9. The Makers of the Gas Used in the Holocaust Are Thriving Today
When the Holocaust began, German authorities deemed their initial methods of killing, such as mass shootings or gassing victims in vans, were inefficient. So the chemical conglomerate IG Farben recommended the use of one of its insecticides, Zyklon-B, as a quick way to kill large numbers of people. Thus were born the gas chambers of the extermination camps. IG Farben went on to produce and supply the Nazis with all the Zyklon-B gas canisters they needed to kill millions of men, women, and children. It also set up factories in the extermination camps, where it used slave labor on a massive scale.
After the war, 24 IG Farben directors were indicted for war crimes, of whom 13 were convicted and sentenced to prison terms. All of them were released early, and most were restored to their directorships or resumed their business careers. Some of them even went on to win civilian medals from the West German government. The conglomerate itself survived the war, until it was split into its original constituent companies. They included Bayer, the aspirin maker. It is not the only surviving member of IG Farben: the chemical giant BASF, which posted sales of more than € 70 billion in 2015, was also once a part of the Nazi conglomerate.
