BMW Faces Up To Its Past

On March 7, 2016, BMW commemorated its 100th anniversary. The company issued a 28-page PDF statement entitled “The Next 100 Years.”. BMW’s statement includes a section called “Facing up to the past” in which BMW expresses [1] regret for its actions during the Holocaust:

Under the National Socialist regime of the 1930s and 40s, BMW AG operated exclusively as a supplier to the German arms industry. As demand for BMW aero engines increased, forced labourers, convicts and prisoners from concentration camps were recruited to assist with manufacturing them. To this day, the enormous suffering this caused and the fate of many forced labourers remains a matter of the most profound regret. In 1983, BMW AG became the first industrial corporation to initiate a public debate about this chapter of its history with the publication of a book entitled “BMW — Eine Deutsche Geschichte” (“BMW — A German History”). Several more publications on the subject followed. The BMW Group is explicitly facing up to this dark chapter of its past and in 1999, it became a founding member of the foundation “Erinnerung, Verantwortung, Zukunft” (“Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”) for the compensation of former forced labourers.

Since the 1990s, the BMW Group has been actively engaging in efforts to promote openness, respect and understanding between cultures.