Here are two letters that nearly made me cry when out walking today. What you need to know about the below is that Thomas J. Watson was the CEO of IBM at the time. Quoted in succession, as they are printed in page 137 of Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation":

VI: WAR CARDS

JULY 5, 1937

Your Excellency Adolf Hitler Berlin

Before leaving Berlin, I wish to express my pride in and deep gratitude for the high honor I received through the order with which you honored me. Valuing fully the spirit of friendship which underlay this honor, I assure you that in the future as in the past, I will endeavor to do all in my power to create more intimate bonds between our two great nations. My wife and my family join in best wishes for you.

Thomas J. Watson International Business Machines

In contrast:

1 JULY 4, 1938

Mr. Thomas J. Watson International Business Machines New York

Dear Sir:

I must offer you my apologies for taking the liberty to write you and to request your kind attention for the following matter. Like many [of] Jewish confession, I am facing a very terrible moment in life and I am obliged to leave this country and to procure in another land my means of living. I am born on the 17th of June 1906 and was educated in the elementary and high school in the country. During eight years until 1933, I have worked as an operator of the Hollerith punching machine for the Reich Statistical Office in Berlin. Now I have spoken with Mr. Drines, the manager of the Hollerith company in Berlin about my plans to find work abroad. Mr. Drines has advised me to write to you somehow with my plans and I hope that with your kind help I would be able to find work in a foreign country. No doubt you know the condition of living here and it would be useless to give any further reasons for my immigration. I would be very grateful to you for your kind assistance and please accept in anticipation my thanks. Hoping to be favored with your reply, I remain

Sincerely Yours, Ilse Meyer Berlin