Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

BMW, Marking 100th Birthday, ‘Regrets’ Nazi Activities

While commemorating its 100th birthday, the German auto company BMW expressed regret for its actions during the Holocaust.

In a statement on its website under the heading “Facing up to the past,” the car company said it “operated exclusively as a supplier to the German arms industry” under the Nazis, using “forced labourers, convicts and prisoners from concentration camps” in its manufacturing.

“To this day, the enormous suffering this caused and the fate of many forced labourers remains a matter of the most profound regret,” the statement said.

BMW notes that in 1983, it “became the first industrial corporation to initiate a public debate about this chapter of its history, publishing a book on the topic.”

“The BMW Group is explicitly facing up to this dark chapter of its past and in 1999, it became a founding member of the foundation Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft (Remembrance, Responsibility and Future) for the compensation of former forced labourers.”

READ: Slave labor talks may be reaching end

In addition to the use of slave labor, BMW also benefited from its owner’s friendship with Adolf Hitler, who gave them businesses that had been confiscated from the Jews, according to the New York Post.

According to The Independent, a 1,200-page independent study commissioned by BMW and published in 2007 found that the company’s wartime owners, Gunther and Herbert Quandt, willingly collaborated with the Nazis and an average of 80 slave laborers died each month at BMW factories.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.