come up with a plausible explanation for that needless delineation, whereas there are good reasons to delineate between the categories of transit with and without Sonderbehandlung. Chiefly, Auschwitz was a hub for the distribution of workers across the camp network, so proper quarantine procedures were a necessity. (Hence why Auschwitz had its own quarantine camp, and prisoners were required by order to remain in quarantine for weeks, etc.)
Mattogno demonstrates, convincingly and through various lines of evidence and reasoning, that where Auschwitz documents used "Sonderbehandlung" they could not refer to deaths. For example: prisoners were marked for Sonderbehandlung during a period when no selections or gassings are claimed to have taken place, numerous dates where gassings are claimed to have taken place were not counted as Sonderbehandlung, workers were given Sonderbehandlung while non-workers like inpatients and children were not, even supervisors were given Sonderbehandlung before inpatients, and more besides.
Moving on, Black claims that death by natural causes includes murders. But if that were the case, there would be no need for the other codes. What nonsense.
He further implies that there are "death reports" which were coded as Sonderbehandlung. This would be a remarkable discovery since the mainstream is totally unaware of these death reports. Actually it is asserted that all such reports were destroyed if they were ever created in the first place. (Healthcare in Auschwitz, p.94)
The least Black could do here would be to share a punch card punched with the Sonderbehandlung code. He doesn't. Only in the JVL piece do we see a photo of a punchcard attached to the claim. However, this photo is so small it's illegible and useless to demonstrate anything. In fact, better versions of this photo show that the card was blank--not even punched.
Other photos of these Rassenamt cards show that they lack any column to indicate the camp the person was interned in or to indicate the reason they departed. Therefore it was impossible to punch one to say they were "specially treated". Instead the columns that are present record basic biographical data and (unsurprisingly) racial traits.
Therefore these Rassenamt cards have no relation to camp prisoner cards. The inclusion of one in the JVL article was just to dazzle the reader. (I note here for completeness that an Andre Schwarz, in describing Black's work in the Luxemburger Wort, made the same misleading conflation by captioning his own photo of a Rassenamt card with the same nonsense about "code 6 for 'special treatment' in gas chambers." The photo refutes its own caption.)
What the key above actually refers to must be what the Arolsen Archives calls a "Hollerith preparatory worksheet card", which they nicely explain here. In one of their provided examples, the "Abgangs-Art" cell is marked "2" to indicate a transfer from Ravensbruck to the adjacent town of Furstenberg. In browsing Arolsen's vast trove of these cards, I find many more transfers (coded "2") plus some natural deaths ("3"). Further observations in spoiler:
I can find no case of a written ID card or a punch card indicating "special treatment" as claimed by Black. This would be a pretty important proof for the Holocaust if it existed.
Instead what these cards show us primarily is that the Germans tracked prisoners' entries to and transfers between the camps. According to Arolsen, the purpose of all this was "To improve the use of concentration camp prisoners as laborers in the war economy." Which is quite mundane and contrary not only to Black's claims but to the Holocaust story generally.
For a useful comparison, consider that the Allies put millions of Germans into forced labor for several years after the war was over.
Finally, and returning to Black's statements above, he claims the "F-6" code for Sonderbehandlung was a "punishment [...] in fact an order for extermination, either by gas chamber or bullet." This reads as total nonsense. I think what he means to reference, here, is a document that Germar Rudolf describes thusly (from Dissecting the Holocaust, p.37):
Neither can any right-minded person equate the explicit description of "hanging" to the purely invented claim of "gas chamber or bullet". The former is yet another proof that, where Nazi documents do refer to killings, they are explicit, not that secret, and clearly contradictory to gassings.
Nor should anything written on a Haftlings-Personal-Karte be read as "an order"--as it is not a communication path by which orders can be sent--much less one "for extermination".
Based on this, I regard Edwin Black as incompetent. This concludes my comments.
Summary
The camp inmate punch card system was only implemented beginning in July 1944, rather late to have much relevance to the Holocaust. Where it is claimed to be relevant is in punch cards which supposedly indicate "Sonderbehandlung" as a cause of death, but this claim is spurious, based purely on one document removed from context, distorted, and painfully misinterpreted. No known punchcard or associated document supports the claim of gassings or mass executions. (I leave aside witnesses.)
If anything, the punch card system is exculpatory. Its purpose was economic, and its existence proves that the Germans needed Jewish labor. It could not exist if there was a real extermination program. Also, included amongst the cards are countless cases of Jewish prisoners being moved out of camps like Auschwitz and not being murdered. This is hardly news to anyone here, but it remains a solid and simple proof that the extermination story is not right.
