Volkswagen's Blood Crimes and Polling on Cuba

I. The Blood Crimes of Volkswagen
The records from a British war-crimes tribunal held in Helmstedt in 1946 that tried several of Volkswagen's employees for killing by willful neglect, show that Volkswagen executives -- not Nazi officials -- oversaw the murder of hundreds of infants. Its executives were killers. In a letter dated January 11, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the Reichsfuhrer-SS ad the head of  the German police to provide the workforce from the concentration camps to Volkswagen plant at Wolfsburg and Ruhen. He ordered that it be done "immediately."

According to historical records, as early as June 1940, Volkswagen had already begun using forced labor. "Because of  the scarcity of men as the war dragged on, many of the g Polish and Russian women -- an estimated 1,500 Poles and 4,000 to 5,000 Russians -- whom the Nazis had brought to the factory." "The death tolls mounted with as many as 30 children dying every month -- until he end, when the number of deaths rose to 60 in the worst months." [1]

"The dead infants weren't really buried. They were wrapped in toilet paper and stacked in the nursery's bathroom, where they would sometimes lie for days before being carted away by an undertaker." [2]

Volkswagen has never issued taken responsibility for the deaths at Wolfsburg and Ruhen, agreed to compensate the mothers for their losses, or even offer an expression of sympathy.

II. Polling on Cuba
A Pew poll taken in January 2015, shortly after the breakthrough in relations between the United States and Cuba, found that 66 percent of registered voters supported  lifting the embargo; after the official restoration of diplomatic ties in July 2015, a CBS News survey showed that  81 percent of Americans -- including 71 percent of Republicans -- supported lifting all sanctions on travel.

The State Department estimates that in the first five months of 2015, some 51,458 U.S/. citizens traveled to Cuba,  a 30 percent increase over the same period in 2014. [3]

Footnotes
[1] Neal Gabler, "Suffer the Little Children: The Blood Crimes of Volkswagen," The Nation, January 4, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Peter Kornbluh, "17D Plus One," The Nation, January 4, 2016.