In the years between the two World Wars, processing of encoded digital data became an indispensable component of managing the economy. Hitler's ideology included utilization of these capabilities in the politics of genocide. Edwin Black's revealing studies complete our knowledge of the efficient methods of selecting populations, and planning translocations, ghettos, slave labor and extermination camps. In the years 1943 - 1944, the years of intensification of the Holocaust in the General Government, maneuvering huge data was impossible. Special Services took over total control of the crime and left no paper trail of their activities, such as the constant movement of the mass transports. Nor was there was evidence of those transports in reports or analyses.

Leon Krzemieniecki Ph.D. Worker on sorters and a tabulator at the Hollerith Department of Polish Railway in Krakau

Edwin Black's book on IBM is an important contribution to the history of Hitler's Europe. It shows how Hitler's occupation worked in a very important sphere of the system of concentration camps. Utilization of the Hollerith machine made management of the concentration camps easier and, indirectly, made extermination easier. The central statistical system, made possible by the Hollerith machine, was one of the elements of the SS administration's dreary plan to create a unified organizational and statistical system in all of Europe. Black's book, rich with documentary evidence, shows the whole picture, and is an important contribution to the knowledge of that picture.

Krzysztof Dunin-Wasowicz Historian of the German occupation Former Prisoner #36090, who worked for some time completing Hollerith forms in the Hollerith Department of Stuthoff Concentration Camp