“To meet Hitler’s requirements, IBM devised a racial census which listed not only religious affiliations, but also bloodlines. ....Every prisoner — known only by a number — was identified with a card, with holes and columns detailing nationalities, date of birth, work, skills, and reason for incarceration. Hole three signified homosexual; hole 12 was for gypsy; hole eight for Jew. Column 34 was labelled ‘Reason for Departure’. Code two meant transferred. Suicide was coded five. And code six was designated ‘special handling’ — the term used for extermination, whether in a gas chamber or by gunshot.... For IBM, such work was highly profitable....The first IBM factory was built in Germany and more than 2000 machines were distributed across the country. IBM staff trained the Nazis to use them; they set up offices, and produced the 1.5 billion punch cards used every year in Germany alone. They also serviced the machines on a monthly basis — sometimes travelling to concentration camps to do so.....After the war, while the perpetrators of the Holocaust were being rounded up for trial, IBM New York recovered its machines, leased them instead to the allies, and quietly assimilated its wartime profits.” — Extract from The Week (UK) 24th February 2001 quoting the new book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black, published by Little, Brown.