Architects of Death

by Karen Bartlett

  Despite describing the origin of Topf and Sons’ relationship with Buchenwald as a public service, undertaken for health and safety purposes, the level of complicity between the company and the SS could not be denied. From 1940 onwards, Topf and Sons supplied the camp with the urns, urn lids, urn stamps and firebricks used in civil cremation (although they understood that these stamps and firebricks were a lie and a sham).

  Still keen to conceal the true nature of life and death in the concentration camps, the SS ordered thousands of urns, stamps and firebricks to maintain the illusion that they were following the strictures of the 1934 Cremation Act which stipulated that ‘the ashes of every corpse must be kept in an officially sealed container and laid to rest in an urn grove, urn plot or a grave’. As Topf and Sons were well aware, identifying individual ashes was impossible when multiple bodies were incinerated at one time in double-muffle ovens. Maintaining the façade, however, prisoners from Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz would later describe how they assisted the SS in scooping up random dirt and ash, before shovelling it into individual capsules which could then be sealed, tagged and sent – for a fee – to the families of victims. (This ‘service’ was never offered to Jewish families.) Lilly Kopecky, a Slovak Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz explained: ‘When German non-Jews died, their families were sent notice of their deaths along with a letter giving them the opportunity to purchase an urn containing the ashes of their loved ones.’ Lilly’s job was to accompany an SS officer, once a week, into the Auschwitz crematorium where she would then ‘sweep up all the dirt I could find and dump it into the urns’. The SS officer would then seal each urn, before Lilly completed the process. ‘I had a set of stamps on my desk with which I put three lines on the urn lids, one for date of birth and one for date of death.’43 In 1997, a renovation of the attics at Buchenwald revealed hundreds of ash capsules, some empty and some filled – but all supplied by Topf and Sons.

  The outbreak of war saw an influx of new prisoners to Buchenwald – including the arrival of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war between September 1941 and summer 1942. During this time the camp became a killing field, with 8,000 former Soviet soldiers and civilians shot dead in stables that had been made to look like a centre for medical check-ups. The prisoners would be led in to a room one by one and instructed to line up against a wooden ruler, which they were told would be used to measure their height. Unbeknownst to them, a member of the SS was standing behind them, concealed in a special cupboard, and would then shoot them in the back of the head through a slit in the ruler.

  Once again this mass murder placed an unprecedented strain on the camp’s abilities to dispose of so many bodies, and a double-muffle mobile oven from Topf and Sons was brought back into commission to assist with the gruesome task.

  One prisoner, Max Girndt, described how the machine was stuffed with bodies in quick succession ‘one body after another at intervals of just a few minutes. Just as in Nero’s day, the burning was done publicly under a blue sky in bright sunshine for all the prisoners to see.’44 He added grimly that ‘since it was hot and there wasn’t any wind, the ash of our cremated comrades fell as a shower of fine dust across the whole camp, even into the food bowls and pots in the barracks and the cauldrons in the canteen.’ Girndt said the ‘specialists’ who operated the oven boasted that there were up to 200 such machines operating across Germany and the occupied territories.

  To cope with the overload, work began to enlarge the Buchenwald crematoria – with two triple-muffle ovens designed by Kurt Prüfer. Later, Topf and Sons would name them the ‘Auschwitz model’, but they were put into operation at Buchenwald first.

  One former prisoner, Hans Neuport, worked on the building of the enlarged crematorium at Buchenwald and vividly recalled the role Topf and Sons played in its creation.

  When special orders were issued we had to leave the site for a while. Special orders were issued when newly arrived prisoners were to be liquidated in the crematorium at once … for the most part these pitiable victims were Russian PoWs, officers and civilian … I saw these proceedings with my own eyes from a hiding place … I heard several earth-shattering screams one after another, so I looked through a gap in the wooden boarding and saw a Russian, still in his uniform, tied to one of the sliding shelves used with the crematorium chamber and pushed into the oven while he was still alive. His dying screams were the most horrific thing I ever heard in my life.45

  This act was performed by three criminal prisoners employed in the crematorium and witnessed by a 69-year-old oven fitter from Topf and Sons named Martin Holick, who was ‘completely shattered by what he had seen’, according to Neuport. Holick was a fitter in Kurt Prüfer’s department and later spent a year working on site at the concentration camp in Birkenau after building the first of the two three-muffle ovens at Buchenwald. Hans Neuport’s devastating account vividly reconstructs the close working relationships Topf employees struck up with other workers in concentration camps – and how intimately they were involved with the most heinous of crimes.

