Memorial Site Topf & Söhne – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens

Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne – Die Ofenbauer von Auschwitz

From 1939 the company Topf & Söhne supplied the SS with corpse incineration ovens for concentration camps. In the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp the company not only set up huge incinerators but also equipped the gas chambers in the crematoria with ventilation systems. The memorial site Topf & Söhne – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens which opened in 2011 is the only historical site in Europe, where the industry's complicity in the Holocaust is shown, attested and communicated at a former company headquarters.

History

The company Topf & Söhne was founded in Erfurt in 1878. Besides brewery and malting facilities, silos and industrial combustion equipment, the company also produced incineration ovens for crematoria in a small department from 1914. The design of these ovens allowed a rather dignified incineration and the company became the market leader in this field during the Weimar Republic. Shortly after the beginning of the war in 1939 the Buchenwald concentration camp saw the first large scale deaths caused by the SS. The SS ordered a mobile oven at Topf & Söhne to dispose of the corpses. Within a few months furnace construction engineer Kurt Prüfer of Topf & Söhne designed further oven types for concentration camps. Based on the principles of carcass incineration they served to incinerate the corpses fast and cost-effectively, thus removing the traces of the Nazi crimes. Until the end of the war employees of Topf & Söhne set up incineration ovens in Buchenwald, Dachau, Auschwitz, Groß-Rosen, Mogilev, Mauthausen and Gusen. For the expansion of Auschwitz-Birkenau as an extermination camp for the European Jews and the Romani people from 1942, Topf & Söhne supplied ovens and ventilation systems for the gas chambers. Because of the high air change rate the SS was able to carry out one massacre after another without delays. Because of the strong demand in efficient ovens in Auschwitz-Birkenau engineer Fritz Sander designed a »continuous-operation corpse incineration oven for mass use«, for which the company applied a patent but which was never built. The company management knew what the products of Topf & Söhne were used for by the SS. Engineers and fitters installed the facilities on site and put them into operation, in Auschwitz-Birkenau fitters from Topf & Söhne were on duty for almost one year. Still in February 1945 the company designed a new extermination centre near the Mauthausen concentration camp, reusing parts of the ovens and ventilation systems which had been dismantled in Auschwitz-Birkenau because of the approaching Red Army.

Erfurt, 2012, The exhibition »Technicians of the ›Endlösung‹« in the historical design department, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Kastner Pichler Architekten, Köln

Erfurt, 2012, A group of visitors at the outdoor facilities, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Boris Hajduković

Victims

The premises of Topf & Söhne in Erfurt is a site of accomplices and confidants. This was not a site of persecution or murder. Still, at this site, technical facilities were developed, produced and sold which made it possible for the SS to dispose of the corpses in concentration camps and to cover up their crimes, most notably the industrial mass murder in the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Thus, Topf & Söhne played a key role in the implementation of the genocide against the Jews and the Sinti and Roma of Europe.

