The Independent reports:
The Swedish flat-pack giant Ikea is today reeling from potentially scandalous allegations that it used scores of political prisoners in former communist East Germany to manufacture its affordable furniture products in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The charges, which include the suggestion that the world’s largest furniture retailer, also once worked hand in hand with East Germany’s despised Stasi secret police, were made in a Swedish public television documentary which will be broadcast for the first time tomorrow night.
The broadcaster, SVT, said yesterday that its investigators had found evidence in Stasi files which pointed to the direct involvement of East German political prisoners in the Ikea manufacturing process during the 1970s and 1980s.
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Posted by: Office Furniture Desk | October 23, 2012 at 03:58 PM
It is funny that for business relations, both sides could come to terms quite easily, even if in politics the two governments were ideologically entrenched...
Posted by: Dublin Flatpack | June 21, 2012 at 10:22 AM
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Posted by: Dublinflatpack | June 13, 2012 at 11:03 AM
How does that fit to the Ikea founder that is alleged to have had soft spot for some aspects of the Nazi ideology?
Anyway, it is definitely true that the GDR was the cheap producer for several Western German consumer goods, especially furniture and shoes. It is funny that for business relations, both sides could come to terms quite easily, even if in politics the two governments were ideologically entrenched. For economic contracts, the negotiators even found a way to establish the Bundesrepublik including West Berlin as one contracting party, while the inclusion of West Berlin was not acknowledged by the GDR (I think the Solomonic solution was to contract with the DM currency area).
Afaik the GDR was at first a relatively efficient cheap producer, but the whole trade concept created ever higher losses under Honnecker.
Posted by: Zaungast | May 05, 2012 at 03:43 PM