  For Kurt Prüfer, however, their work had been a triumph. In December 1941, he sent the following request for a bonus:

  Erfurt, 6 December 1941

  To Herr Ludwig and Herr Ernst Wolfgang Topf

  Dear Messrs Topf,

  As you know, I have worked up the three-muffle cremation furnace into an eight-muffle cremation furnace, mostly in my free time at home.

  These furnace designs are also [indecipherable] and may I assume that you will grant me a bonus for the work I have done.

  Heil Hitler!

  Kurt Prüfer46

  Now that the new three-muffle ovens at Buchenwald had been a great success – he followed up in November 1942 with a handwritten note to the Topf brothers demanding the bonus he had been promised.

  Erfurt, 15 November 1942

  To Herr E. and Herr L. Topf

  Dear Herr E and Herr L Topf,

  Following the discussion that took place between us last year, you agreed to make me a special payment for the new three-muffle cremation furnaces, to be paid as soon as they had been confirmed to be working perfectly.

  The two Topf three-muffle cremation furnaces were put into operation in the Buchenwald crematorium twelve and six weeks ago, respectively.

  The first furnace has already been used for a large number of cremations, the functioning of the furnace and hence the new design have been shown to work perfectly. The furnaces heat [to a temperature] a third higher than was demanded of me.

  So far, eight three-muffle cremation furnaces have been completed and/or are currently being built. A further six are in progress. I therefore request that you kindly pay me the remuneration promised to me as soon as possible.

  Your humble,

  Kurt Prüfer47

  The Topf brothers rewarded Prüfer’s achievement with a bonus of 450 RM.

  In December 1941, Karl Koch was accused of corruption and relieved of his positon at Buchenwald. He was replaced as camp commandant by Hermann Pister, who was commended by his superiors for his smooth running of the camp as a commercial operation.

  ‘On 19 January 1942 he was given the camp, whose previous commander had made a complete mess of it,’ concentration camp inspector Richard Glucks wrote. ‘With great energy, never ebbing diligence and through his own example, he turned Buchenwald into a model camp.’48

  After the outbreak of war the numbers of prisoners in Buchenwald rose dramatically: up to 20,000 in August 1943, 37,000 in December 1943, 82,000 by August 1944 and 110,000 in January 1945. By January 1945, Buchenwald consisted not only of the main camp, but also of eighty-seven satellite camps and places of work for inmates including the Gustloff II works next to the barracks, the nearby DAW plant that made carbines and the Mittelbau Dora works where prisoners laboured making V2 rockets.

  In total, 238,980 men were committed to Buchenwald and 34,375 died there. Of the 27,000 women sent to sub-camps, 335 died. A further 8,000 Soviet prisoners were shot by the S
S, and 1,100 hanged from hooks in the cellar of the crematorium. More than 12,000 people perished on the death marches and during transportation to other camps at the end of the war – bringing the final total for deaths attributable to Buchenwald up to approximately 56,000.

  For many years, Goethe’s oak remained the only tree standing in the camp at Buchenwald, casting its shade over the horrors committed there. When it was finally felled by an Allied bombing raid in August 1944, SS officers surrounded its smouldering trunk, distraught that they had been unable to save it. Later, its truncated remnants would come to symbolise Germany’s ruin – and its people’s journey from Goethe to the Holocaust.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ALWAYS AT YOUR SERVICE

  On 6 December 1943, Kurt Prüfer received an award for twenty-five years employment at Topf and Sons. As the somewhat curt language in the newspaper advert demonstrated, it was an honour grudgingly bestowed. Normally, German employees of longstanding could expect flowery, hyperbolic language and warm sentiments on such occasions. Topf and Sons’ employees also sometimes received thoughtful letters and cards from the Topf brothers, commiserating on the death of a parent, wishing a spouse a speedy recovery, celebrating the birth of a baby. To commemorate Prüfer’s twenty-five years at the company, he, too, received such a letter:

  Erfurt, 6 December 1943

  Dear Herr Prüfer,

  It gives us great pleasure to be able to congratulate you today on your twenty-fifth anniversary with us.

