JA Topf & Sons

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Former administration building, now a place of remembrance
Company logo above the inscription " Silo storage and transport systems", here in the Lindener Hafen in Hanover
Monument in front of the administration building

The company JA Topf & Sons was an industrial company in Erfurt . This built the crematoria in various concentration camps and in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (see gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz concentration camp ). The company also installed some ventilation systems and gastight doors for the gas chambers and carried out technical test runs of the furnaces. The former administration building is now a memorial site for Topf & Sons .

Company history

Company foundation as a machine factory

In 1878 in Erfurt by Johann Andreas Topf (1816-1891) and expanded by his son Ludwig Topf (1863-1914) to a company with over 500 employees, the company achieved great success in the First World War with a specially designed for the combustion of Lignite developed high-performance firing that worked extremely economically. After Ludwig Topf's early death, his wife Elsa Topf became the owner. After a drop in sales, the company ran into financial difficulties in 1933, so a settlement procedure was initiated. In 1935, the founder's grandchildren, Ludwig Topf (1903–1945) and Ernst-Wolfgang Topf (1904–1979), jointly took over management of the company.

Regulating firing System SA Topf & Sons, Erfurt for brewing pans , malt kilns, steam boilers; Advertisement (1891)

The company built complete malthouses and brewery machines as well as silo systems , chimneys and gas-tight doors and windows as well as industrial firing systems derived from them. From 1914 there was also a small department for the development and manufacture of crematorium ovens. The crematorium oven business accounted for less than 3 percent of the company's total sales.

Arms factory in World War II

During the Second World War, production was based on military orders from the Wehrmacht, such as B. aircraft parts converted. In the 1940s, the company management decided to work with the Reich Security Main Office , which administered the concentration camps. No pressure was applied from above. However, the company's liquidity had deteriorated with the start of the war; in April 1941 the debt level peaked at 497,000 RM . Any moral concerns were likely put aside to save the company. Due to the constant further development of the engineers at Topf & Sons, the company developed into the main supplier of incineration ovens for concentration camps. The Berlin company Kori was the biggest competitor, although their ovens were much more simply designed.

publicly-owned business

In Erfurt, the company was expropriated in 1948 and was initially able to continue its activities under the name " Nagema Topfwerke Erfurt VEB". In the mid-1950s, the company was renamed "VEB Maschinenfabrik Nikos Belojannis " after the Greek resistance fighter . It then operated under the company name (company) "VEB Erfurt Mälzerei- und Speicherbau EMS". From 1970 until 1990 the company belonged to the combine progress agricultural machinery , was converted into a GmbH in the course of its dissolution and was finally insolvent in 1994 .

Development into a place of remembrance

In 1997, the cultural scientist Eckhard Schwarzenberger first gave impetus for a conscious use of the former company premises, the history of which had largely disappeared from the memory of the city and its citizens at that time. Since then, concepts for the preservation and history-conscious use of the site and the remaining buildings have been developed and introduced into a public discourse together with institutions and cultural institutions in Erfurt and a support group.

From 2001 to 2009 the area was occupied by left-wing activists who campaigned for a place of remembrance and against the demolition of the factories. After they were cleared by the police, they were nevertheless torn down and the area was rebuilt. Only the former administration building was preserved and was opened to the public in 2011 as a memorial site for Topf & Sons . There is an exhibition showing the company's involvement in the Holocaust . The place of remembrance belongs to the Erfurt City Museum .

Collaboration with the SS to equip the concentration camps 1940–1945

Manufacture of incinerators, participation in the construction of the gas chambers

The ovens manufactured by JA Topf and Sons for the cremation of corpses in the Buchenwald concentration camp

The Topf and Sons company was responsible for building incinerators in various concentration camps, including Buchenwald , Groß-Rosen , Auschwitz Stammlager , Dachau , Gusen and Mauthausen . The muffle furnaces were initially transportable, were later walled in and were finally stationary. The initially individual combustion chambers increased to two- and three-muffle furnaces and were expanded to up to eight chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau .

In October 1941, the collaboration with Karl Bischoff , the construction manager of the SS in Auschwitz , began for the construction of Crematorium II with five three-muffle ovens in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp (see also gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz concentration camp ). The capacity of the facilities in Auschwitz-Birkenau for a total of 4,416 corpses per day was exceptional. These systems were installed and also repaired on site by the company's engineers. In addition, ventilation systems were installed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, which should enable faster degassing and thus a faster sequence of killings. The employees of the company Topf & Sons had an insight into the crimes through their work in the extermination camp. Heinrich Messing and Karl Schultze were there when the first mass murder occurred on March 14, 1943 in Crematorium II. Records describing work on the “undressing cellar” or the procurement of gas-tight windows and doors as well as display devices for hydrogen cyanide residues also testify to an accomplishment.

