The FINANCIAL — The world is commemorating and honoring the victims of National Socialism, according to Siemens AG.
Seventy years ago, on January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps were liberated by Soviet troops. From 1943 to 1945, Siemens-Schuckertwerke AG operated a machine tool production facility in the Bobrek camp near Auschwitz. About 200 of the camp’s prisoners worked at the facility. Siemens is known to have employed a total of at least 80,000 forced laborers in the war years of 1940 to 1945. At least 5,000 of these laborers were prisoners from concentration camps – primarily from the Ravensbrück, Auschwitz-Bobrek, Flossenbürg, Buchenwald and Gross-Rosen camps.
The management and employees of the company today profoundly regret that Siemens employed people against their will at the time when the company was integrated into the war economy of the unjust National Socialist regime. Siemens has acknowledged its responsibility by contributing a total of more than €150 million to the Jewish Claims Conference (1962), the Siemens Humanitarian Relief Fund for Former Forced Laborers (HHZ) (1998-2000) and the German Industry Foundation Initiative “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.”
As a further acknowledgement of its responsibility, Siemens cooperates closely with the Ravensbrück Memorial and fosters selected projects that aim to clarify and document the events of that time. At its Annual Shareholders’ Meeting in Munich’s Olympiahalle on January 27, 2015, Siemens commemorated the day with an exhibit of historical documents from its archives in the hall’s foyer, according to Siemens AG.
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