Why Did Philip Morris Stop Making Cigarettes at Auschwitz?

Abstract

After the collapse of communism in the satellite states of the Soviet Union, global cigarette makers began acquiring factories throughout Eastern Europe to capitalize on this new market opportunity. Drawing on victims’ accounts of the Holocaust, this article rediscovers the Philip Morris cigarette factory at Auschwitz—a manufacturing plant once used by the SS to torture and execute prisoners from the first transports to the killing center. Confidential tobacco industry documents disgorged through litigation show that the world's largest cigarette maker was aware of this heritage prior to purchasing these factories, and made efforts to control the fallout from this potential PR blunder. During these same years, cigarette makers were publicly equating cigarettes with liberty, airing advertisements comparing smokers to the persecuted Jews of Nazi Europe. Exposing these trespasses both physical and rhetorical, this article reflects on one site where two very different atrocities collide.