Posted on 09/05/2002 5:36:59 PM PDT by GeneD
German engineering giant Siemens has hastily abandoned plans to register the trademark "Zyklon", the same name as the Zyklon B poison gas used in Nazi extermination camps, BBC News Online has learnt. A year ago, Bosch Siemens Hausgeraete (BSH), the firm's consumer products joint venture, filed two applications with the US Patent & Trademark Office for the Zyklon name across a range of home products, including gas ovens.
Jewish groups have condemned the move, in particular because Siemens used slave labour during the Nazi period.
"We are very sorry if this trademark application has caused any offence," Bosch Siemens spokeswoman Eva Delabre told BBC News Online, confirming that the firm had never used and had now no intention of using the name in the US.
Last month, UK sports goods maker Umbro apologised after complaints that it named one of its sports shoes Zyklon.
Name blame
Zyklon B, originally an insecticide, was widely used in gas chambers in the latter stages of the Nazi Holocaust.
The word Zyklon means "Cyclone" in German, and is already applied to some Siemens vacuum cleaners in its home market. It uses a technology similar to the bagless "cyclone" vacuum cleaners pioneered by UK inventor James Dyson.
But while the name may have been chosen innocently, it was condemned as insensitive by observers.
"Siemens should know better because it was directly complicit in the use of slave labour," said Dr Shimon Samuels, head of the European arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation.
"This is a major, major scandal."
Hasty retreat
A reader had alerted BBC News Online to the Zyklon trademark application.
When BBC News Online queried Bosch Siemens about its plans for the Zyklon product range, the company quickly made an about-turn, saying that "today BSH has begun taking the necessary steps to withdraw its trademark applications" for Zyklon.
Compensation claims
Like many other large German firms, Siemens is now involved in plans to compensate victims of the Nazi regime.
The German Government is still working on ways to deliver about £3.5bn in reparations to victims and their families.
Efforts to distribute compensation have been complicated by a mass of private lawsuits, mainly in US courts, alleging use of slave labour and other forms of profiteering from the Holocaust.
Zyklon B: Fascist economy.
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I am deeply offended by your use of the term "storm troopers"! (just kidding)
Gradually, even items with no direct Nazi link have been proscribed because neo-Nazis co-opted them. Since the Swastika flag had been outlawed, Skinheads took to waving the old Reichkriegsflagge; it is now illegal to fly THIS publicly. A prominent German businessman was fired for having the audacity to fly an Imperial flag on his property. This is particularly stupid because the Imperial ensign is a monarchist symbol and, as such, had actually been outlawed during the Third Reich.
But, as I suggested, German government and society are heavily involved in a form of anti-Nazi voodoo, and with Teutonic thoroughness will continue to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Frankly, I'm surprised they even retained the eagle as the national symbol.
Perhaps instead of using "cyclone" for a brand name they could use "whirlwind." Oh, but wait. They can't use that either, since the Wirbelwind was a quad-20 mm AA gun used by the Wehrmacht. Bad mojo.
If they wish to outlaw every word that was used by the Nazis, they might as well just start naming their products in Esperanto.
One can lament how words change their meanings over time. It is often the case when they are realted to serious calamities. Witness, for instance, the word "terrorist" being used as a synonym for "bad guy." Do you think that at the end of Napoleonic wars the word "monarchist' designated merely an intellectual preference for a certain national order?
It is from our parents that we learn the language, and if our parents co-opted a certain word, we are stuck with that ingheritance. If the "parents" of the present-day Germans co-opted the swastika and certain German words, this generation is stuck with it. This generation cannot assume that the listeners of their spoken word will of a sudden forget a very, very prominent recent decade when "Zyklon" meant more than just a shape in which water leaves the bathtub.
Here's a fundamental rule of business: The customer is always right. If your customers are offended by the name you give your product, to the point that they choose not to buy it, you go out of business. Whatever nitwit came up with the idea of naming a gas oven "zyklon" ought to have his or her head examined.
What a dumb idea to register that name.
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