IT’S COME TO THIS: Zyklon B producer heiress to participate in next Gaza flotilla.
A heiress from the German industrial dynasty that profited from producing Zyklon B, the gas used in Nazi death camps, will participate in the next pro-Palestinian flotilla to Gaza, activist groups announced last week.
Marlene Engelhorn is a descendant of the family that founded the BASF chemical industrial company, which in the 1920s merged with IG Farben, one of the largest industrial powers during the Nazi regime. During this period, IG Farben produced the cyanide-based poison, which was used to murder millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
The Engelhorn family’s multibillion-dollar fortune originated with Friedrich Engelhorn, who about 150 years ago in Germany founded BASF, one of the world’s largest chemical companies. Another family company, Boehringer Mannheim, which produced pharmaceuticals and medical diagnostic equipment, was sold to Roche for $11 billion in 1997.
As a partial heir to that fortune, Ms. Engelhorn grew up in a mansion in a chic part of Vienna. She attended French-language schools, describing herself as the sort of student who was “correcting grammar mistakes when I heard them.” She played soccer with boys and read voraciously. She said she lacked any awareness of class privilege. When she saw friends living in small apartments, she wondered why they did not choose to live in a big house with a garden, which is “much nicer.”
“Privilege really gives you a very, very narrow view of the world,” she said.
At university in Vienna, Ms. Engelhorn’s perspective began to broaden.
She volunteered with gay-rights groups and grew interested in the interconnection of racial, gender and economic discrimination.