For decades, Wolfe, who died December 10 at the age of 93, was the chief archivist for captured Nazi documents at the National Archives in Washington. But by time we found ourselves standing together outside the archive near Stuttgart, he was retired and now volunteering his invaluable expertise to my project.

Together, we were seeking documents related to the IBM Corporation’s willing cooperation with the Nazi regime to facilitate the Holocaust. IBM, we would ultimately discover, eagerly helped the Nazis with its then cutting edge punch card technology to organize and systemize census data and thereby locate millions of Jews for shipment to the camps.

We had already set our appointment to visit the facility near Stuttgart with local IBM officials. But at the last minute, IBM headquarters in both New York and Paris learned the nature of our mission and ordered the local staff to deny us entry. Through the surreal medium of a security intercom we were informed that the museum had been suddenly and permanently shut down.

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