The entry to power of the National Socialists in 1933 heralded the state persecution of opponents of the regime, Jews, Roma – who were classed as »gypsies« -, the sick and many other groups. For the first time, anti-semitism became part of the government policy of a modern state and the persecution of all groups was progressively heightened. The process was characterised by the interplay between state regulation, violence from supporters of the regime and rabble-rousing propaganda from the press. The acts of terror against the Jews in November 1938 (»The Night of the Broken Glass«), culminating in around one hundred deaths, marked the prelude to the complete exclusion and murder of the Jewish minority. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, large parts of Europe fell under German control. In Eastern Europe in particular a multi-tiered system of camps and extermination sites was established, in which the SS murdered up to six million Jews, among them around 165,000 German Jews. It is estimated that around seven million Germans lost their lives in the war, including almost 3.5 million civilians. Around 28 million residents of the occupied Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians) and three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death. These groups are still barely commemorated in Germany. Germany came under Allied occupation in 1945 and 1949 saw the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who had very different cultures of remembrance. The GDR profiled itself as an »antifascist« state. The former concentration camps at Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen became »National Memorials« and primarily documented the communist resistance during the war. In the Federal Republic, the dominant memory was initially of the victims of Allied bombing raids and those who had fled or been expelled from their homes in the former territory of the Third Reich. It was left to specific groups to remember Nazi persecution, the Holocaust or the resistance. With the exception of the war crimes trials, there was no public discussion of perpetrators or involvement in crimes. However, the situation was to change in the mid-1960s, when the statute of limitations for murder was lifted following a lengthy debate. Also during this period, memorial sites were established at former concentration camps (1965: Dachau and Neuengamme; 1966: Bergen-Belsen) and the German Resistance Memorial Centre was opened in 1968 in West Berlin. However, it was not until the 1980s that a diverse and often small-scale landscape of memory developed as the result of local initiatives. Following German unification in 1990, a national memorial site concept was developed and there was a major review of German sites of memory. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was inaugurated in 2005. The Topography of Terror, a comprehensive documentation of National Socialist crimes and perpetrators, has opened with a new centre in May 2010; the documentation centre »Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation« followed suit in 2021. In the meantime, central memorials in Berlin have been erected to commemorate further groups of Nazi victims as well: the murdered Sinti and Roma, the patients murdered in the context of the Nazi’s »Euthanasia« killings and the persecuted homosexuals. The German victims of National Socialist terror in the former Eastern territories of the Third Reich were forgotten by both German states after the end of the war. For decades, memory of these victims was only preserved by West German associations for Germans born in these territories and it mainly excluded the period from 1933 to 1945.

Remembrance

After the US-Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp American officers began investigations against the company in nearby Erfurt. Engineer Kurt Prüfer was arrested but released after two weeks. Subsequently Ludwig Topf, the company's proprietor, committed suicide at the end of May 1945, for fear of being arrested by U.S. investigators. In July Thuringia was handed over to the Soviet occupying forces. In March 1946, Soviet officers arrested for engineers of the company, Kurt Prüfer and Fritz Sancer among them. Kurt Prüfer died shortly thereafter, the others were sentenced in Moscow to twenty-five years in a penal colony. The company was expropriated in 1947 and became part of a Publicly Owned Operation (VEB). In the GDR, only the company's former owners were deemed responsible, the role of the other employees remained a taboo topic. After reunification the company was privatized in 1993 but went bankrupt in 1996. The company premises remained unused and slowly fell into decay.
In 2001 parts of the premises were occupied by squatters. They used the former plumbing building as a cultural centre and organised events and guided tours about Topf & Söhne and National Socialism.
In 2007, an investor purchased the premises. In 2009, he vacated the site, after talks between the city administration and the occupants about an alternative site ended without success. The former administration building was renovated from 2008 on, the city opened it in 2011 as »Memorial site Topf & Söhne – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens«. A permanent exhibition informs on the company's involvement in the Holocaust. The outdoor exhibition shows a walkable model of the company's premises in the years 1944/45. At the newly constructed retail park, stelea inform about the production of the concentration camp ovens and the ventilation technologies.

Erfurt, 2012, The exhibition »Technicians of the ›Endlösung‹« in the historical hallway, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Boris Hajduković

Erfurt, 2011, Former workplace of furnace construction engineer Kurt Prüfer, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Kastner Pichler Architekten, Köln

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition on the comlicity of Topf & Söhne in the Holocaust, changing special exhibitions, guided tours and educational activities upon application, events program

Open

Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact

http://www.topfundsoehne.de

topfundsoehne@erfurt.de

+49 (0)361 655 168 1

Sorbenweg 7
99099 Erfurt

Erfurt, 2012, Ash urns from the crematorium of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Kastner Pichler Architekten, Köln

Erfurt, 1935, Advertisement with the company's premises, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne

Erfurt, 2011, Memorial site Topf & Söhne. The former company's slogan reads: »Always happy to be at your service«, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Kastner Pichler Architekten, Köln

Erfurt, 2011, The former administration building of J. A. Topf & Söhne, Sammlung Erinnerungsort Topf & Söhne, Kastner Pichler Architekten, Köln

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