In his patent application, he explains:
With the unavoidably high mortality rate in the assembly camps that have been set up in the occupied Eastern lands in response to the war and its consequences, it is not possible to bury the large number of inmates who die. This is partly due to lack of space and manpower, and partly a result of the clear risk posed to the immediate and wider environment by burial of the dead, many of whom succumbed to infectious diseases. It is therefore necessary to dispose of the bodies, quickly, safely and hygienically by means of cremation.86
Given the time-sensitive situation, the company had to act fast when applying for the patent, he informed the Topf brothers in his memo, otherwise they risked being overtaken by a rival competitor.
Later Sander would weakly justify his behaviour by claiming he was a ‘German engineer’, much like an engineer working in aircraft construction, who felt obliged to use his knowledge ‘in order to help Hitler’s Germany to victory, even if that resulted in the destruction of human life’.87
The fact was, however, that Sander was no Nazi. He was never recorded as expressing any anti-Semitic sentiments. Nor did he need to advance his career; he had risen as high as he could expect to and was close to retirement age. Sander’s motives were driven by pure jealousy and dislike of Kurt Prüfer.
In response, Prüfer understood immediately that Sander was trying to muscle in on an area of work he had claimed as his own. He tells Sander that his design will not work as – in his own vast experience – scorched body parts stick to even steeply sloping surfaces. Sander, however, tells the Topf brothers that this can be easily rectified by adding openings where people outside can give the ‘cremation objects’ a push.
A cremation expert analysed Sander’s design in 1985 and concluded that it was viable and could have cremated 1,200 bodies per day, but, ultimately, the patent was not granted and the ‘Corpse Incineration Oven for Mass Operation’ was never built. In principle, however, it had the full backing of the Topf brothers who initialled Sander’s memo, apparently unperturbed by its contents, and requested a sketch of the new design.
The fact that Sander’s gruesome invention did not come to fruition, did not deter Prüfer. Within six months he had quickly produced an equally heinous innovation: a ‘Ring Cremation Oven’, based on technology already in use for firing bricks.
On 29 January 1943 Prüfer visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and agreed with the chief of construction, Karl Bischoff, that the SS should plan a sixth crematorium, which was originally intended to be an above-ground ‘open crematorium chamber’ and later amended to an underground chamber (presumably to protect it from Allied airstrikes and reconnaissance flights) In a follow-up letter on 5 February Prüfer writes: ‘The quotation for the large ring cremation oven will be with you by next Tuesday at the latest. If you wish to go ahead with this, we would request that you place the order as soon as possible.’
Prüfer’s exact design is no longer in existence, but it appears to have been based on industrial ring ovens which operated a system of continuous combustion through one central source of fuel – reducing costs by up to 70 per cent. Using this system, Prüfer’s oven, which his quote revealed to be twice as big and twice as expensive as an eight-muffle oven, would add coal from above, which would then land directly on piles of burning corpses.
In his trial after the war, Rudolf Höss confirmed that such a system was planned ‘in the form of an enormous underground brick factory with a ring oven’. Although Prüfer’s design was accepted, like Sander’s it was never built. Initial plans to build in 1943 were put on hold as Ludwig Topf explained to the SS that the company was at full capacity, and could not take any additional orders for ovens. When the project was reconsidered in 1944, Höss claimed that the Allied advance meant the Nazi genocide had run out of time.
From the very beginning Topf and Sons was involved in helping the SS develop new means of disposing of its victims – but its complicity in the Holocaust went much further. From 1940 onwards, Topf and Sons took part in discussions and decisions about ventilation systems for the crematoria – and by 1943 it was developing ventilation technology for the gas chambers. In essence, Topf and Sons was devising more efficient ways of murdering people.
The person responsible for developing ventilation technology was 40-year-old Karl Schultze who originally worked in Department D, but was promoted in 1941 to run a department of his own, Department B, which developed industrial inward and outward ventilation systems, hot-air heating systems and dust-extraction systems. Schultze, who was married with no children, had joined the company in 1928 after being educated at technical college. Like Prüfer, he was not made an authorised company representative, so his business deals had to be approved by Fritz Sander or Paul Erdmann.
