Architects of Death

by Karen Bartlett

  In summary, Röder is convinced that he and every other production engineer could only survive in the operations division shadow-like, as a subpar employee. Braun simply refused to tolerate those around him; he always wanted to make all of the decisions and do everything himself, right down to the smallest detail, it just wasn’t possible for any equivalent specialist to exist alongside him. We have already previously experienced this. Our response to all this is that Braun’s nature and temperament – and also his character – have been well known to us for a long time.

  On 2 March 1943 things appear to come to a head between Ernst Wolfgang Topf and Gustav Braun, when Topf openly confronts Braun – this time in a dispute over a new roof for the plumbing workshop yard.

  FILE NOTE

  By Herr E W Topf

  For the Braun personnel file

  2.3.1943

  SECRET

  The statement I made to Herr Braun today:

  I told Herr Braun that open enmity towards him seemed to me to be the simpler and better course, and that he should assume me to be his declared enemy. This was the result of the last few weeks, in which he has indulged in his scheming to the point where I am just sick of it.

  The events leading up to my declaration this lunchtime (to which I added, that he was a devil and his behaviour correspondingly devilish – something I totally stand by), were as follows…

  Topf then details the nature of the disagreement, which is over the length of the new roof – and whether workers should be deployed to work on that, rather than building a new wall. Braun, states that he has already called off the work on the wall. ‘Braun responded to my astonishment as follows: “I called it off, because nothing’s allowed to be done without the approval of Herr Ludwig Topf!” At this point all four of us fell silent. I was quite naturally astonished at this audacious and tactless manner and attempt to put me down.’

  The row continues, in detail, about whether or not to continue building work on the wall, before Ernst Wolfgang becomes almost incoherent with rage:

  Torpedoing the discussion we’d had on Wednesday … has to lead to open enmity between Braun and me. All the more so, given that he succeeded in playing my brother off against me, since the latter agreed to Braun’s project. Since Braun clearly felt quite comfortable doing this, I’ve made this tactic easier for him in future. So now we’ll see where this open feud between us will lead.

  Everyone knows that Braun is a chop-and-change kind of a person who never plans anything and who has wasted our company’s money over and over again these last five years with his impulsive actions. He has overturned everything from one day to the next: started this, abandoned that, never seen anything through. I have been on his case for months and that doesn’t suit him at all. He wants to see me off, and thinks he’ll find it easier dealing with the other one [Ludwig Topf], whom he can still impress with his fast and short-lived actions. At any rate, Braun reckons he hasn’t been rumbled yet. But he knows full well that I have seen through him and that I disapprove of his constant chopping and changing. This is why he has been avoiding me for weeks and hides behind my brother with evident malice. This shamelessness is intolerable.

  What I have always known about this man – that he doesn’t know how to behave in any way other than dishonestly and maliciously, and that he’s an appalling schemer – has now been definitively proven.128

  What this memo proves most clearly, perhaps, is not that Braun was an ‘appalling schemer’, but rather that both Topf brothers were afflicted with a strong strain of mental instability (especially bearing in mind that Ernst Wolfgang was the brother who did not commit suicide). Given such sentiments, however, one might wonder why Braun was not sacked. On the contrary, despite the mutual loathing that existed between Braun and Ernst Wolfgang, Braun’s position at Topf and Sons was firmly established, and, in 1943, he was awarded a large bonus of 800 RM. No matter how much Ernst Wolfgang fumed and vented, the reality was that workers as qualified as Braun were neither found nor replaced easily.

  Udo Braun remembers his father in these years as an old-fashioned, duty-bound patriarch – a man typical of the time:

  He got up very early to go to work. He drank his ersatz coffee standing up and didn’t sit down for breakfast. He took the same route to work every day and greatly enjoyed his walk. He wanted to be early and the first to arrive and the last to leave. [On one occasion] there was an air raid. I was tired and sat on the stairs. My father was already in the cellar with the rest of the family. So he came back up, picked me up and just shook his head. [On another occasion] I was crossing the street with him. In the middle of the street I stopped to look at some flowers and I got into trouble. When you are in the street you have to cross it!… There were rules and you had to obey them. He was an authority figure and very distant from me. I can’t say that we liked each other. There was a distance. That is what I meant when I said he was an ‘old’ father. He was too old for a cuddle. I needed that.

  Although Udo heard that his father told humorous family stories at work, at home he was serious and authoritarian.

  In the company of his colleagues he was very jovial. Apparently he used to tell stories about my little brother and I – like the one where my mother took me by the scruff of the neck and my little brother bit her on the bum. Despite being quite senior in the company, he was still a very humorous man – but I saw little evidence of his humour myself.

  Although Braun divorced his first wife and married Udo’s mother, his second marriage did not prove particularly happy either.

  ‘My mother was born in Oldenburg. My father was from Swabia. That’s a terrible combination if you ask me,’ Udo Braun says. ‘I don’t mean to sound horrible, but we used to joke “that’s the maximum sentence”.’

