German media giant Bertelsmann, who own the BMG music group, has admitted it lied about its Nazi past and that it made big profits during Adolf Hitler's reign in Germany using Jewish slave labour. The company set up a commission to look at its past – and in particular how, during the rise of the Nazi party in the thirties, it restructured itself from a religious and school book publisher to supply millions of anti-Semitic texts.
Independent Historical Commission Chairman Saul Friedlaender, an Israeli historian, told a news conference: "Bertelsmann published a variety of papers and books that clearly had anti-Jewish bias.” He confirmed that the company had targeted the youth market with its ‘Exciting Stories’ series and the ‘The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth’ annual which pushed its sales up 20 fold. He also said that, while the Nazis shut down the company in 1944, this was probably because of war shortages and not because of subversive texts, as it was said at the time. "In 1945, the legend that C Bertelsmann was closed down because of resistance to the Nazis smoothed the way for the occupation authorities promptly granting the firm a new licence to publish.”
The company immediately issued a statement apologising for its wartime activities and false corporate history. Saying the company accepted the commission's finding the group’s chairman Gunther Thielen said: "I would like to express our sincere regret for the inaccuracies the Commission has uncovered in our previous corporate history of the World War Two era as well as for the wartime activities that have been brought to light.”
The 800 page report, which Bertelsmann plan to make public, was commissioned after media reports on Bertlesmann's Nazi past. About 6,000 German companies are contributing to a 5.1bn euro ($5bn) settlement with hundreds of thousands of Nazis slave labourers. Other companies, such as Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank have also set up commissions into history during the Third Reich.