A dark past

Just for train aficionados. ICE stands for Inter City Express. But when DB (then called Deutsche Bundesbahn, now known as Deutsche Bahn) were at the initial stages of testing the trains, ICE stood for Inter City Experimental.
And something else; the one and only electric locos built by the GDR are now doing commuter service in and around German cities - west and east. The GDR held on to the old name of German Railways - DR - Deutsche Reichsbahn.

An article in yesterday's Irish Times explains how the Nazi government paid DR for the transportation of their victims to the concentration camps.

I have always been aware how Mercedes supplied cars to the regime and how IG Farben was the parent company of the modern German pharmaceutical industry, but it never dawned on me before how the railway helped in the evil deeds. It did and in a big way.