Art books are for rich people. The accompanying exhibition book costs $65. Pro tip: the Carnegie Library carries almost every CMOA exhibition book, including a copy of Gordon Parks: Pittsburgh Grease Plant, 1944/46 tucked away in the stacks of the main branch, which is part of the larger building that also houses the museum. The reason Parks even ended up in Pittsburgh is because of a PR crisis. In 1942, the Department of Justice accused Standard Oil of “anti-trust violations stemming from a long-term relationship with the German petrochemical company I.G. Farbenindustrie,” writes CMOA curator Dan Leers in his introductory essay. “Although [Standard Oil] was exonerated, the damage to its reputation had been done.”
Reading this, you might assume (as I did) that this was all a misunderstanding—just an innocent American oil company with a few business ties to a German counterpart. None of the contributing authors, including Leers, mention that the relationship between Standard Oil and I.G. Farben was so close that when it began in 1929, I.G. called it a “marriage.” At the time, I.G. was best known for developing and supplying the chlorine gas that Germany deployed during World War I. In the 30s, after partnering with Standard Oil, I.G. thoroughly enmeshed itself within the Nazi regime, manufacturing the oil, rubber, and explosives that Hitler used to wreak havoc across Europe. Standard Oil provided I.G. (and by extension, the Nazis) with patents for synthetic rubber, which the U.S. military desperately needed; instead, Standard deliberately hid the crucial technology from the American government. Standard owned factories in Hungary that the company sold to the Nazis. Standard even supplied gasoline to refuel Nazi aircraft.
“Standard Oil: Axis Ally,” read a headline in The New Republic on April 6, 1942, shortly after the DOJ presented evidence of Standard’s collusion with I.G. Farben. Standard was not in any way “exonerated,” as Leers writes. The reality is that the federal government definitively proved that Standard Oil, through its cartel-like arrangement with I.G. Farben, actively aided and abetted the Nazis from 1929 to 1942—an eventful time in German history. Harry Truman, at the time a U.S. Senator, declared that Standard’s actions constituted treason.
On April 7, 1942, just a few days after the end of the DOJ’s testimony, I.G. Farben announced an exciting new venture: I.G. Auschwitz. I.G. had invented and manufactured the Zyklon B that the Nazis used to gas Jews in Auschwitz. Now, I.G. would have a factory complex within the camp itself, powered by slave labor from the inmates. 300,000 concentration camp prisoners passed through I.G. Auschwitz; 25,000 of them were worked to death.
Why do none of the museum curators or foundation directors mention Standard Oil’s ties to the Nazis in Gordon Parks: Pittsburgh Grease Plant, 1944/46? I think it’s because if Standard Oil was complicit in the Holocaust, it raises an uncomfortable question: to what degree was Gordon Parks complicit?