Edwin Black's Claims
In researching this, it's apparent that nearly all material about IBM's alleged participation in the Holocaust was written by Edwin Black. I think Black is a sensationalist prone to making false statements. In fact even the Auschwitz Museum felt compelled to deny some of them, but I will focus here just on his punchcard -> gas chamber claim.
In a piece for Huffington Post, Black claims that among "the IBM Concentration Camp Codes" is "IBM's code for death by Gas Chamber".
In a piece for JVL, he likewise claims the code for "death in the gas chambers [w]as 6".
He wrote more about this in his book, IBM and the Holocaust:
The bottom of the Personal Inmate Card logged prescribed tortures in a section headed Strafen im Lager, "Punishment Administered in Camp."
[...]
Even in death, Nazi victims were coded. Four main death codes were punched into Zentral Institut Hollerith cards:
Death by natural causes C-3
Execution D-4
Suicide E-5
SB Special Treatment F-6 [65]
Most death reports were coded C-3, even when people were openly murdered. But the fourth death code was in fact a secret one. F-6 stood for SB, Sonderbehandlung or "Special Treatment." Any punishment coded F-6 was in fact an order for extermination, either by gas chamber or bullet.[66]
First, here is a reproduction of the "Decoding Key" found at Buchenwald. (I found it in NARA's records here. By request, Edwin Black shared his version of the same document with Sergey Romanov, who published it here. For this post I assume the document's legitimacy, although I find it strange that there isn't any other known copy.)65. "Decoding Key for Concentration Camp Card Index Files," circa 1945, RG242/338, T-1021, Reel 5, Frame 99, JAG.
Analysis
Maliciously, Black asserts that "Sonderbehandlung" was a "death code". He leaves out that this category of punch was labelled "manner of departure" and was primarily used to indicate transfers. In reproducing the list of these codes, he excludes "released", "transferred", and "escaped". These are clearly not "death codes".
It is worth comparing this key to other surviving documents, particularly those analyzed by Carlo Mattogno in Healthcare in Auschwitz. Most relevant are the reports titled "Summary of Numbers and Deployment of the Female Prisoners". Mattogno writes (p.184):
That is five types of departures compared to the above key's seven. The only difference is that the category "died" encompasses natural deaths, "suicide", and "execution". Note that "Sonderbehandlung" still stands alone! This shows that "Sonderbehandlung" did not refer to a type of death.In these reports, the changes in the camp census in the stated periods are noted as “Gains” and “Losses.” The “Gains” are broken down into “Admissions” and “Newborns” as well as “Transferred from,” the losses into “Releases,” “Escaped,” “Transferred to,” “Died” as well as “S.B.”
It hardly needs to be stated, but the presence of an explicit "executions" column in the key also precludes the possibility that the "Sonderbehandlung" column could refer to executions. No Holocaust historian has ever come up with a plausible explanation for that needless delineation, whereas there are good reasons to delineate between the categories of transit with and without Sonderbehandlung. Chiefly, Auschwitz was a hub for the distribution of workers across the camp network, so proper quarantine procedures were a necessity. (Hence why Auschwitz had its own quarantine camp, and prisoners were required by order to remain in quarantine for weeks, etc.)
Mattogno demonstrates, convincingly and through various lines of evidence and reasoning, that where Auschwitz documents used "Sonderbehandlung" they could not refer to deaths. For example: prisoners were marked for Sonderbehandlung during a period when no selections or gassings are claimed to have taken place, numerous dates where gassings are claimed to have taken place were not counted as Sonderbehandlung, workers were given Sonderbehandlung while non-workers like inpatients and children were not, even supervisors were given Sonderbehandlung before inpatients, and more besides.
Moving on, Black claims that death by natural causes includes murders. But if that were the case, there would be no need for the other codes. What nonsense.
He further implies that there are "death reports" which were coded as Sonderbehandlung. This would be a remarkable discovery since the mainstream is totally unaware of these death reports. Actually it is asserted that all such reports were destroyed if they were ever created in the first place. (Healthcare in Auschwitz, p.94)
The least Black could do here would be to share a punch card punched with the Sonderbehandlung code. He doesn't. Only in the JVL piece do we see a photo of a punchcard attached to the claim. However, this photo is so small it's illegible and useless to demonstrate anything. In fact, better versions of this photo show that the card was blank--not even punched.
Other photos of these Rassenamt cards show that they lack any column to indicate the camp the person was interned in or to indicate the reason they departed. Therefore it was impossible to punch one to say they were "specially treated". Instead the columns that are present record basic biographical data and (unsurprisingly) racial traits.
Therefore these Rassenamt cards have no relation to camp prisoner cards. The inclusion of one in the JVL article was just to dazzle the reader. (I note here for completeness that an Andre Schwarz, in describing Black's work in the Luxemburger Wort, made the same misleading conflation by captioning his own photo of a Rassenamt card with the same nonsense about "code 6 for 'special treatment' in gas chambers." The photo refutes its own caption.)