Between December 1940 and September 1941, Schultze submitted four designs for a ventilation system for Crematorium I at Auschwitz. In February 1941, the SS had bought and installed a temporary ventilation system from the Cologne-based Frederick Boos company, which was responsible for the heating systems in the camp. This, however, was deemed unsatisfactory, and hindered the Gestapo in their efforts to murder people in the room next door. ‘The current system has become useless’, complained the Head of the Political Department and Criminal Secretary, Maximilian Grabner, on 7 June 1941. Grabner, who was the second most powerful person in the camp after Rudolf Höss, went on to explain that ‘When the second oven is in use – as is now the case on an almost daily basis – the morgue ventilation hatch has to be closed, as otherwise the hot air from the flue gets in, and this is the very opposite of the ventilation effect required.’ Despite this, the temporary system remained in place, and the system supplied by Topf in April 1942 was not installed.
The greatest concern to the SS was the amount of time it took to decontaminate a room or building after a gassing had taken place – up to two days for the entire building in the case of the original gassings that were carried out in the Auschwitz cellars. To overcome this, Prüfer and Schultze were involved from the earliest stages in the planning for building Crematoria II to V. As Annegret Schüle charts in her book, there has been disagreement between historians about exactly when the SS decided to add gas chambers to each crematorium, but by the time of their completion in March 1943 each had a gas chamber attached to it.
Topf and Sons must have known about these plans no later than mid-1942, as Kurt Prüfer and the SS discussed plans for a ventilation system for Crematoria II and III at their meeting on site in August of that year. The minutes of the meeting specifically note that the construction of Crematorium II would have an inward and outward ventilation system – something that would only be necessary if there was a gas chamber. On 27 November 1942, SS Untersturmführer Wolter, a structural engineer at Auschwitz, notes that he has spoken to Prüfer on the phone in relation to Crematorium II, and that Prüfer had said that ‘the company would have a fitter available in about a week’s time to install the outward ventilation system once the ceilings of the special cellar are ready’. In SS terminology a ‘special cellar’ was a gas chamber. The SS later ordered two ventilation systems for Crematoria IV and V, where gas chambers had not originally been planned, but were added later. Karl Schultze prepared a quotation for each order in June 1943, and the ventilations systems were dispatched in December that year (though never installed in the case of Crematorium IV).
As the constant changes in plans for the camp show, Auschwitz-Birkenau was now being promoted at the highest levels of the Nazi regime as a ‘showcase’ elimination and work camp, and its development was progressing under the watchful eye of Heinrich Himmler himself. For the SS this added an extra pressure to a process that was often chaotic and prone to delays and breakdowns. Their response was to work ever more closely with Topf and Sons, consulting them in areas of work where the company had no expertise, and blaming them when things went wrong.
In December 1942, the SS construction unit at Auschwitz informed Topf and Sons that Himmler ha
d personally set new deadlines for the completion of the crematorium. These deadlines were a month earlier than those the SS at the camp had originally suggested, but when the SS at Auschwitz replied to their masters in Berlin to say that the deadlines were impossible and could not be met, Hans Kammler agreed to a postponement only on the basis that he received weekly progress reports, and that every effort was made to meet the original deadline.
In January 1943, the new deadlines were agreed upon with Prüfer, giving the company two additional weeks to work on Crematorium II and an extra month for Crematorium IV. The reliability of Topf and Sons, and the efforts of all concerned to work under ‘extreme pressure’ was something the SS didn’t hesitate to show off about in their self-serving reports to their superiors. They had deployed all labourers and ‘worked around the clock’ in sub-zero temperatures, and despite many difficulties, to complete Crematorium II, SS Hauptsturmführer Bischoff wrote to Kammler in Berlin – forwarding a report from Prüfer which stated that ‘the inspection of the above-mentioned crematorium, complete with its internal fittings, showed that despite the scale of the task and the difficulties caused by bad weather and problems acquiring materials, the work was performed very quickly’. Bischoff concluded his report to Kammler by praising Prüfer, and informing the SS in Berlin that the ovens had been fired up in Prüfer’s presence ‘and are working perfectly’.
