Word: wilhelm
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...camp, was supposedly used to manufacture upholstery and carpets. The factory's name was Teppichfabrik G. Schoeffler AG. "Our historians say Schoeffler is Schaeffler," the museum spokesman says, adding that the difference is due to a mere misspelling in the documentation. That, according to the museum, links Auschwitz to Wilhelm and Georg Schaeffler, the brothers who founded the company that is now the Schaeffler Group. (See Hitler's rise to power...
After studying private family archives and public documents, Gregor Schöllgen, professor of contemporary history at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, concluded that Wilhelm Schaeffler, Maria-Elisabeth's brother-in-law, cooperated with the Nazis as necessary for personal gain, but that in this way he was not unlike many small entrepreneurs during the Nazi period. He says there is no evidence that Schaeffler was an enthusiastic Nazi or a supporter of Hitler's plans to annihilate Europe's Jews. What does Schöllgen think there is to the story about the Auschwitz hair? "Based on what we know...
...camps like they were trading cotton rather than the remains of human beings, Schöllgen says, and he has come across no documents such as order forms or any receipts linking Schaeffler to the hair. Says Schöllgen: "The evidence is still missing that shows that Wilhelm Schaeffler was actually involved in these crimes...
Still, the history that Schöllgen uncovered is a reminder of the pervasiveness of Nazi policies. In 1940 Wilhelm Schaeffler acquired a company called Davistan AG in the town of Kietrz. Davistan was a former Jewish-owned manufacturer of upholstery and carpets that had gone bankrupt. In an interview with Schöllgen in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on March 2, Davistan is described as the "cornerstone of the current Schaeffler Group." The company belonged to a Jewish family named Frank that ran into trouble during the Great Depression and left Germany in 1933 as anti-Semitism began to spread...
...Davistan, Schöllgen says he believes the number was small. In 1943, Davistan also began producing armaments for the Nazis such as antitank weapons and aerial bombs. Schaeffler and his younger brother Georg, who would marry Maria-Elisabeth in 1964, fled Kietrz in 1945 as the Red Army advanced. Wilhelm was arrested by U.S. forces and served more than four years in Polish prisons after the war. (Schöllgen points out that none of the current allegations were ever brought up in Wilhelm's trial.) The Schaefflers later settled in Bavaria and rebuilt the company, founding the textiles company...