The Nuremberg Tribunal indicted 24 IG Farben board members and executives on the basis of crimes against humanity, only 13 received prison sentences. And the sentences they received were described by the Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor as "light enough to please a chicken thief". By the early 1950s a number of those convicted of slavery, looting and mass murder were back at the helm of the very companies - Bayer, Hoechst and BASF, formed out of the assets of IG Farben in 1952. The owners of these "new" companies were also the shareholders of IG Farben. Thus, although the gravity of the crimes committed by IG Farben meant the company was considered too corrupt to be allowed to continue to exist, it was supplanted by its key constituents - companies like Bayer which were owned, and directed at the highest level, by the very same people as IG Farben. Those who had helped Hitler to power and provided the technical know-how for his wars of aggression and the Holocaust, were back in control of the industry.
The Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer typifies the bounce back. An executive of IG for many years, the most senior scientist on its supervisory board and the chairman of its technical committee, he had become a Nazi Party member in 1937 and was the executive responsible for the construction of the IG Farben factory in Auschwitz, in which tens of thousands of slave labourers met their deaths. Ter Meer's own visits to Auschwitz and the detailed reports he received made it inconceivable that he did not have a clear picture of what was occurring. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal found him guilty of plunder, slavery and mass murder. As a result, Ter Meer received the longest sentence of any of the IG Farben board members. But despite being found the most culpable of the men who, in the words of Chief Prosecutor, "made war possible... the magicians who made the fantasies of Mein Kampf come true", ter Meer was already out of prison by 1952. By 1956 he had become the chairman of the supervisory board of Bayer, a post he held until 1964. Even today Bayer continues to honour this convicted mass murderer. On All Saints Day 2006, for instance, the corporation is known to have laid a wreath on ter Meer's grave in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany. Yet for decades Bayer refused to pay compensation to its surviving slave labourers. Only after international protests did it eventually agree to pay damages - more than 50 years after the end of the war.
Bayer continued to grow in the post-war period, eventually becoming bigger than the whole of IG Farben even at its zenith. Even as part of IG Farben, Bayer had maintained its strength in pharmaceuticals. In fact, scientific experiments had been done specifically on behalf of Bayer in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. IG had footed the bill for the research of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz-Birkenau's infamous "Angel of Death", and some of his experiments utilised germs and pharmaceuticals provided by Bayer. Wilhelm Mann, whose father had headed Bayer's pharmaceutical department, wrote as head of IG's powerful pharmaceutical committee to an SS contact at Auschwitz: "I have enclosed the first cheque. Dr Mengele's experiments should, as we both agreed, be pursued. Heil Hitler." IG employee SS major Dr Helmuth Vetter, stationed at Auschwitz, participated in human medical experiments by order of Bayer. Prisoners died as a result of many of these experiments. Vetter was convicted of war crimes in 1947 and was executed in 1949 but Bayer's role only emerged later. In the Auschwitz files correspondence was discovered between the camp commander and Bayer. It dealt with the sale of 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes and involved haggling over the price. One exchange notes: "The experiments were performed. All test persons died. We will contact you shortly about a new shipment at the same price." According to testimony by SS physician Dr Hoven during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal: "It should be generally known, and especially in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have notable scientists at its disposal. It is clear that the experiments in the concentration camps with IG preparations only took place in the interests of the IG, which strived by all means to determine the effectiveness of these preparations. They let the SS deal with the - shall I say - dirty work in the concentration camps. It was not the IG's intention to bring any of this out in the open, but rather to put up a smoke screen around the experiments so that... they could keep any profits to themselves. Not the SS but the IG took the initiative for the concentration camp experiments."