The GDR politician Bruno Baum quotes the "Central Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland" as follows:

At the beginning of 1943 the company [Topf and Sons] handed over four large modern crematoria to the camp management, the most important part of which were the gas chambers. The crematoria were marked with the Roman numerals II, III, IV and V. Crematoria II and III each had two underground chambers, named Morgues 1 and 2 in the construction plans, which together formed a single gassing facility intended for humans. Chamber 1 was 210 m² and 2.3 m high, Chamber 2 had 400 m² and was also 2.3 m high. In crematoria IV and V, an above-ground chamber with an area of ​​580 m² was set up, which was officially called "Bathing establishment for special action".
Among the surviving documents from the former camp management Oswiecim are some orders from the central construction management of the camp, from which it emerges that both chambers No. 1 in crematoria II and III (morgue) and the bathing establishments for special operations in crematoria IV and V with gas-tight doors that had barred peepholes with 8 mm thick unbreakable glass. The actual destination of these rooms, camouflaged with more or less innocent names, is testified by the correspondence of the head of the central construction management of the Waffen SS and Police, Bischoff , in which he calls these rooms 'gassing cellars'.

The word "Gaskeller" can be found in a telephone conversation memo made by employees of the Topf and Sons company in Erfurt on February 17, 1943. It says:

“In matters: Central construction management of the Waffen-SS, Auschwitz / Ost-Oberschl.
Subject: ventilation system.
It calls Mr Schultze and reports the following:
1.) The ventilation fan no. 450 for the gas cellar cannot be found there, although it is said to have gone off with us. "

Engineers like Kurt Prüfer also developed "suggestions for improvement" like the so-called express work: three corpses were to be cremated in an oven. So the designers knew that no one would receive neatly separated ashes for burial purposes. One of the “improvements” in Auschwitz was a modification of the ovens, in which the body fat escaping from the corpses was fed directly into the flames and used for firing.

In a document received, an internal and "secret" stamped letter from the auditor to the management of his company dated September 8, 1942, the capacities of the three ovens in operation are given as "250 per day", those of the five ovens under construction with " 800 “and also promised two ovens that could cremate another 800 corpses a day. The company had such eight-muffle ovens in stock for a planned large warehouse in Mogilew ; from deliveries there “ovens were diverted”. The SS demanded more ovens from Topf so that the urgent calls would finally be silenced.

On February 19, 1943, Prüfer suggested to the Central Construction Office in Auschwitz that the exhaust air from the ovens should be used to heat “Leichenkeller 1”, ie the gas chamber, in Crematorium II. Apparently this should ensure the faster release of hydrogen cyanide gas from Zyklon B even at low ambient temperatures.

Patent application: Continuously operating corpse cremation furnace for mass operation

On November 4, 1942, the company applied for a patent for a continuous furnace for the mass cremation of corpses with the Reich Patent Office in Berlin under number T 58240 Kl. 24 . The patent application shows that the Topf engineer Fritz Sander, who formulated the application, knew about the intended use, namely the cremation of the corpses of camp inmates. In the draft description it says:

“In the assembly camps in the occupied eastern territories caused by the war and its consequences, with their inevitably high mortality, the burial of the large number of deceased camp inmates is not feasible. [...] There is therefore the compulsion to dispose of the constantly accumulating large number of corpses quickly, safely and hygienically by cremation. In doing so, of course, the legal provisions applicable to the Reich German territory cannot be followed. "

According to Sander, the patent specification was classified as secret and therefore not processed by the Reich Patent Office. However, the historian Annegret Schüle also believes it is possible that the patent was not granted because the invention contravened applicable law, according to which the ashes of different corpses could not be mixed.

The functional principle of the furnace should correspond to that of an incineration conveyor belt: On the one hand, the time to fill and empty the combustion chamber should be eliminated, and on the other hand, additional fuel consumption should be avoided, since the corpses served as fuel for each other. A description by Sanders for "cremation ovens for concentration camps" intended for management describes the inclined arrangement inside the facility and the use of gravity in the context of mass incineration:

"The corpses slide by their own gravity on appropriately inclined and shaped surfaces into the heated furnace and then down, get caught in the fire in this way, and finally burn out and incinerate at a suitable point inside the furnace."

