It's also worth remembering that many of these companies, and their employees had absolutely no choice but to play ball with the regime. The Nazi authorities basically came in, placed their people on the management and took the companies over using their facilities and technical ability to produce equipment for the war effort.
I know I spoke to some old women in Eindhoven in the Netherlands where Philips Electronics is Headquartered. They were working for Philips during that period and the Nazis fully occupied the plant. The senior management were forced to flee the country and when the employees went on strike many were sent to concentration camps!! So, basically they were forced labour facilities even if the people were still receiving a wage they had very little choice and often had to work at gun point / under threat of death.
The Nazi regime did utterly unforgivable and sickening things. I think it's important that we all remember the period and learn lessons about the dark side of humanity from it and make sure that it can never and will never happen again. The Jewish community faced absolutely horrendous treatment under the Nazis, but it's also important to remember that they also rounded up and put gay men and women to death and anyone they considered "abnormal" i.e. children and adults with minor disabilities, the deaf community, those suffering from mental illness.
The modern German Government and many other European Governments have systematically prosecuted as many nazi colaborators as they could over the decades that followed the war. There are also extremely tough anti-Nazi laws in Germany which forbid anyone from making pro-nazi statements.
I don't think at this stage it's fair to tarnish modern German companies with what went on during the war though. It was not really within their control and anyone who did have involvement would have face prosecution after the war.
It's absolutely vital that we continue to educate people about this period of history though. It's shows just how ugly the face of racism and intollerance can be and that we absolutely must do our utmost at all times to ensure that it never happens again.
Let's not forget we've had a few decades in the 'civilised world' with relatively good human rights records
WWII is still within living memory in Europe...
Apartheid only ended in the southern US in the 1960s...
I only hope that modern communications technology like the internet keeps us so interconnected that we're starting to finally discover that we're all human, regardless of race, religion, colour, nationality etc etc..