In the post-war years Bayer grew to become the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world. In the mid-1980s Bayer was one of the companies which sold a product called Factor VIII concentrate to treat haemophilia. Factor VIII turned out to be infected with HIV and in the U.S. alone, it infected thousands of haemophiliacs, many of whom died in one of the worst drug-related medical disasters ever. But it was only in 2003 that the New York Times revealed that Bayer had continued producing and selling this infected product to Asia and Latin America after February 1984 when a safe product had become available, in order to save money. Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, who investigated the scandal, commented, "These are the most incriminating internal pharmaceutical industry documents I have ever seen."
http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-firms/11153-bayer-a-history
BAYER continues to refuse to openly distance itself from the convicted war criminal Fritz ter Meer. On All Saints Day the company again had a wreath laid on ter Meer’s grave in Krefeld-Uerdingen (Germany).
Ter Meer, born in 1884, was a board member of IG Farben from 1925. During the Second World War he was responsible for the construction of the IG Farben factory in Auschwitz, in which around 30 000 slave labourers went to their deaths. In July 1948 at the Nuremberg IG Farben trial ter Meer was sentenced to seven years in prison for enslavement and looting. During questioning he maintained that no specific suffering was inflicted on the slave labourers “because without this they would have been killed anyway”.
After his release from prison, ter Meer became Chairman of the Board of BAYER. After his death in 1967 Bayer named a student support foundation the “Fritz ter Meer Foundation.
„It is unacceptable that BAYER honours a war criminal like Fritz ter Meer and at the same time refuses to adequately and justly compensate the victims and their descendants. BAYER must face up to its share of the responsibility for the Nazi reign of terror, the war and slave labour.” Köhler-Schnura points out that for decades BAYER refused to pay compensation to surviving slave labourers. Only when international protests threatened the company’s reputation did it hesitantly agree to pay damages - more than 50 years after the end of the war.
David Rosenberg of Pittsburgh, who chaired the Committee for Appropriate Acknowledgment, adds: “It is an outrage to the victims of policies Fritz Ter Meer helped implement for Bayer to lay a wreath at the grave of a convicted Nazi war criminal. The company's belated and reluctant participation in a compensation fund for former forced laborers cannot posthumously exonerate Ter Meer or Bayer for their wartime activities. Dirty hands do not suddenly become clean. The Company which continues to lay wreaths for him sets its own company priorities up as superior to the Nuremberg War Crimes Court and the judgment of humanity.” Rosenberg has been looking into Bayer's role for years. The committee began work in 1998 as a response to contributions the Bayer Foundation made to local Jewish organizations, including the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center's capital campaign.
"A curious sight has been seen in a cemetery in Krefeld, not far from the world headquarters of the Bayer Corporation. Next to the grave of one of the company's former directors, shortly after All Saints Day (Nov. 1), a substantial wreath appeared. Ribbons attached to the wreath indicate it was from the "Supervisory Board and Board of Directors (Aufsichtsrat und Vorstand) of the Bayer Corporation (Bayer AG.)"
That the Bayer boards would recognize a former officer would not seem unusual, but in this case, the individual so honored was the Bayer chemist and I.G. Farben executive Fritz ter Meer. Ter Meer's Nazi-era activities included supervising the construction of a slave labor camp at Auschwitz in which approximately 30,000 persons, mostly Jews, were worked and starved to death.
Ter Meer's role in creating the slave labor camp at Auschwitz is widely known. The Nuremberg War Crimes Court at the I.G. Farben trial in July 1948 sentenced a number of German captains of industry to prison terms. Ter Meer was charged and convicted of plunder and enslavement and served a seven-year term.
Why is the Bayer Corporation placing a wreath at the grave of a convicted Nuremberg war criminal?
There is a Fritz ter Meer Educational Foundation which is administered through the Bayer offices at the company's headquarters in Leverkusen. The foundation offers scholarships for graduate studies in chemistry.
By expressly honoring a man whom the Nuremberg court found guilty of war crimes, the Bayer Company demonstrates it has not learned from the past".
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/1695.html
Bayer Aspirin is still around today and above are some internet articles that gives the history of Bayer before, during and after the war. Makes you wondering when you take your daily aspirin for heart health.
[Moderator's note: Quote boxes and links to the articles added by Moderator. SKNSGRL, interesting information, but please provide links or citations for articles you post in the future. Thanks, Vikki.]
