IBM asks court to block US$12B Holocaust suit

IBM has asked a Swiss court to block a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed by an organisation alleging that the computer giant's punch card machines facilitated the murder of gypsies during World War II, lawyers said last week.

Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action (GIRCA) is seeking up to US$12 billion in collective damages. Swiss courts have been processing the case since 2001.

GIRCA has accused IBM of facilitating the mass murder of gypsies by selling Germany its state-of-the-art punch card Holleriths, knowing that the Nazi government would use the tabulating and sorting systems to track and identify victims.

For its part, IBM has claimed that it lost control of its German subsidiary -- dubbed Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen GmbH, or Dehomag -- before war began in 1939.

IBM had its European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland prior to and during World War II.

"We have appealed the case to the Supreme Court in Switzerland and we are confident that we will prevail," Reuters quoted IBM spokesman Fred McNeese as saying.

IBM has refused to discuss the case in detail. "We are not discussing the charges and will discuss our case in court," McNeese said.

The charges by GIRCA primarily stem from research done by writer Irwin Black, who in 2001 published a book titled 'IBM and the Holocaust', where he claimed that IBM supplied the Nazis with both hardware and the software of the day (blank punch cards) to "computerise" the Holocaust bureaucracy.