  Udo remembers his mother once asserting her authority over his father when he refused to build her a second potato rack for two different types of the vegetable. To get her own back his mother mashed the two types together into a horrible concoction, and served it up for dinner. As a result, Gustav Braun built his wife a second potato rack.

  In 1936, the family moved into a middle-class, three-bedroom apartment in a house on the street next to the Topf family park, where Udo Braun still lives. They were joined by Gustav Braun’s son from his first marriage, Hans, who the family believed needed some paternal discipline. Udo’s older brother joined the Waffen SS, and there is a photo of him in his uniform holding hands with little Udo. Despite his military position, Hans formed a secret romantic relationship with Ruth, the youngest daughter of the Jewish Stein family who lived in the same house.

  In another example of how the horrible work of Topf and Sons often went hand in hand with complex relationships with Jewish friends and family, both Ruth and her sister escaped from Nazi Germany, but their parents, Leopold and Elly Stein, were murdered at Auschwitz – possibly gassed, and almost certainly burned, in machinery Gustav Braun had knowingly overseen the construction of.

  All the evidence suggests that Gustav Braun knew all about the SS’s orders of ovens for the concentration camps, as well as the ventilation systems for the gas chambers.

  When the SS placed a new order for five three-muffle ovens which would be housed in Crematorium III at Birkenau in September 1942 (in addition to the five that had previously been ordered for Crematorium II), Kurt Prüfer discussed the details of the order with Gustav Braun.

  Later in February 1943, a typed note in the Topf and Sons file refers to a conversation between Karl Schultze and Fritz Sander who were discussing the missing blower for the ventilation system and ovens at Birkenau. In the note, Topf employees set aside SS convention and refer directly to the ‘gas cellars’. This note is then read and signed by purchasing manager Florentin Mock, Max Machemehl, Ludwig Topf – and Gustav Braun.

  When the war ended, Braun colluded with the Topf brothers and their senior employees, perpetuating the myth that all of the company’s business dealings with the SS had been ‘perfectly ordinar
y’. Braun also agreed with the assessment that Ludwig Topf’s suicide on the eve of his arrest had been due to overwork and ‘excessive stress’. Despite his second-hand role in developing the technology of the Holocaust, Braun was arrested alongside Prüfer, Sander and Schultze on 4 March 1946.

  As a nine-year-old, Udo Braun knew very little about his father’s work and the reasons behind his arrest:

  I was too young and too ‘far away’ from him. Shortly before he was arrested my mother said: ‘Dick [Braun’s nickname because he had spent time in America], why don’t you leave for a couple of days. I’ve got a funny feeling.’ Then my father shouted – I heard his voice from my room – ‘What do you want, you old hag, I was not even a member of the [Nazi] Party. I have not done anything. I am not leaving. I don’t even know why I should leave!’ My mother didn’t know either, but she had a feeling – and a couple of days later they came to take him away.

  When interrogated, Gustav Braun initially admitted to knowing about the deliveries to the concentration camps, before changing his story and denying he had any prior knowledge. During an interrogation on 12 February 1948, he is presented with a company diagram that shows him overseeing the production of machinery for the gas chambers and crematoria. In response, he states:

  The Topf company organigram you’re showing me wrongly lists my position as company production director. I only managed the company’s machine-engineering operations. Company departments such as production planning, assembly, standards, purchasing and dispatch did not report to me, and I had no connection with their work. Those departments reported directly to the company boss Ludwig Topf.

  The interrogator admonishes Braun: ‘It is a known fact that the Topf company assembly department built crematoria and gas chambers for use in concentration camps, and that the overall management of this work rested with you as operations director. Tell the truth!’

  Braun responds to the interrogators’ remarks by stating:

  I am not denying that the assembly department built and equipped crematoria and also equipped some gas chambers in German concentration camps over the course of a few years, especially from 1941 to 1943. However, as I have already stated, I was not involved in this work, as the assembly department did not fall under my competence.129

  In the face of his denial, the Soviet authorities decide to bring Kurt Prüfer and Gustav Braun together for an explosive face-to-face encounter on 25 February. It is clear from the meeting that the two men dislike one another – and Prüfer’s determination to point the finger of blame at Braun is also evidenced. According to the interrogation record, the meeting lasted an astonishing seven hours, beginning at 11:40 a.m. and finishing at 6.30 p.m. After noting that Prüfer and Braun have known each other in a professional capacity since 1936 and that ‘there had never been any personal bad feeling between them’, Kurt Prüfer gives a long account in which he firmly implicates Braun as a guilty party in all of Topf and Sons’s activities:

  Gustav Braun was operations director of Topf and Sons. He was a close confidant of the company owner, Ludwig Topf, and also reported to him directly. He was in charge of all of the company’s production activity.

  Sometimes Braun would deputise for Ludwig Topf, if he and his brother (and co-owner of the company), Ernst Topf, were out of town for longer periods.

  The following departments, offices and units came under Gustav Braun’s jurisdiction as operations director: production planning office, assembly department, standards office, dispatch department, materials warehouse and operations.

