Ernst Wolfgang’s absence, however, made the leadership of the company uncertain – with many questioning whether he ever planned to return, especially after the announcement on 3 July that Erfurt would be transferred from American to Soviet control (as had already been agreed by the Allies in September 1944). On 18 July Kurt Schmidt wrote to Topf: ‘I don’t want to write down here the rumours that are circulating in Erfurt about your absence … but it would be very important for you to be here if you could.’
The change of control to a Soviet occupying force was one that Ernst Wolfgang had feared, and he had tried to seek assurances before his departure that it would not happen during his trip. However, it was clearly something beyond his control, and Topf now found himself in limbo – he had left Thuringia and was now unable to return. At the end of July Ernst Wolfgang was denied permission to re-enter the Soviet zone. He spent several months holed up in a schoolhouse near the border, while he petitioned to be allowed to return to Erfurt. When the new school year started in September, he moved in with his sister Hanna’s daughter near Kassel for six weeks – but his efforts to return to Topf and Sons remained fruitless. Although Ernst Wolfgang was doing everything in his power to facilitate a return to Erfurt, he also used this time to lay what he hoped were the foundations for a new Topf and Sons in West Germany – building on the company’s existing network of branch offices. While he continued to urge loyal employees like Kurt Schmidt to fight the expropriation of the company in Erfurt, he also urged them to join him in the west if those efforts were unsuccessful.
In the immediate aftermath of the handover from American rule, the Soviets wasted no time in assessing what role Topf and Sons could help play in rebuilding the Soviet economy – they also continued to make less overt enquiries into the links between Topf and Sons and the Nazi concentration camps.
In July 1945, the first month of Soviet rule, officers visited Topf and Sons on five occasions. Their first visit was to establish the size of the company, its production system and the raw materials that were being used. Officers were also keen to find out what had happened to an order for vertical kilns that had been destined for the Soviet Union, but which had been cancelled after the German invasion of 1941. They were mainly concerned with the food systems aspect of the business – including the possibility of producing field kitchens for the USSR (which was in fact the subject of a very large order in October that year).
At the same time Soviet officer Major Kriwenzow saw his visit to Topf and Sons as an opportunity to probe further about why Ludwig Topf had committed suicide. Kurt Schmidt, Gustav Braun and other representatives of the company’s management reassured Kriwenzow that Ludwig’s death had had nothing to do with the company’s relationship with the SS. ‘The radio advertisement about the cremation ovens at Buchenwald can be ruled out as a significant factor, since we all knew that these were a perfectly normal order,’ the Topf minutes state. The record goes on to claim, untruthfully, that these ovens were based on a 1911 design, and that they were the same as those supplied all over the world, including the USSR. The Topf management seem reassured that Major Kriwenzow shares their view: ‘Major Kriwenzow said that it was the view of the Russians that the supplying company could not be held in any way responsible for the cremation ovens, since so far as the company was concerned, it was a delivery just like any other.’ Kurt Schmidt agrees, adding that if one was to take the opposite view, and hold Topf responsible for the atrocities committed in the camps, you would also have to hold responsible every other tradesperson, including ‘table makers, stool makers and cupboard makers’.116
These two strands of argument – that ovens were identical to those supplied to civic crematorium and that Topf were just one of many ordinary suppliers to the camps, in the same vein as table makers or bread bakers – would prove enduring. In the case of the first argument, all those involved knew that it was an outright lie, yet on 26 October Ernst Wolfgang Topf granted his niece’s husband, attorney Ernst-Otto Keyser, the power to represent him – which he did, starting with the following letter to the Soviet authorities:
It is not as if they had been supplying mass-cremation equipment, it had just been the exact same cremation ovens supplied as standard to all crematoria; i.e. the ovens for the cremation of one body at a time. The company of J. A. Topf and Sons had no way of knowing, and still cannot think, that the individual cremation oven could be abused for the purpose of mass cremation.117
This letter reveals the depths of Ernst Wolfgang’s dishonesty, but it did nothing to stop the Soviets from taking control of Topf and Sons.
On 30 October, the Soviet military administration stated that all companies that were associated with the Nazi Party or the army were to be sequestered as ‘ownerless property’ and taken into the temporary administration of the state. Despite desperate last-minute wrangling by Kurt Schmidt, Topf and Sons was declared ownerless and taken into Soviet administration on 20 November.
Meanwhile, Ernst Wolfgang had discovered that he might be granted permission to return to Erfurt, but, fearing for his own safety no doubt, he decided ultimately to remain in the American zone, where he could urge his workers to rally behind him. In the month following the expropriation, Topf urged his loyal members of staff to support him in trying to get the company takeover reversed by writing letters stating that the Topf brothers had never been Nazis, and detailing their anti-Nazi activities. Some obliged, including the executive secretaries and long-serving administrative staff as well as Willy Wiemokli, the half-Jewish bookkeeper whose own father had been murdered at Auschwitz, and who was likely to have been incinerated in a Topf oven.
