From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Mon Sep 09 2002 - 11:36:34 MDT
> The other night I heard how some German company, Siemens I believe, had
> picked a name for a new gas oven -- 'Zyklon'. Recall that Zyklon-B was
> the gas the germans used to execute large numbers of Jews and other
> 'undesireables'. How quickly they forget.
Last summer Siemens wanted to introduce a new vacuum cleaner in the US and wanted to
protect its brand name "Cyclone". This name was to suggest that the new cleaner would be
as strong as a special kind of whirlwind whose meteorological name also is cyclone
(German: "Zyklon"). The gas the Nazis used in the extermination camps like Auschwitz was
indeed called "Zyklon B". Zyklon as a name for that whirlwind and as a scientific device
to separate particles from gases and fluids is used in Germany, though it is not very
common. The Siemens announcemen was highly embarrassing because in WW II Siemens
Company used Nazi prisoners of war and the inmates of concentrations camp as working
slaves in their plants and factories. I guess they dropped that project pretty soon
after they were confronted with the criticism of the German Jewish Council.
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