Despite Bischoff stressing that work on the crematorium was to be given ‘the absolute top priority’, with two teams of labourers working in shifts if necessary, the project was beset by problems caused by snow and permafrost, a severe shortage of materials and labourers being transferred to other work. To rectify this, the SS sent a telegram to Topf and Sons to demand that Prüfer work on site for at least two to three days per week as part of the construction management unit. By now, however, Topf and Sons, and Prüfer in particular, knew their power. The company replied by post, rather than by telegram, and stated that of course Prüfer would be available to frequently inspect the work at Auschwitz. This rather vague and leisurely reply showed that the company were not afraid of the SS, nor did they have any inclination to sacrifice other work or priorities to meet the demands from Auschwitz.
In January 1943, much anguished communication ensued over a missing blower for the ventilation system for the gas chamber, followed by a letter from Bischoff to Hans Kammler, blaming Topf and Sons for delays. The report of 12 February 1943 states: ‘Problems with the company Topf and Sons of Erfurt … The many different promises made by this company, and their failure to deliver as agreed, are leading to serious problems.’ Bischoff asks Kammler to respond by issuing ‘the firmest possible warning’.
There was no doubt that Topf and Sons was now the SS’s partner of choice in their extermination program, and that knowledge of this was widespread in the company with memos about discussion over ventilation for the ‘gas cellars’ passing through the hands of typists and secretaries, the administration office and company secretary Max Machemehl, operations director Gustav Braun, the purchasing manager as well as the engineers, and finally the company directors, Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang Topf, who were ultimately responsible for every decision.
In February 1943, Topf and Sons was asked to source ‘gas analyses’ for the new crematoria that would measure the level of gas in the atmosphere and make sure no threat was posed to SS men working on site. Although this was an area where Topf and Sons had no experience, they obligingly tried to find a supplier, replying that ‘two weeks ago we contacted five different firms about the display devices for cyanide residue that you need’. When interrogated in Moscow in 1948, Prüfer confirmed that he understood perfectly well what these devices were needed for. ‘The head of SS construction management at the camp, Bishcoff, informed me that prisoners were being killed in these gas chambers using cyanide fumes, and it was at his request that I made contact with a number of German companies with a view to procuring the gas analysers for the gas chambers.’88
In addition to their existing orders, Topf and Sons had won the contract to supply the ovens for Crematorium III and a ventilation system for the gas chamber, an additional waste incinerator for Crematorium II, two lorries for ash transportation and a fumigator to disinfect prisoners’ clothes. When the lifts, supplied by the Huta company, used to move the bodies up from the gas chambers to the ovens proved unsatisfactory, Kurt Prüfer was asked to source a temporary replacement for Crematorium II and ‘2x electrical corpse lifts’ for permanent use in both crematoria. Prüfer did this by sourcing the order from the Gustav Linse Specialist Lift Company, a close neighbour to Topf and Sons in Erfurt that is still in operation today. The Linse lift was installed in Crematorium II by Topf fitter Heinrich Messing in May 1943, and Messing also repaired the lift in Crematorium II. The SS also ordered two new electrical lifts from Topf and Sons at ten times the price of the Linse lift.
Although he had stepped in to work on the ‘corpse lift’, Heinrich Messing was actually a ventilation fitter, and, as opposed to Prüfer’s short visits, he was one of four Topf and Sons’ fitters who spent a great deal of time at Auschwitz between 1942 and 1943. Messing was an Erfurt native, and still a relatively young man in his early forties during his time at Auschwitz. The seventh son of a shoemaker, Messing followed his oldest brother, Wilhelm, into a plumbing apprenticeship, and both became active members of the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD, and the Rote Hilfe Deutschlands, a charitable organisation that supported communist political prisoners. In 1933, during the first weeks of Hitler’s reign, Wilhelm Messing was arrested and sentenced to two years imprisonment for ‘preparation for high treason’. On 28 February 1933, Heinrich Messing was arrested on the same charge and sent to Erfurt’s first temporary concentration camp at 18 Feldstrasse. Three other communist comrades, Bernhard Bredehorn, Friedrich Schiller and Hermann Kellerman were arrested in the same series of raids – but the four men were to meet again later, in the 1930s, all as employees of Topf and Sons.
