THE Bertelsmann Group, now a global media conglomerate, publisher of Herman Lategan’s biography Hoerkind (Penguin Random), has acknowledged that it was not a resistance fighter but a collaborator with the Nazi regime, becoming the largest supplier of books to the German army (Wehrmacht). Founder Heinrich Mohn was a financial supporter of the SS.

The company published Nazi propaganda and anti-Semitic literature while reaping high profits during the war.

I should add that Lategan is also published by the same publisher Media24/Netwerk24 that censored and destroyed my writing and photography on South African Jazz history, unlike Bertelsmann, which at least acknowledged its crimes, which include using Jewish slave labour, Media24 has only issued a case-limited apology.

You can read about the sad attempt to recast the corporation and its directors which included PW Botha, as leading lights in the liberation struggle, here.

Key details regarding Bertelsmann’s Nazi-era conduct:

• Financial Support and Ties: Founder Heinrich Mohn was a member of the “SS Sponsors Circle” (Freundeskreis Reichsführer-SS), donating money to the organization.
• Wartime Profits and Content: Bertelsmann’s publishing house, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, thrived by producing “people’s editions” (Volksausgaben), which included Nazi ideology, antisemitic titles, and war adventure books.
• Propaganda Supplier: Between 1939 and 1941, the company’s revenue skyrocketed as it became the top supplier of reading material to the Wehrmacht.
• Post-War Cover-up: For decades, Bertelsmann claimed it had resisted the Nazi regime, but a 2000-2002 independent commission found this to be false.
• Slave Labor: While not directly employing concentration camp labor at its headquarters, the company cooperated with printing plants in Lithuania that used Jewish slave labor.

SOURCE: New York Times