Thanks again, Bill.  In writing my essay (1981) "Ezra Pound: America's
Wandering Jew," I had to deal with Ford.
 
==Dan P
 
 
At 09:28 PM 9/9/99 -0400, you wrote:
>The story about Ford & GM involvement with Nazi war effort appeared in
>The Washington Post Nov. 30, 1998.  Interest in the topic has been
>revived by a 30-billion dollar law suit filed against German companies
>by Holocaust survivors who were forced to work as slaves by the Nazis. 
>I think there is also litigation in US against US companies with plants
>in Germany during WWII.  
>
>The following story from last month has some additional facts about the
>topic.  
>
>August 19, 1999 
>  Dow Jones Newswires
>
>  Ford Listed Among Companies  Linked To Auschwitz Death Camp
>
>  WARSAW, Poland (AP)--Ford Motor Co. (F) is listed  among nearly 500
>companies that had links to the  Auschwitz death camp, which supplied
>Nazi Germany  with slave laborers during World War II, officials said 
>today.
>
>  The list, based on newly released Nazi documents from  Russia, doesn't
>give information on the exact link each  company had to the notorious
>death camp, where some  1.1 million people died.
>
>  The list includes both companies that used slave labor and others that
>inquired about using workers from Auschwitz, said Auschwitz museum
>historians compiling the list.
>
>  Apart from Ford's German subsidiary, German industrial  giants such as
>Krupp, Siemens, IG Farben and M.A.N.  also are named.
>
>  Ford has acknowledged that slave labor was used at its  Cologne,
>Germany plant during the war, but says it had lost control of its German
>operations during World War II.
>
>  "There's no question that the Nazi's assigned forced  labor to the
>Cologne plant," said Ford spokesman Jim Vella. "It was out of our
>control. ... (But) we don't have anything in our research that pertains
>to workers from  Auschwitz."
>
>  Barbara Jarosz, the head of Auschwitz museum archives,  said she had
>no details about Ford's link to Auschwitz.  Jarosz said archivists are
>still reviewing the documents  to establish names of slave laborers,
>which will provide  evidence for compensation claims.
>
>  Auschwitz museum historians are compiling the list  based on newly
>released Nazi documents received from Russia, where part of the camp
>archive has been kept since 1945.
>
>  The newly available documents include construction  plans, orders for
>raw materials or services, invoices and reports from work on the death
>camp that the Nazis started building in 1940. They also include lists
>of  workers, including camp inmates, used by some  companies, Jarosz
>said.
>
>  Victims' organizations say detailed files of more than  100,000
>workers would be most helpful in their claims.  But those papers remain
>in Moscow, where they were taken along with all the other camp documents
>shortly after Red Army freed Auschwitz in 1945.
>
>  In December, General Motors Corp. (GM) said it hired a Yale University
>professor to look into the company's  activities in Nazi Germany.  GM
>has said that GM's Adam Opel plants in Germany   were taken over by the
>Nazis during the war and denied  that it aided the Nazis.
>
>
>
>
>Daniel Pearlman wrote:
>> 
>> This is very interesting info about Ford Motor Co., Bill!
>> ==Dan
>> 
>> At 10:58 AM 9/9/99 +0000, you wrote:
>> >anti-Semitism was more widespread before the Second World War... or at
>> least was more open.  Henry
>> >Ford published his anti-Semitic ideas in periodicals that were distributed
>> at Ford dealerships.  What
>> >I've heard about his ideas sounds a lot like EP's, but I don't have
>> documentation to back up the
>> >recollection.  Hitler is supposed to have been an admirer of Henry Ford,
>> and quoted him to justify
>> >his own anti-Semitic policies.
>> >
>> >Ford Motor Company was also heavily invested in German factories, and
>> recently published information
>> >indicated contacts between Ford officials & German managers even after the
>> Nazi war machine rolled
>> >into action. If my recollection is correct the meetings were held in
>> neutral countries -- Portugal
>> >perhaps. Ford manufacturing expertise helped build the trucks that carried
>> Nazi troops across
>> >Europe.  Of course, when the story came out a year or so ago, Ford rolled
>> out the PR machine to
>> >diminish it and get it out of the news.  But Ford could not deny its
>> investments in Nazi Germany, and
>> >even collected money for damage to those factories from the US Government
>> after the war.
>> >
>> >To me this helps explain why EP was given radio time in Italy during the
>> war, and why his support of
>> >the Italian Fascist government was important.  In the war of ideas, the
>> endorsement of anyone with
>> >name recognition is a valuable asset.
>> >
>> >Bill Wagner
>> >
>> >
>> >Jonathan Morse wrote:
>> >
>> >> Richard Edwards asks Jonathan Gill:
>> >>
>> >> >As to anti-semitism, it is a mystery to me where he got it from
>> (Dorothy?).
>> >> >The prejudices of his Philadelphia suburb, as documented in the local
>> press
>> >> >at the time (Carpenter again), seem to have been directed mostly
against
>> >> >Italians; obviously Pound didn't pick up much of that. I wonder
>> whether, in
>> >> >the course of your research, you formed an opinion as to whether or not
>> the
>> >> >meanness of Pound's hatreds was in any way associated with his mental
>> >> >illness, if any.
>> >>
>> >> It certainly seems true that by the mid-1940s, at the latest, Pound
was out
>> >> of touch with what ordinary people think of as reality. A sad
instance, one
>> >> of many, is the letter written in English and Chinese to the
commander of
>> >> the DTC and beginning, "In view of the situation in China and Japan, it
