[Sunroof]

Lots of stuff about Ferdinand Porsche on the web............

"Ferdinand Porsche was long viewed as an unwilling participant in Hitler's war machine but a recent investigation suggests he and his company may have been in deeper than was previously thought. A five-year study by a team of German historians found that as much as 80 percent of VW's wartime workforce of 16,000 may have been slave laborers.

In 1991 the head of the investigative team, Bochum University history professor Hans Mommsen, declared at a symposium, "It's quite clear that Porsche was responsible for hiring concentration camp inmates for the factory's labor camp." Porsche contacted SS leader Heinrich Himmler directly to request slaves from Auschwitz, Mommsen said.

It should be noted that the investigation was commissioned by Volkswagen itself. The company has dedicated a stone memorial to the slave laborers at its headquarters in Wolfsburg, and I suppose we shouldn't hold current management responsible for crimes committed 50 years ago. But the whole business does put the funky Beetle of one's youth in a new light".

Years ago the story came out that Mercedes-Benz was commissioned by the Nazis to build the ovens for the Nazi concentration camps and Porsche designed the ignition (lighting) system). Maybe they did not know the intended use of the ovens at the time.

Crazy!