  In the last fifteen years you have been working with a great deal of autonomy in the cremation furnace division, which was founded before the World War of 1914–1918, and it is with both pride and satisfaction that we observe that your interest in crematorium construction is matched only by your success in it.

  In addition, you took on the unpaid role of factory obmann [representative] for a time, and are still an active member of the consultative council. All this effort you devote to maintaining the well-being of the company of J. A. Topf and Sons gives us all the more reason to express our thanks and appreciation to you on your 25-year anniversary.

  Hoping that many more years of fruitful labour will continue to bind you to us personally, we greet you with.

  Heil Hitler!49

  Notably, this letter thanks him ‘with pride and satisfaction’ for having worked ‘with great independence’ in the crematorium construction department for the last fifteen years, and for dedicating himself to crematorium construction with ‘both interest and success’. At the request of Ludwig Topf, the Erfurt Economic Chamber presented Prüfer with an award, and both the Thüringer Gauzeitung and the Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung were asked to carry reports.

  Yet this polite and formal letter contains none of the camaraderie or friendly backslapping that Prüfer must have hoped for. Much as he had done when demanding a pay rise or increased commission, Prüfer demanded recognition for his ‘service’ to the company, and, as usual, he received it, though never in a way that would prove emotionally satisfying. Prüfer would be incensed, like an insecure lover, at these perceived slights. He would repeatedly demand to know the depth of the Topf brothers’ esteem for him, and always find their answers hollow.

  The young Kurt Prüfer, who had been so keen to join the prestigious company Topf and Sons, had turned into a resentful man. A man who took dozens of sick days, formally requested to leave work ten minutes early and billed for the expense of snagging his suit jacket on a filing cabinet. Now, in the course of his four short years of association with the SS, he had mutated into something else: a monster. Prüfer had become a man who would not flinch when faced with heinous crimes; a man who would stand with a watch beside the ovens of Auschwitz like the devil’s own helper.

  Even in reading decades-old administration files, Prüfer’s difficult personality, and the dislike and distrust between Prüfer and the Topf brothers, leap from the pages.

  In July 1940, the Topfs received the most extraordinary call from one of Prüfer’s neighbours, which Ernst Wolfgang carefully documents in a memo. On 6 July, a retired post office worker named Herr Kleinhans rang Topf and Sons and explained that: ‘The Prüfers are our neighbours (worst luck) – they are utterly intolerable people. Frau Prüfer is hysterical and certifiable, and Herr Prüfer just falls out with everyone.’

  It seemed that the Kleinhans and the Prüfers quarrelled often; Frau Prüfer accused Frau Kleinhans of gossiping with the Prüfers’ maid. The Prüfers’ maid was the niece of the Kleinhans’ maid, Frau Daniel, whose husband also worked at Topf and Sons (it was a small world). This had led Kurt Prüfer to confront Herr Daniel, at work where he insulted Daniel’s wife by claiming that she was ‘un-German’.

  ‘After Herr Kleinhans, full of outrage, had poured this all out like a waterfall, I asked what it all had to do with the Topf company,’ Ernst Wolfgang writes. Kleinhans responded by saying that the company should ensure that Prüfer had no contact with Herr Daniel at work and take measures to stop Prüfer from ‘exerting any influence over him [Herr Daniel] on company premises’.

  With some satisfaction, Ernst Wolfgang noted: ‘Herr Kleinhans’s starting point here was that Prüfer is abusing his position in the company!’ Rather than dismissing the call as a piece of overheated nonsense, Topf told Kleinhans that he would make a note of the call and look into the matter. For Ernst Wolfgang Topf, no piece of office gossip was too trivial to meddle in, and, usually, he loved to think the worst of his employees – and Kurt Prüfer in particular.50

  Yet, on one crucial occasion, the Topf company was offered the chance to rid themselves of Kurt Prüfer: on 28 February 1941, he resigned.

