In 1939, the German government conducted a census of all persons living in Germany. Census takers recorded each person's age, sex, residence, profession, religion, and marital status, and for the first time, they also listed the person's race as traced through his or her grandparents. This information was later punched into coded cards by thousands of clerks.The cards were sorted and counted by the Hollerith machine, an early version of the modern computer. The Hollerith was invented in 1884 by a German-American engineer, Herman Hollerith. The machine was used in the United States and by most European governments for processing census data in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Holleriths used by the Germans were developed by a German branch of the American company later known as International Business Machines (IBM).
The information from the 1939 census helped Nazi official Adolf Eichmann to create the Jewish Registry, containing detailed information on all Jews living in Germany.
The Registry also recorded the names of Jews in Austria and the Sudetenland of western Czechoslovakia, which were occupied by German troops in 1938 and 1939 and made part of the Reich (German empire). Nazi racial ideology and policies did not stop at Germany's borders.
Technology and information that were under other circumstances helpful tools became, under the Nazi regime, a means of locating victims. https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007703
Only a few hours later, it was facing a lawuit over the decision. A group of 14 states, led by California, are trying to force the government to back down and leave the citizenship question off the census when it goes out to American households two years from now.
The government’s justification for the question sounds simple enough: Asking about citizenship will provide more information about who is in the United States, and more information is always good. It claims it’s simply reinstating a question that’s been part of every census except 2010’s.
Technology and information that were under other circumstances helpful tools became, under the Nazi regime, a means of locating victims. https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007703
Continued from VOX...
Only a few hours later, it was facing a lawuit over the decision. A group of 14 states, led by California, are trying to force the government to back down and leave the citizenship question off the census when it goes out to American households two years from now.
The government’s justification for the question sounds simple enough: Asking about citizenship will provide more information about who is in the United States, and more information is always good. It claims it’s simply reinstating a question that’s been part of every census except 2010’s.