This article was written for The Kathmandu Post (click here for the ePaper link, page 1 WORLD) and first published 29/01/2011 on ekantipur.com.

See below the online version with implemented links:


By Beatrice Jeschek

Designers in the 'Topf & Sons' planning office, 1940 © Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar

On January 27, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the city of Erfurt in Germany inaugurated a place dedicated to tell the history of one of the darkest symbols of the Nazi regime – the Auschwitz ovens.

It is a dark chapter for any German to open. Anyone walking along the former company grounds in Sorbenweg in Erfurt must feel the shadows of the past. It is here where the innovative heads of “Topf & Sons”, once market leader for the construction of incineration ovens for crematoria, used their talents to build machines effective enough to erase the outcome of mass killings.

The story of the company “Topf & Sons” fascinates in a morbid manner.

It started in the 19th century and led to the crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau – where more than 1,100,000 men, women and children lost their lives. From the spring of 1942 and onward, this concentration camp became the largest site for the murder of Jews brought here under the Nazi plan for their extermination.

A patent for killing

The killing and disposal of the corpses was carried out continuously, systematically and inexpensively in a manner which economized on fuel and left as little evidence behind as possible.

In response to the demands of Nazi Germany’s paramilitary organization “SS”, the company management, engineers and fitters supplied not only incineration ovens for the disposal of murdered human beings – they also perfected the gas chambers.

In 1942, carried on by full knowledge and witness of the practices of mass murder at Auschwitz, “Topf & Sons” applied for a patent for a “continuous-operation corpse incineration oven for mass use”.

A patent that may shock even those familiar with the technical aspect of the Holocaust. The urging question lying underneath is how a perfectly normal company ended up as the employing engineers of Hitler’s “final solution”.

Was profit the driving factor? Ideology?

Thinking about the Auschwitz ovens shocks. It even physically hurts. Thus, silence around the technical proceedings and its inventors is the most common reaction.

As from January 27, the traveling exhibition “Engineers of the ‘Final Solution’: Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens” is supposed to give answers right where all these plans and documents on how to finalize Hitler Germany’s mass killings originated.

After all, the opening date has been chosen wisely as it marks the anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and therefore designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

'Topf & Sons' crematory ovens at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1943

Critical memorial

The first steps towards displaying a profile of the builders of the Auschwitz ovens were taken already in 2005 in Berlin. It then found its way throughout Europe. Presently, the exhibition is being expanded, updated and adapted for permanent display in Erfurt.

Single voices in the German press highlight the effect an exhibition like this may have on the international debate.

Not only does it show abroad how critical Germany is with its past. That is a given. Moreover, it initiates an attempt to clear the view on the role technology plays in modern society.

The divergent aspect here is that this new Place of Remembrance in Erfurt is the first to be so strongly dedicated to the mechanics of the Nazi death camps, the builders of the Auschwitz ovens.

Actually, the brand name of the “Topf & Sons” drafting machines was “ISIS” – making reference to the ancient Egyptian goddess who offered protection to all who “invented something useful for mankind.”

Technology per se can’t be bad, can it?

According to the exhibition’s website, there is proof enough to say that the “Topf & Sons” engineers, “entirely of their own accord”, invented more efficient facilities for the disposal of more and more human beings.

“With their construction designs, they hastened to remain far ahead of the demands made by the SS. The personal and economic advantages they gained for their efforts were modest – too modest to explain their great commitment,” the website reads. The proportion of the concentration camp business of the total sales of the company was only about two percent.

As if it was supposed to add “inspiration”, the windows of the company’s technical departments even afforded an unobstructed view of the Ettersberg, a mountain near Weimar where the Buchenwald concentration camp was located.

As it seemed, the designers in the drafting rooms were proud of finding innovative solutions for specific customers. And from 1939 onwards, the company’s specialized furnace construction department worked most intensively for the “SS”, a very specific customer.

The ending

After the war, the “Topf & Sons” company management as well as the involved employees denied all charges of guilt and responsibility for the crimes.

In 1945, Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang Topf, owners and managing directors of the family business in the third generation, escaped any charges. Ludwig committed suicide, Ernst Wolfgang fled to the Western occupied zones and could not return after the Soviet army became the occupying force in Erfurt. Legal proceedings against him were suspended.

Ernst-Wolfgang and Ludwig Topf, 1938

A year later, in 1946, the engineers Kurt Prüfer, Fritz Sander, Karl Schultze and Gustav Braun were arrested by the Soviet army. Sander died the same year of heart failure. In 1948, his three colleagues were sentenced in Moscow to twenty-five years in a penal colony for assisting the SS in committing genocide.

The builders of the Auschwitz ovens were not even Nazi fanatics. They were real people, smart inventors, pulled by ambitions of serving the state.

“Half-Jews” and proclaimed communists were among the staff. “Topf & Sons”, and this is maybe what critical memorial actually means, was not just a grey company, building without faces.

A lot of morally challenging material shows up – “Topf & Sons” fits in Nazi Germany as a normal company with normal people. The lack of humanity towards “natural enemies” of the national community was enough to create accomplices in mass murder.

Fact is, the psychology of providing the technical grounds for mass killings has many facets, and some of these are displayed in the exhibition.

For more information on the permanent exhibition click here.