  Prüfer’s main complaint was, as ever, money. Between November 1939 and February 1941, a period when Topf and Sons were supplying the SS, Prüfer’s salary was 360 RM per month, with 2 per cent commission on the gross profit of his sales. On average this commission amounted to 66 RM per month, bringing his total pay to 426 RM. In comparison, Prüfer’s colleague Paul Erdmann, who had worked longer for Topf and Sons, but who had less technical expertise, earned 900 RM per month.

  In his resignation letter, Prüfer claimed to be in dire financial straits, and had been reportedly raiding his savings to make ends meet in order to look after his sick wife. The Topf brothers had promised to increase his salary at the time that they took over the company, Prüfer states, yet ‘so far this has only happened to a very small degree’.51 Although Prüfer had been promoted to the role of senior engineer in December 1935, he was given only a 10 per cent pay rise at the end of 1936, from then on he had been forced to actively request any further pay increases, which were granted rather grudgingly.

  In 1937, the company argued with Prüfer over his sales calculations, pointing out that in four years his work in crematorium construction had not brought in any net profit. When Prüfer again requested a pay rise of 20 RM per month in June 1938, the company agreed to pay two-thirds straightaway, but the remaining third only at the end of the year. Prüfer asserted that he no longer wanted to be a ‘“supplicant” begging for money’, so he used his resignation letter as an opportunity to remind the Topf brothers that ‘I have my pride, after all’. He threatened to take up a job with another company.

  The explanation for Prüfer’s reward, or lack of it, lay less with his work, however, and more with his fraught relationship with Ernst Wolfgang Topf. After years of chilly formal relations, they had a serious falling out at Christmas 1939 over a dispute with a colleague in Prüfer’s department, Herr Van Der Loo. The man had been summarily dismissed after allegedly insulting the company management, but, in an act of what Ernst Wolfgang Topf would term ‘mutiny’, Prüfer stuck up for his colleague, thus ensuring that he would never be deemed ‘worthy’ of legally representing the company as Fritz Sander and Paul Erdmann were able to do.

  In two long and emotional memos, Ernst Wolfgang Topf lays out the full details of the complaint, and his frustration with Prüfer, who accused the Topf brother of acting ‘rashly’ in di
smissing his friend. Enraged, Ernst Wolfgang responded that Prüfer ‘would never be able to become someone who planned and acted in the best interests of the company’.52

  Given this exchange of hostility, the Topf brothers might have been expected to jump at the chance to get rid of Prüfer. Not only was he a demanding ‘troublemaker’, running a seemingly unprofitable department that was only a tiny offshoot of the main part of the Topf and Sons’ business, but the company itself was facing liquidity problems. The war had led to a shortage of materials, which made it impossible to complete orders, added to which some clients were increasingly late in paying their bills. As a result, Topf and Sons was facing mounting debts with Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank and could justifiably refuse demands for a pay rise. In negotiations with Prüfer, Topf and Sons should have held the upper hand – due to rules regulating the war economy, employees could not change jobs at will; a company had to approve an employee’s request to leave – and Topf and Sons appeared to have every reason to turn down Prüfer’s demands for more money, and accept his resignation.

  Yet only a day after receiving his letter, the Topf brothers wrote back to Prüfer to tell him that they would not be accepting his resignation. ‘You know better than anyone that you are working on essential tasks,’ the brothers wrote, adding that, while normally the company would not consider a request for a pay rise, under these ‘particular circumstances’ it would make an exception. With mediation from the Trustee of Labour, the Topfs agree to pay Prüfer a fixed rate of 450 RM per month, with no added commission, bringing him an extra 24 RM per month. (This offer still amounted to less than half of what Paul Erdmann was earning.) A company restructuring also worked in Prüfer’s favour; his Department D became a separate department for Cremation and Waste Incinerator ovens.