  Topf and Sons started carrying out construction and outfitting work for the concentration camp crematoria in 1940.

  The commissions for these works always came from the responsible organs of the SS, specifically, the SS construction management units at the Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps.

  These commissions were included in the company’s general production plan, which was drawn up by the planning office together with Gustav Braun.

  As operations director, Braun would work with the planning office to set the timescales for carrying the commissions out, depending on the company’s production capacity at the time. He therefore always knew which organs of the SS the company had accepted commissions from, and what kind of commissions these were. He arranged whatever was necessary to ensure the commissions were carried out on time.

  The Topf company carried out these commissions in the following way: the factory manufactured the required equipment, supplies and parts. These were then sent to the relevant concentration camp by the dispatch department. Foremen and workers were sent from the assembly department to carry out the construction and assembly work on site, i.e. in the concentration camps.

  These works were carried out with Braun’s knowledge and on his instructions – company operations, assembly and dispatch all reported to him directly.

  Normally, the Topf company only built cremation furnaces in the concentration camps I named above; it was only in Auschwitz that the company was involved in setting up four gas chambers alongside the crematorium.

  The following equipment and parts were manufactured in the Topf factory for the named crematoria: mountings, ventilators, steel floors for the cremation chambers. In addition, the company’s turning and metalworking workshops produced cast-iron doors for the cremation chambers/muffle furnaces, as well as iron grids.

  It was Braun who ensured the production of these parts and fittings, since he was directly responsible for the work done in the workshops.

  At this point, the interrogator turns his attention to Braun, and asks him to confirm his position at Topf and Sons, and whether he knew that the company was carrying out work in concentration camps on behalf of the SS. Braun replies:

  I found out about it, quite by chance, in 1940, in the course of a conversation with one of the Topf and Sons’s fitters. I’d asked him where he was working and he replied that he was building crematorium furnaces in the Auschwitz concentration camp, along with senior engineer Prüfer.

  The second time, I was informed by workers in the dispatch department, which was under my authority. It happened like this: one day in 1940, I went into the dispatch department and saw several SS men there. When I asked what they were doing there, the department manager responded that they were negotiating the dispatch of building materials to the Buchenwald concentration camp, since the company’s senior engineer, Prüfer, was building a cremation furnace there.

  In general terms, I knew as operations director that the company was building cremation furnaces, but I didn’t know where or for what purposes – I wasn’t interested in that.

  The interrogator then asks Prüfer to respond to Braun’s statement. Prüfer claims that Braun is lying:

  Braun’s claim that he didn’t know who Topf and Sons were building cremation furnaces for, and for what purpose does not correspond to the truth. As operations director, Braun was informed about the furnaces and almost all the construction work on the cremation furnaces in the concentration camps was carried out with his knowledge.

  As evidence for this I would like to make clear the following facts:

  1. In 1940–41, two cremation furnaces for the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps were assembled in the Topf and Sons factory, with Braun’s direct involvement. Braun personally designated a location in the factory where the furnaces were to be assembled, and assigned workers to carry out the assembly work on these furnaces. In addition, individual parts (metal racks) and fittings for these furnaces were manufactured in the factory workshops on Braun’s instructions. Once the furnaces had been assembled, they were delivered – on Braun’s instructions – one to the Dachau concentration camp, the other to the Mauthausen concentration camp.

  2. In autumn 1940 or early 1941 (I can’t remember the exact date), an SS man from Berlin visited the company to find out why one of the cremation furnaces was not yet ready and on schedule, as well as to inspect the assembly work on the furnace.
As a result of this visit, company boss Ludwig Topf called a special meeting to discuss the construction of this furnace. In addition to L Topf and the SS man, this meeting was attended by both Braun and myself, and Braun actively participated in the discussion of the deadlines for construction of this cremation furnace for the SS. On the instructions of the SS organs in Berlin, the company dispatched this furnace to the concentration camp at Mauthausen.

  3. As company operations director, Braun held a meeting with the factory foremen every morning after breakfast to review the work plans for the day. Thus Braun was not only aware that parts and equipment were being manufactured in the factory workshops for cremation furnaces that would be used in concentration camps, at these meetings he himself issued the instructions to the factory foremen to produce the necessary parts or equipment within the specified time frame.

  4. In autumn 1942, I personally agreed the delivery of an eight-muffle cremation furnace to the Auschwitz concentration camp for Crematoria IV and V – the parts of which had been manufactured for the Berlin SS organs and deposited in the factory warehouse. Braun assigned a worker to help me check that all parts for these furnaces were present; and he instructed the dispatch department to send these cremation furnaces to the Auschwitz concentration camp, which they did.

  5. In the course of 1941 and 1942 I approached Braun several times in his capacity as operations director with the request to send specialist workers to the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps so that they could carry out a series of works relating to the construction of the cremation furnaces in these camps. In each case, Braun approved the request and assigned me the required specialists for the work in Auschwitz and Buchenwald…