IBM Holocaust suit to be dropped By Bloomberg News March 29, 2001, 11:50 a.m. PT WASHINGTON, D.C.--A lawsuit charging IBM with complicity in the Holocaust will be withdrawn this week, the U.S. State Department said.

Concern had been raised in Germany that the class-action lawsuit would "endanger legal peace" for German companies that agreed to an international settlement and creation of a fund for Holocaust victims, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement. Lawyers will file a motion this week to dismiss the suit, he said.

The federal lawsuit, filed Feb. 9 in New York, alleges IBM's U.S.-based officers knew the company's German subsidiary leased punch-card tabulating machines to the Nazis to "facilitate" extermination of Jews. A companion book, "IBM and the Holocaust," by Edwin Black, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for four weeks.

IBM's German subsidiary had paid into the compensation fund there, so IBM can't be sued for actions in Germany. The complaint, brought on behalf of five concentration camp survivors, cites the conduct of IBM in the United States.

Michael Hausfeld, whose Washington-based firm, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, brought the case, couldn't be reached for comment.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2001