The mode of operation of the system is discussed in detail:

“The cremation objects are therefore constantly exposed to the effects of the flames and the fire all the way through the furnace. Exposed to heating gases. [...] Through appropriately arranged outlet openings, if the cremation objects are stuck or jammed, external assistance can be provided ... "

Start of work-up after 1945

After the Second World War, some of the most responsible employees were brought to justice by the Soviet occupying forces. Ludwig Topf committed suicide to avoid imminent arrest. In a suicide note he affirmed his "innocence in the crematoria"; he is a “decent man” who will never “surrender to a foreign country”.

The brother, Ernst-Wolfgang Topf, went to the West. He was briefly imprisoned in 1946; a court proceedings in Fritzlar-Homberg were discontinued in 1949; The public prosecutor's office continued investigations, but ended in October 1951. Topf re-founded the company in Wiesbaden , relocated it to Mainz in 1953 and had to dissolve it in 1963 due to bankruptcy. Due to a book publication that contained material from the GDR, accusations against him were again raised. Ernst-Wolfgang Topf untruthfully claimed that the ovens in Auschwitz were not custom-made, and stated in his defense: "The word: 'No, the Topf company does not deliver for concentration camps' was synonymous with concentration camp and death!" However, even today, after reviewing all documents, no state constraints are recognizable; only material advantages are to be assumed as a motive. Further investigative proceedings followed, none of which led to the initiation of a main hearing. There was a lack of relevant evidence that was in the Eastern Bloc and should not be used for political reasons.

Four employees were arrested by the Soviet occupation forces in March 1946; they disappeared into unknown camps. Guilty confessions have been received from them, in which they admitted their complicity. The chief engineer Karl Schultze described his observation of how people were driven to the crematorium and commented on the motives for his further participation:

“The next day I was in the crematorium at ten in the morning. I saw 60 bodies there, men, women and children. […] I told him [ie examiner] what had happened, how these people were led, driven into the gas chamber and killed and now their corpses were being cremated in the crematorium. [...] I stayed there for five days. [...] I had to check the crematorium oven. That was only possible when the transport arrived with the 300 or so people who were killed in the gas chamber. [...] I continued because we were bound by our signatures. We had a duty to the SS, the Topf company and the Nazi state. I did not act of my own accord, but on instructions ... I was afraid of losing my job and possibly being arrested. "

The chief engineer and authorized signatory Paul Erdmann initially remained unmolested, but was arrested at the end of 1950 on suspicion of having participated in a crime against humanity by building crematoria . However, he was released in February 1951. It has not yet been clarified why he was not brought to justice. Five involved fitters from the Topf & Sons company, some of whom had secretly formed a communist cell before 1945, soon joined the KPD and thus the later SED . One was recognized as " persecuted by the Nazi regime "; some others got jobs in the People's Police or were recruited by the State Security . It cannot be proven whether they used their position to conceal their previous activity; in any case, they got away with no trial. A request from the BRD public prosecutor's office in a case involving Topf was not answered from Erfurt.

See also

Varia

Exhibitions
  • The two deaths of Paul Schäfer - legend and life story of an Erfurt communist. Exhibition from August 25, 2018 to April 28, 2019, Category: Special Exhibition, History, Pot and Sons: The exhibition discovers the person Paul Schäfer behind the legend and follows his footsteps as far as Moscow. In his dramatic life the big questions about utopia and revolution, terror and dictatorship arise.

literature

  • Aleida Assmann , Frank Hiddemann, Eckhard Schwarzenberger (eds.): Topf & Sons company - manufacturer of the ovens for Auschwitz. A factory site as a place of remembrance? Campus, New York / Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-593-37035-2 .
  • Bruno Baum : Resistance in Auschwitz. Kongress, Berlin 1957, 1962 (only in these extended new editions), p. 55 f.
  • Simone Hain, Mark Escherich (Ed.): Areal der Ververstellungigung. Ideas for a historical place of Topf & Sons. (= Project work by the Gropius Professorship and the Preservation of Monument Preservation at the Bauhaus University Weimar). Weimar 2007 ( PDF ).
  • Philipp Kratz: Ernst-Wolfgang Topf, the company JA Topf & Sons and the suppression of guilt in the post-war period. In: Journal of History. 56 (2008), pp. 249-266.
  • Jean-Claude Pressac: The Auschwitz Crematoria. The technique of mass murder. Piper, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-492-12193-4 .
  • Steffen Raßloff : 100 monuments in Erfurt. History and stories. Klartext, Essen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8375-0987-8 , pp. 188-189.
  • Bianca Saupe: The Topf and Sons Company - A German family business and its involvement in the Holocaust. GRIN Verlag, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 978-3-64069-495-2 .
  • Annegret Schüle : Industry and the Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 .
  • Annegret Schüle: International traveling exhibition Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. (= Accompanying volume for the traveling exhibition). Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-95565-223-4 .
  • Annegret Schüle: JA Topf & Sons - An Erfurt family business and the Holocaust. State Center for Political Education Thuringia, Erfurt 2014, ISBN 978-3-943588-45-3 .
  • Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals, business without responsibility. In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl (ed.): In the labyrinth of guilt. Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-593-37373-4 , pp. 199-229.
  • Annegret Schüle, Tobias Sowade: Willy Wiemokli. Accountant at JA Topf & Sons - between persecution and complicity. (= Against repression and forgetting, Volume 9). Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95565-100-8 .
  • Eckhard Schwarzenberger: Pot & Sons. Working at a perpetrator location. 3. Edition. Berlin 2001.

