It's time to squeeze the Charmin.

Just when we thought we knew all there was to know about the Holocaust, David Steinman, in Moon and Stars and Holocaust, provides us with shocking documentation that the American corporate giant was instrumental in facilitating the institutional infrastructure that undergirded Hitler's plan to wipe Europe free of Jewry.  In recent years the roles of various European and American corporations in aiding and supplying the Nazis have been exposed.  Now we have evidence that P&G, producer of Charmin (TM) toilet tissue and icon of American business, was complicit in the Final Solution, putting the profits it derived from sales of toilet paper, toothpaste and other toiletries above responsibility and morality.

We have been told that "nobody knew."  Nobody knew the extent of Hitler's plans for the Jews; nobody knew that the Third Reich could carry out the Final Solution; nobody knew that Final Solution was being implemented.  Now we know that not only did many know, but that some, like P&G, made it possible for the Final Solution to proceed apace.

It is horrifying that while the millions of Jews imprisoned in camps were worked to death and denied even the most basic human dignity of showering, their wardens were enjoying the softest tissues and most luxuriant facial scrubs American technology could provide.  Let there be no mistake: P&G "clean" money is dirty money.

"Everyone appreciates the comfortably clean feeling of Charmin," runs the P&G advertising slogan.  But everyone at P&G should feel uncomfortably dirty about the horrifying abrogation of human rights that forms this sordid chapter in its corporate history.  Making money by abetting the most monstrous regime in human history may have seemed good business at the time, but it is bad business today, and we intend to take every step to see that current leadership at P&G both renounces the actions of past leadership and moves forward in partnership with the Jewish community in a morally appropriate direction.  Return to the ranks of responsible corporate citizens requires nothing less.

While today's P&G clearly is not responsible for the actions of earlier directors and their hands-on relationship with the Nazis through German subsidiary PGD, today's P&G does owe the world a full accounting and restitution in order to remove the blot now tarnishing its corporate name.  America's icon of business owes it to itself, its employees, investors, customers, and, most importantly, to the memory of the six million Jews and millions of victims of the Nazis to come clean about its dirty role in the Holocaust.  We are certain that P&G will take whatever actions are fiscally and morally necessary to counter the public outrage generated by these surprising new revelations. The ADL will continue the fight for accountability as the Holocaust continues to reveal itself, providing an expanded historical account and important lessons for today and the future.