“寶馬家族”承認曾用奴工爲納粹造軍火

The family that owns Germany's luxury car manufacturer BMW has ended decades of silence about its role during the Nazi era and admitted to taking over scores of Jewish businesses and using tens of thousands of slave labourers at its factories during Adolf Hitler's Third Reich。

The disturbing revelations about the Quandt dynasty, which became a major BMW shareholder in 1960, are contained in an independent 1,200-page study commissioned by the family in 2007 after its ruthless Nazi-era business practices were exposed in a German television documentary. BMW was not implicated in the report。

"The Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis," Joachim Scholtyseck, the Bonn historian who compiled and researched the study, concludes at the end of his report published this week. "The family patriarch was part of the regime."

Herbert Quandt

Mr Scholtyseck established that Günther Quandt and his son Herbert, who both headed the dynasty during the Third Reich, willingly collaborated with the Nazi regime by employing an estimated 50,000 forced labourers in its arms factories. An average of 80 slave labourers per month died at Quandt factories and many were executed。

"We were treated very badly, we were whipped and had to drink water out of the lavatories," recalled Takis Mylopoulos, a former slave labourer who worked at a Quandt factory in Hanover during the Second World War. The family was also found to have taken over scores of previously Jewish-owned businesses that were "Aryanised" by the Nazis。

Gabriele Quandt, Günther Quandt's grandson, responded to the study's conclusion by admitting his family had been "wrong" in trying to avoid confronting the truth about its Nazi past for so long。

The study shows that Günther Quandt joined the Nazi party in 1933, the same year that Hitler became Reich Chancellor. Four years later, he was put in charge of the Nazis' so-called "armaments economy" supplying ammunition and military hardware from factories that used thousands of slave labourers from concentration camps. An execution area for disobedient slave workers was set up at at least one of the Quandt plants。

The Quandts commissioned the study just five days after the showing of a 2007 television documentary entitled The Silence of the Quandt Family, which contained extensive details about its collaboration with the Nazis。

The family admitted in a statement at the time: "We recognise that in our history as a family of German industrialists, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently accounted for."

Günther Quandt was arrested and interned in 1946. But judges concluded that he was a mere Nazi "fellow traveller" who played no active part in committing the crimes of the Third Reich. He was released in 1948.

Prosecutors have argued that if today's evidence had been presented at the time, Quandt would have been charged with committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. However, he joined the board of Deutsche Bank after the war and was honoured by Frankfurt University in 1951. He died on holiday in Egypt in 1954.歷經數十年的沉默，掌控寶馬汽車的德國科萬特家族近日終於承認了歷史上與納粹的不光彩關係。在阿道夫•希特勒統治時期，“寶馬家族”接管了數十家猶太人的企業，並在工廠中使用了數萬名奴工。

2007年，德國一部電視紀錄片曝光了科萬特家族在納粹時期的累累罪行。隨後，“寶馬家族”對自己的歷史展開了調查，並最終公佈了這份長達1200頁的獨立調查報告。報告中並未牽涉寶馬公司。科萬特家族在1960年控股寶馬公司。

此次調查的負責人、波恩歷史學家喬希姆•斯科蒂塞克在本週公佈的報告結尾寫道：“科萬特家族與納粹的罪行密不可分，家族元老也參與了納粹統治。”。

斯科蒂塞克研究發現，在希特勒統治期間，家族領袖岡瑟•科萬特及其子赫伯特主動與納粹分子合作，在軍工廠內僱傭了大約5萬名奴工。平均每月有80名奴工死於家族工廠，很多奴工還被處死。

塔基斯•馬勒潑勒斯在二戰期間曾在科萬特家族位於漢諾威的工廠裏做工，他回憶說：“我們被虐待，被鞭打，還被逼喝廁所裏的水。” 通過納粹的“雅利安化”運動，科萬特家族接管了幾十家原本屬於猶太人的企業。

岡瑟•科萬特的孫子加布裏埃萊•科萬特對研究結果做出迴應，承認其家族長期無視歷史上的污點是“錯誤的”。

研究表明，岡瑟•科萬特在1933年加入納粹黨，同年，希特勒出任德國總理。四年後，岡瑟開始負責納粹所謂的“國防經濟”，使用大量來自集中營的奴工爲納粹生產軍火和裝備。在科萬特家族的每一家企業裏，都有一處專門的行刑區，用來處死反抗的奴工。

2007年，德國電視紀錄片《科萬特家族的沉默》播出5天后，科萬特家族即宣佈將對這段歷史展開調查。紀錄片曝光了科萬特家族與納粹合作的大量細節。

科萬特家族當時發表聲明稱：“我們認識到，作爲一家德國家族企業，我們在1933年至1945年的歷史還不夠充分清晰。”

1946年，岡瑟被逮捕拘禁。但他被裁決爲納粹的“同路人”，也就是沒有積極參與納粹罪行的人，遂於1948年獲釋。

檢察官認爲，如果現在的證據在當時能夠呈交法庭，科萬特家族成員將被判戰爭罪或反人類罪。然而二戰後，岡瑟還加入德意志銀行董事會，並在1951年被法蘭克福大學授予榮譽稱號。1954年，他在埃及度假期間去世。