What the key above actually refers to must be what the Arolsen Archives calls a "Hollerith preparatory worksheet card", which they nicely explain here. In one of their provided examples, the "Abgangs-Art" cell is marked "2" to indicate a transfer from Ravensbruck to the adjacent town of Furstenberg. In browsing Arolsen's vast trove of these cards, I find many more transfers (coded "2") plus some natural deaths ("3"). Further observations in spoiler:
Spoiler
An example of a natural death ("3").
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/2524865
A protective custody prisoner who was released ("1").
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4066191
A forced labor reeducation prisoner who was released ("1"), which seems to have been common.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4954172
Here is a POW who came to Buchenwald from Lublin, which is coded as camp "14", which is not a number in the key, and which also makes for an interesting path of travel.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/9523842
A rare prisoner who escaped ("7"). Also from Lublin.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4065600
In a few cases, the prisoner's departure code is given as "9", which is not a number in the key.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... t/10604970
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... t/11162892
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/2529015
I can find no case of a suicide, execution, or Sonderbehandlung.
Just to the right of the departure section are two columns for "Holl. Verm. Zu" and "Ab" which I am unable to translate. They're also filled out strangely, often including numbers in the margin. Finding out what this means could be of some value.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/2524865
A protective custody prisoner who was released ("1").
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4066191
A forced labor reeducation prisoner who was released ("1"), which seems to have been common.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4954172
Here is a POW who came to Buchenwald from Lublin, which is coded as camp "14", which is not a number in the key, and which also makes for an interesting path of travel.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/9523842
A rare prisoner who escaped ("7"). Also from Lublin.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/4065600
In a few cases, the prisoner's departure code is given as "9", which is not a number in the key.
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... t/10604970
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... t/11162892
https://collections.arolsen-archives.or ... nt/2529015
I can find no case of a suicide, execution, or Sonderbehandlung.
Just to the right of the departure section are two columns for "Holl. Verm. Zu" and "Ab" which I am unable to translate. They're also filled out strangely, often including numbers in the margin. Finding out what this means could be of some value.
Instead what these cards show us primarily is that the Germans tracked prisoners' entries to and transfers between the camps. According to Arolsen, the purpose of all this was "To improve the use of concentration camp prisoners as laborers in the war economy." Which is quite mundane and contrary not only to Black's claims but to the Holocaust story generally.
For a useful comparison, consider that the Allies put millions of Germans into forced labor for several years after the war was over.
Finally, and returning to Black's statements above, he claims the "F-6" code for Sonderbehandlung was a "punishment [...] in fact an order for extermination, either by gas chamber or bullet." This reads as total nonsense. I think what he means to reference, here, is a document that Germar Rudolf describes thusly (from Dissecting the Holocaust, p.37):
Somehow Black has taken this decree about a real, authorizable execution which if it occurred could but probably never was documented as a punishment on the bottom of a Haftlings-Personal-Karte, and he has confused it with Hollerith punchcards which had the capability if it occurred to indicate in code a special type of camp departure. The two have no relation whatsoever to each other. Haftlings-Personal-Karten do not even have a section to indicate deaths, and the Hollerith camp punchcards do not even have a section to indicate punishments. Merging the two is absurd.[...] IMT doc. 3040-PS, from Allgemeine Erlaßsammlung (general compendium of decrees) (AES), part 2, A III f (Treatment of foreign civilian workers), issued by the RSHA. It includes regulations for the punishment of foreign civilian workers in case of severe criminal offenses (including “Sonderbehandlung” as capital punishment which “takes place by hanging”). However, this can not be applied automatically to all other cases, and certainly not to Jews being deported to ghettos and concentration camps.
Neither can any right-minded person equate the explicit description of "hanging" to the purely invented claim of "gas chamber or bullet". The former is yet another proof that, where Nazi documents do refer to killings, they are explicit, not that secret, and clearly contradictory to gassings.
Nor should anything written on a Haftlings-Personal-Karte be read as "an order"--as it is not a communication path by which orders can be sent--much less one "for extermination".
Based on this, I regard Edwin Black as incompetent. This concludes my comments.
Re: IBM punchcard system proves the holocaust
The IBM punching-card system served as means to collect and process data about people. How that proves industrial extermination is above me. Nowadays it's standard practice that governments keep records on people that work akin to punching cards, albeit the technology is far more sophisticated and the data can be more detailed today. The records are kept to administer people and provide services. If you want to exterminate folks, you don't need complex record keeping systems. You need to apprehend people and cause their death, stop causing their survival. A record / punching card system rather proves that no extermination was intended.