This effort was a failure, and the company remained in Soviet hands – with the first order of the Soviet administration requiring Kurt Schmidt to provide a full list of the company’s assets, bank accounts, machinery, raw materials and semi-finished goods. Despite claiming that Topf’s ‘perfectly ordinary’ supplies to concentration camps were identical to their deliveries of civic cremation ovens, the inventory carefully lists the patents applied for by Department D, including the ‘cremation oven with double-muffle’ registered on 6 December 1939 and developed for Buchenwald, as well as Fritz Sander’s hideous innovation for Birkenau, the ‘continuous operation corpse incineration oven for mass use’.
Whether they were aware of it or not, the net was now closing in on those engineers and managers who remained in Erfurt. Topf records reveal that on 11 October a Soviet officer had visited the company looking for Kurt Prüfer, but that he had not been on site that day. But this was only a temporary reprieve for Prüfer. Between the fourth and seventh of March 1946, Kurt Prüfer, Fritz Sander, Karl Schultze, Gustav Braun and Max Machemehl were arrested by the Soviet authorities.
Max Machemehl was released eighteen days later without charge. Topf fitter Wilhelm Koch was interrogated as a witness, as was Paul Erdmann and executive secretary Johanna Buschleb. Heinrich Messing went underground for two weeks after being tipped off about the Soviet investigation. The remaining men were sent to the headquarters of the Soviet Army Command in Berlin-Karlshorst, and were subjected to an initial round of interrogations. Fritz Sander had been through four interrogations when he died of heart failure on 26 March 1946, only three weeks after his arrest.
Kurt Prüfer, Karl Schultze and Gustav Braun were transferred to Butyrka prison in Moscow where, more than two years later, they were subjected to a second brief round of interrogations in February–March 1948. All three were then charged.
The indictment against the men began:
Deputy Minister for State Security of the USSR
General Lieutenant
15 March 1948
INDICTMENT
On 7 March 1946, the following employees of the German machine-engineering company Topf and Sons was arrested by the counter-espionage organs of the Ministry for State Security of the USSR on the basis of criminal responsibility for their participation in the horrific acts of the Hitlerites in the concentration cam
ps:
Prüfer, Kurt – manager of the cremation furnace planning and construction group
Schultze, Karl – manager of the ventilation construction group; and
Braun, Gustav – company operations director
The investigations established that:
Between 1940 and 1944 the machine-engineering company Topf and Sons maintained contacts with the organs of the SS, on whose behalf they built crematoria and gas chambers in the concentration camps, which were intended for the mass extermination of citizens of the USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia and other states under the yoke of fascist Germany.
The accused Prüfer, Kurt; Schultze, Karl; and Braun, Gustav were specialists in the field of the design and construction of cremation facilities and gas chambers for the company. Between 1940 and 1944 they built and equipped crematoria in the Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, Gross-Rosen and Auschwitz death camps.
In Auschwitz alone, in the Auschwitz main camp and Birkenau satellite camp, five powerful crematoria and four gas chambers, in which more than 4,500 wholly innocent people were murdered every day, were built and equipped by them.118
The charges against Prüfer were that he had led the negotiations with the SS, planned and overseen the construction and installation of the ovens, and taken the initiative to develop and improve existing designs.
The accused Prüfer represented the company of Topf and Sons in discussions with the SS administration about issues relating to the construction and equipping of the above-mentioned crematoria and gas chambers. He participated in the development of technical projects and crematorium drawings, led consultations and monitored the construction work.
Prüfer was directly in charge of the assembly work during the installation of the twenty-one cremation ovens designed by him for the crematoria.
Despite knowing the true purpose of the crematoria and gas chambers in the camps, Prüfer, on his own initiative, gave thought to how the technical equipment and crematorium facilities could be improved so as to increase their capacity, before devising ways to do so.
In addition, he entered into written correspondence, on his own initiative, with various German chemical companies relating to the manufacture of gas analysers for the gas chambers in Auschwitz.119
Karl Schultze was charged with building and installing the ventilation systems for the gas chambers, and for overseeing a test run during which prisoners were killed in the gas chambers – as well as increasing the capacity of the ovens through fitting specialist blowers.
The accused Schultze, K., designed and installed powerful ventilation systems in four gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, on behalf of the SS.
During commissioning of these systems, he personally carried out a test run in which prisoners were killed in the gas chamber.
In order to increase the capacity of the cremation furnaces in the camp crematoria, Schultze designed special fans and personally supervised their installation.
In early 1943, the accused Prüfer and Schultze tested a cremation furnace in Auschwitz. In the course of the test run, the bodies of approximately twenty prisoners who had been specially killed in the gas chambers for this purpose were cremated in the said furnace.120
Gustav Braun was charged with sending fitters to the camp, fulfilling SS orders and for forcing 300 ‘foreign workers’ into slave labour.