>> >> seems to me that the bottling of my knowledge now amounts to
suppression of
>> >> military information" (Spoo and Pound letter 42, 3 Nov. 1945). It's
true,
>> >> too, that the antisemitism of the letters to Olivia Agresti lacks
anything
>> >> like a sense of proportion -- as when Pound attributes the
catastrophe of
>> >> the war to Jewish influence over Hitler (Tryphonopoulos and Surette
letter
>> >> 70, 5 Nov. 1953). But I should think the general historical situation is
>> >> that prejudice and mental illness are independently distributed. Some
>> >> bigots are crazy; others aren't. If you think Pound's antisemitic
texts are
>> >> evidence of insanity, how will you think about the respectably dressed
>> >> civil servants who wrote the Third Reich's statute against Jewish-owned
>> pets?
>> >>
>> >> The question probably can't be answered if it's posed that way. But
if we
>> >> narrow it down and refer it specifically to language, as (for instance)
>> >> Robert Casillo does, we may at least be able to learn something about
>> >> Pound's language. For what it's worth, here's an example of my own,
from a
>> >> chapter in progress. If it has a moral, I suppose it's only the modest
>> >> thought that we ought to read history as if it were poetry.
>> >>
>> >> -------
>> >>
>> >>         On July 11, 1954, 8½ years into his incarceration in St.
Elizabeths
>> >> Federal Hospital for the Insane, Ezra Pound received a visit from his
>> >> Jewish imitator Louis Zukofsky. It was a family affair; Zukofsky brought
>> >> along his wife Celia and his son Paul. Paul was three months short of
his
>> >> eleventh birthday but already embarked on his career as a violinist,
and at
>> >> St. Elizabeths he gave a recital for Pound and some of his fellow
inmates.
>> >> The next day, Pound responded with a letter.
>> >>         That composition displays Pound as he saw himself in relation to
>> the arts:
>> >> a stern but affectionate preceptor-at-large. The Zukofskys' performances
>> >> are accordingly subjected, one at a time, to scrutiny and analysis.
About
>> >> Celia's music Pound asks, "Question of whether C/ jams one LINERARR
>> >> statement against another, or merely puts in chords?" About Louis'
poetry
>> >> he opines, "damn if I see what yu wd/ lose by a rewrite making EVERY
line
>> >> comprehensible." And about Paul he speaks as one artist and father to
>> another:
>> >>
>> >>      AND my prophetik soul / foreseeing: every time that brat gits a
>> >> thousand $ bukks fer playing Weiniawski, Zuk will be beatin' his
breast and
>> >> crying: why did I beget this cocatrice.
>> >>                                 Only practical suggestion is that yu
>> begin distinguishing between
>> >> infantilism and MUSIC FER ADULTS.  (Ahearn 209-10. "Weiniawski" is
>> >> presumably Henryk Wieniawski, composer of showy virtuoso pieces for the
>> >> violin.)
>> >>
>> >>         Pound was one of the twentieth century's great critics, and in
>> this letter
>> >> we see him at his best: passionate, wide-ranging in his sympathies and
>> >> eagerly receptive to the new, yet possessed of a profound sense of
value.
>> >> Imagine F. R. Leavis with a sense of proportion, a sense of humor, and a
>> >> prose style. But before Pound was a critic he was a poet, and he was
never
>> >> satisfied with his own critical language until he had economized it.
Within
>> >> two weeks of writing this letter, for instance, he had reduced its
contents
>> >> to their essentials. "Mr. Zukofsky brot his ten year old son to play
Mozart
>> >> on the lawn a fortnight ago," Pound wrote to his confidante Olivia
Rossetti
>> >> Agresti. "ETC. INDIVIDUALS/ BUT......" (Tryphonopoulos and Surette 163).
>> >>         In the next sentence, Pound makes his point general and
>> explicit: "I shd/
>> >> like to arouse ORA's interest in history/ in biology/ in Luther
Burbank, in
>> >> eugenics/" But that expository prose is only a redundant gloss on the
>> >> ellipsis following Pound's "INDIVIDUALS/ BUT." It is hard to make a
>> >> conjunction serve as an allusion, but that is what Pound has done
here. A
>> >> more prosaic speaker of English — for instance, Faulkner's garrulous
>> >> character Jason Compson IV — would have filled in the ellipsis and
finished
>> >> the sentence. "I have nothing against jews as an individual," Jason
>> >> explains when his turn comes to pick up the tale of _The Sound and the
>> >> Fury_. "It's just the race." But when Ezra Pound hit his period key six
>> >> times rather than write out such words, he was communicating a profound
>> >> intuition. That six-dot suspension of utterance tells us that some
meanings
>> >> are so deeply embedded in the social structure of language that they
can go
>> >> without saying. Pound's sense of Mozart on the lawn was something
actually
>> >> experienced, as compared with his fantasy of the word "Jew." But the
word
>> >> "Jew" was a preemptive significance. It silenced the echo of the violin.
>> >>
>> >> Jonathan Morse
>> >> Department of English, University of Hawaii at Manoa
>> >
>> HOME:
>> Dan Pearlman
>> 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5
>> Providence, RI 02906
>> Tel.: 401 453-3027
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>> Fax: (253) 681-8518
>> http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/
>> 
>> OFFICE
>> Department of English
>> University of Rhode Island
>> Kingston, RI 02881
>> Tel.: 401 874-4659
>
HOME:
Dan Pearlman                            	
102 Blackstone Blvd. #5         	
Providence, RI 02906            	
Tel.: 401 453-3027              	
email: [log in to unmask]
Fax: (253) 681-8518
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/
 
OFFICE
Department of English
University of Rhode Island	
Kingston, RI 02881
Tel.: 401 874-4659