Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/11/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]- ---------- > A recent message to this group commented on relations between Leitz (the > compny, owners and management) and the Nazis. I must say that this subject has > always bothered me. The politics of the nazis were horrible and awful, we all agree to that! But I think it is unfair to connect the Leica camera with the nazis. It is well known that the Leitz family was anti-nazi, and that Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, daughter of Dr. Ernst Leitz II spent several months in jail in 1943 because of helping Jewish people to escape to Switzerland. Remember also that both Leica and Contax were used by the Allies. Take a look at page 73 in "Leica Collectors Guide" by Dennis Laney, and you will find a wartime advertisment by a well known London dealer "calling-up" Leicas on behalf of the government. When the English war photographer George Rodger documented the cruelties found in the Bergen-Belsen camp, he was using one of his Leicas! /Hans