From Aryanization to Auschwitz-German Corporate Complicity in the Holocaust

Peter Hayes, the Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University, is the ideal person to have speak on the interaction between German corporations and the Nazi state. His ten books include Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (1989) and From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (2004); in the latter work he discusses in detail the history and production of Zyklon-B, the gas used to kill more than one million Jews at Auschwitz and other camps. He is now working on a book under contract to Cambridge, Profits and Persecution: German Big Business and the Holocaust. Among books that he has edited are The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (co-edited with John K. Roth), and the forthcoming How Could This Happen? A Reader on the Holocaust. He has also received awards for outstanding teaching. 

In his talk at Oregon State, Professor Hayes addressed the involvement of German big business in the Holocaust and the advantages gained by the corporations, including the opportunity to exploit slave labor.