Web links

Commons : JA Topf & Sons  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morality, business without responsibility. In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl (ed.): In the labyrinth of guilt. Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 3-593-37373-4 , p. 203.
  2. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals. P. 208.
  3. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals. P. 214 and as Document 34 in Jean-Claude Pressac : The Auschwitz Crematoria. Munich 1995, ISBN 3-492-12193-4 .
  4. ↑ For tree without further details. Bibliogr. Supplement: Oświęcim-Brzezinka concentration camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau) - due to v. Documents and Sources of evidence / edit Jan Sehn (Ed.): Central Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland. Trans. V. Rita Tertel, Warszawa 1957. (German barrel DNB 576147672. )
  5. ↑ tree, resistance, exp. New edition Congress, Berlin 1957, pp. 55f; 1962, p. 57f. in chap. "The real culprits ... are the German corporations." / Letter from SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Bischoff to SS-Oberführer Hans Kammler from January 29, 1943 quoted by Saul Friedländer: The years of annihilation. Volume 2: The Third Reich and the Jews 1939–1945. 2nd Edition. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54966-7 , pp. 530-531.
  6. ↑ Hans Ulrich Thamer, Simone Erpel (ed.): Hitler and the Germans - Volksgemeinschaft and Verbrechen. Dresden 2010, ISBN 978-3-942422-10-9 (exhibition catalog). Fig. On p. 131 = telephone note from Fritz Sandner, chief engineer at T&S, dated February 17, 1943.
  7. ↑ born 1891, died in Soviet captivity in 1952 as a result of a stroke. Eckhard Schwarzenberger: Ovens for Auschwitz. ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.topf-holocaust.de
  8. ^ Document dated September 8, 1942
  9. ^ Crematorium ovens: The "Zero Point of Architecture" at www.stern.de
  10. ↑ cf. Ralph Giordano on the following : If Hitler had won the war. 5th edition. Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2006, ISBN 3-462-02944-4 / Annegret Schüle: Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 , pp. 166–176 and documents pp. 443–450.
  11. ^ A b Excerpt from the interrogation record of March 7, 1946, taken from the copy by Prof. Gerald Fleming, University of Surrey , In: New York Times . July 18, 1993.
  12. ^ Annegret Schüle: Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 , p. 450 (facsimile).
  13. ^ Annegret Schüle: Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 , p. 171.
  14. ^ Annegret Schüle: Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 , p. 444.
  15. ^ Annegret Schüle: Industry and Holocaust. Topf & Sons - The furnace builders of Auschwitz. Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0622-6 , p. 455.
  16. ^ Philipp Kratz: Ernst-Wolfgang Topf, the company JA Topf & Sons and the repression of guilt in the post-war period. In: Journal of History. 56 (2008) H. 3, p. 252.
  17. ^ Inquiries from the BRD public prosecutors to Erfurt had not received an answer; Topf employees from the concentration camp area played important political roles there.
  18. ↑ Philipp Kratz: Ernst-Wolfgang Topf ... In: ZfG. 56 (2008) no. 3, p. 262 / spelling adjusted here.
  19. ↑ Philipp Kratz: Ernst-Wolfgang Topf ... In: ZfG. 56 (2008) H. 3, pp. 250 and 262/63.
  20. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals. Pp. 217/218.
  21. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals. P. 216.
  22. ↑ Annegret Schüle: Technology without morals. P. 214.
  23. ↑ The two deaths of Paul Schäfer. Legend and life story of an Erfurt communist. In: TopfundSoehne.de. Retrieved February 27, 2019 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 20 ″  N , 11 ° 3 ′ 5 ″  E