It seems remarkable, and striking, that these four hardened communists who had between them been charged of the highest crimes of treason, and suffered long periods of imprisonment and unemployment, should all find employment in a company that was manufacturing technology for the SS – as well as aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe.
Heinrich Messing, now a married man with three children, took up his role as a travelling fitter at Topf on 13 August 1934; Schiller joined two years later as boilermaker in August 1936 and Bredehorn followed a month later in September as a welder. Kellermann was the last to join the company, taking up a position as a metalworker in May 1939. The four men would later claim they had been key members of the communist underground, using Messing’s work as a travelling fitter to spread the word about new policies and bringing back new literature. Regardless of how successful their underground operations were, the men would always vouch for each other, with Schiller warning Messing to disappear to avoid interrogation by Soviet officers in 1946. The quartet provided each other with references during the years of East Germany’s communist regime, with Schiller calling Messing a ‘sincere fighter’ and a ‘role model’ in communist activities.
The presence of active communists at Topf and Sons is a puzzling anomaly. Just as Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang Topf were well aware of their political affiliations (how could they not be when, for example, Bernhard Bredehorn was even arrested and held in custody for ‘small tasks undertaken for the left’ as late as November 1944) so too were these supposedly underground communist fighters aware of the true nature of the work going on at Topf and Sons. As Annegret Schüle summarises: ‘SS men were forever coming and going at Topf, the mobile ovens were made on the premises and were returned there for repair, and the customer addresses for deliveries were not a secret.’ Bernard Bredehorn, she adds, was a welder who attached the brackets to the oven doors.89
The work of the Topf and Sons fitters at Auschwitz was crucial, not only to the installation of the crematoria and gas chambers – but also to T
opf’s relationship with the SS.
Between January and June 1943, Heinrich Messing lived and worked at the camp installing the ventilation system for Crematorium II, as well as an air fan and engines for the ovens in Crematoria II and III, and ventilation equipment for the gas chambers.
His Topf colleagues, Wilhelm Koch and Martin Holick, were installing the three-muffle ovens in Crematorium II from September 1942 onwards. Koch spent a total of nine months at Auschwitz, during which time he installed the waste incinerator in Crematorium III and the ovens in Crematoria IV and V. Martin Holick spent a year at Auschwitz, completing the construction of the ovens in Crematorium II, and the installation of the fumigators in the ‘sauna’. A fourth fitter, Arnold Seyffarth, was dispatched to complete the ovens in Crematorium III, and stayed for several months.
These four men enjoyed a high status in the company, and in the camp. Although they may have exercised no control over their assignment, none of them used their advantageous position within the company to sabotage projects or oppose their work. They lived in comfortable SS accommodation during their stay, and were some of the 1,000 civilian workers on site who were cut off from the outside world during the typhus epidemic that occurred in the last months of 1942. ‘The mass extermination carried out at Auschwitz-Birkenau cannot have escaped their notice,’ Annegret Schüle writes. ‘The flames from the incineration of tens of thousands of piled-up corpses were visible for miles around.’90
Kurt Prüfer, Karl Schultze and the Topf fitters were the men on the ground, and on 5 March 1943, the day finally came to try out the new ovens for Crematorium II. As predicted, the construction unit was running one month behind schedule, and that morning prisoners in the special unit (responsible for operating the crematoria and gas chambers) had been instructed by Prüfer to start heating the ovens early so that they could be operating at maximum efficiency later in the day. At about 4 p.m., a delegation of senior SS officers from Berlin, members of the political department and representatives from Topf and Sons drove up to the crematorium and took their places as the demonstration began.
Architects of Death Page 14