By Shayne Cytrynbaum ‘25 With the recent headlines about famous celebrities and business leaders making antisemitic remarks, many in the Jewish community and the wider world have begun to more sharply criticize the historic antisemitism of many of the world’s most pollutive companies. Many industry magnates in the fossil fuel, agricultural and automobile industries were highly antisemitic, with some even collaborating with the Nazi regime and using Jewish slave labor, yet nowadays many of these brands or their offshoots remain alive and ever-popular. One of the most famous examples of antisemitism in American industry was Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company and creator of the Model T car. Beginning in 1920, Ford published a four-volume set of antisemitic pamphlets called “The International Jew” in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. “The International Jew” repeated many centuries-old antisemitic rumors and borrowed heavily from the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” conspiracy theory, popularizing a myth of scheming, “globalist” Jews that persists to this day. The antisemitic roots of our world’s most pollutive industries goes deeper than publishing conspiracy theories, however, with some collaborating directly with the Nazi regime. IG Farben was a German chemical manufacturing conglomerate active from 1925 to 1945 that is infamous for its creation of the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi death camps to murder millions of Jews, Romani, LGBTQ+ people and other minorities. What few are aware of, however, is that IG Farben was a massive investor in both the fossil fuel and agricultural industries. IG Farben was the second-largest shareholder in Standard Oil of New Jersey, a massive petroleum corporation now known as ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest polluters and contributors to the climate crisis. Standard Oil of New Jersey notably supplied IG Farben with tetraethyl lead, a crucial chemical that the Nazis used to fuel their fighter planes. IG Farben’s conglomerate also included the pharmaceutical giant Bayer, which today owns Monsanto, an agricultural giant. Monsanto is known for genetically-modifying their seeds to force farmers to repurchase them year after year, and are also the creator of the infamously carcinogenic and toxic weedkiller Roundup. The same corporation that created the poisonous Zyklon B gas and knowingly infected concentration camp victims with tuberculosis and typhus is now creating poisonous pesticides that can cause lymphoma. While IG Farben’s directors were convicted for war crimes and its holdings were broken up following the Second World War, IG Farben’s descendant companies continue to thrive off of its war profiteering and Nazi money. “I was not aware of this but I’m not surprised,” says senior Daniel Shapiro. “[Pollutive] corporations have always been divorced from morality so this doesn’t seem that odd.” Much of the public ignorance surrounding these industries’ Nazi-sympathizing roots is due to corporate lobbying. One of the most notorious examples of fossil fuel lobbying is Koch Industries, a chemical manufacturing conglomerate owned by hard-right donors David and Charles Koch. Koch Industries famously was forced to pay $400 million over 4 years in fines due to environmental recklessness, while the Koch brothers raised $889 million to promote climate change denial. Lesser known is that their father, Fred Koch, helped to fund the Nazi Regime’s third-largest oil refinery. After the Koch-funded refinery was bombed by the Allies in World War II, it was rebuilt using slave labor from Jewish women imprisoned in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. According to investigative journalist Jane Mayer, Fred Koch even stated in 1938 that “the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy and Japan.” Even following the Nazi Regime’s collapse, the Koch patriarch never lost his political extremism. He was one of the original founders of the John Birch Society, an organization active during the McCarthy era and the Red Scare of the 1950s that wrongfully accused many prominent Americans of communist sympathies, which often led to innocent people being blacklisted, shunned or arrested. This was all in spite of the fact that Fred Koch knowingly cooperated with Joseph Stalin in the 1930s to build 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union. Fred Koch’s prejudice also extended to the Civil Rights Movement, as he fervently opposed the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended segregation in public schools. Today, the legacy of Fred Koch’s political extremism continues in his sons’ opposition to climate justice efforts, as Koch Industries continues to harm vulnerable communities through its funding of disinformation campaigns and policies that perpetuate environmental racism. Although the modern-day iterations of these corporations now condemn antisemitism, the climate destruction that they continue to cause is still considered by many to be a great risk for the Jewish community. Many involved in Jewish climate activism are afraid that climate disasters may make it harder for Jews to organize in person for prayer or community events. Activist are also concerned that changing seasonal patterns could strip Jewish holidays and traditions of their significance, with seasonal harvest festivals like Sukkot or Pesach losing their land-based traditions. “I grew up in a city on the frontlines of the climate crisis, [and] as our local Jewish community has been hit particularly hard by climate change-exacerbated storms in recent years (houses inundated, Torah scrolls and siddurim waterlogged, Jewish small businesses shuttered), I often find myself meditating on this arc of fossil fuel history,” said Madeline Canfield, organizing coordinator for the Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM), who grew up in Houston. “With the legacy of the modern day fossil fuel and automobile industries tied so intricately to historic systems of oppression—racial capitalism, and also Nazism and antisemitic conspiracies and genocide—it is difficult not to see the ghosts of our pasts in the already-emerging destructions of our present. When systems of oppression remain untransformed, we witness the sadness of repetitions,” she said. Besides the likelihood of the climate crisis having a direct effect on the Jewish community’s ability to organize, the climate crisis has also been proven to increase the likelihood of political extremism and xenophobia, which often go hand-in-hand with antisemitism. Researchers concluded that climate change leads to systemic instability on a global scale, as it can increase the likelihood of war over resources, cause mass immigrations from climate-battered regions, lead to wide-spread food insecurity and destabilize entire economies. All of this instability caused by climate change often leads to an increase in immigration to less vulnerable countries in the global North. A sudden wave of immigration, especially if refugees are coming from poorer nations in the global South, often in turn leads to a rise in anti-immigrant, reactionary and xenophobic rhetoric and actions, which very often crosses over into antisemitism. The link between the climate disaster and antisemitic political activity is shown most clearly with the aftermath of the Syrian Civil War. Research suggests that the protests that sparked the Syrian Civil War were largely affected by an intense drought that hit Syria in the years preceding their civil war. Following the war’s outbreak in 2011 and the subsequent European Refugee Crisis, anti-immigrant and xenophobic political parties have grown in France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary and the United Kingdom, all of which have seen increases in antisemitic rhetoric and actions. Thus, the instability wrought by the climate crisis indirectly led to the rise in xenophobia across European politics, which often allows for antisemites to gain more publicity and even political office. Although the climate crisis and antisemitism on the surface may appear to be completely separate issues, in truth the same companies and individuals are often responsible for perpetuating both, and the wider impact of the climate crisis creates a real threat to the Jewish community today. However, the emerging network of Jewish climate activists, such as the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, hopes to fight for a stable future for all, including both a stable future for the planet and a stable future for the Jewish community. As reflected in the Jewish Youth Climate Movement’s mission statement, many in the Jewish community are working to “make taking collective action towards climate justice a central, defining feature of what it means to be Jewish over the next decade, empowering the next generation of Jewish youth to be leaders in our fight to build a sustainable and equitable world for all.” EuroTank oil refinery near Hamburg, Germany, which was built by American oil magnate Fred Koch and personally approved by Adolf Hitler. After being bombed by Allied forces in World War II, the refinery was rebuilt using the slave labor of Jewish women imprisoned at Auschwitz.
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December 2023
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