The statements each man made during his interrogation contain factual errors. No doubt they were extracted under duress. But, nonetheless, they provide telling insights into the attitude and mindset of Topf and Sons employees as each man worked to advance his position through enabling the worst kinds of atrocities.
Fritz Sander begins his 1946 interrogation by confirming his name and basic details, including how long he has worked for Topf and Sons. His interrogator then asks him how he designed the ‘corpse incineration furnace for mass operation’.
As chief engineer in the company, I presided over the cremation construction department, which was managed by Prüfer. In 1942 (I can’t remember the exact date), he mentioned that the crematoria at the Auschwitz concentration camp couldn’t handle the number of corpses that needed to be cremated. He told me that he had witnessed two to three bodies being shoved into a single chamber, and that the crematoria still weren’t able to deal with the number of corpses they had.
As a specialist in incineration technology, I then took the initiative to build crematoria with greater corpse incineration capacity.
In November 1942, I presented my design for a crematorium for the mass incineration of corpses – the corpse incineration furnace for mass operation – and applied to register it with the state patent office in Berlin.
[This] would work on the conveyor-belt principle, meaning that bodies could be brought to the furnaces mechanically and continuously.
The interrogator then asks Sander who designed the crematoria at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, to which Sander replies that it was Kurt Prüfer, but designs were approved by Sander himself and then overseen by Ludwig Topf. When asked what he knew of Prüfer and Schultze’s visits to Auschwitz, Sander replies:
In the summer of 1942 Prüfer and Schultze told me that large numbers of people were being killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and that their bodies were then being incinerated in the crematoria. There were so many of them that three bodies were being pushed into a chamber at a time.
‘So you knew that innocent people were being murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp?’ the interrogator probes.
‘Yes, I knew [that] from the summer of 1942. Prüfer told me about the mass transportations of people being brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp from Poland, Greece and other countries, who were then murdered in the camp.’
The interrogator later returns to this line of questioning to confirm that Sander knew specifically about the gas chambers. ‘At what point did Prüfer tell you that the crematoria could not handle the incineration of the bodies? Did you ask him out of interest where all the bodies were coming from?’ he asks.
Sander replies: ‘Yes, I did ask Prüfer why there were so many bodies in the camp; he replied that they were killing people there in gas chambers and then cremating their bodies.’
But before this the interrogator asks: ‘Knowing that the concentration camp crematoria were being used for the annihilation of innocent people, how could you – on your own initiative – suggest the design of an even bigger crematorium for the mass incineration of bodies?’
Sander replies: ‘As a German engineer and employee of the Topf company, I felt it was my duty to use my knowledge to help Hitler’s Germany to victory, even if that resulted in the annihilation of people – just as every engineer in aircraft construction did.’121
Some of Sander’s inconsistencies regarding the dates of his conversations with Kurt Prüfer have been seized upon by Holocaust-denying historians as evidence that his statement was fabricated. Of course, it’s likely that Sander was confused. But while he may have mixed up whether the conversation with Prüfer took place in 1942 or 1943, there can be no denying Sander’s chilling description of the ‘corpse incineration furnace for mass operation’ – and his rationale that it was his duty to help Hitler’s Germany achieve victory, even if that resulted in the annihilation of a population.
When Karl Schultze is interrogated, he formulates a slightly different defence. Initially, Schultze confirms the details of his employment and admits that he made three trips to Auschwitz in 1943 in connection with fitting the ventilation systems for the crematoria and gas chambers.
The first time I was there, I was summoned to see an SS man who worked at the camp and who warned me that the construction and outfitting work that our company was doing on crematoria and gas chambers in Auschwitz was an extremely important state secret. He made me sign a confidentiality agreement. I had already had to sign a similar agreement for Ludwig Topf, since I came into direct contact with the work that the company was doing for the SS construction management unit at Auschwitz.
After detailing how he witnessed the gassing of the first prisoners at the crematorium, Schultze then states that he reported this to Ludwig Topf upon his return to Erfurt and that Ludwig ‘did not react to this [information]’. The interrogator points out that in Schultze’s first questioning in 1946 he claimed to have also told Kurt Prüfer about the gas chambers. Schultze admits that he may have done, ‘but it’s a long time ago and I can’t remember the exact circumstances and nature of our conversation’. Schultze agrees that he and Prüfer travelled to Auschwitz together in early 1943 to fix the broken fan in Crematorium II, and that during this visit ‘there were around sixty prisoner corpses lying next to the cremation furnaces. I assume they had been killed in the gas chamber. About twenty-five of these corpses were incinerated in our presence. After that I didn’t go to Auschwitz again.’
The interrogator asks Schultze what he would like to say in reaction to a document that shows that ‘4,756 prisoners were murdered every day’ in gas chambers built and equipped with his involvement.
‘I have no reason to doubt these official figures. The document really does show [that],’ Schultze replies.
Does he realise, the interrogator asks, that this means he was working on the mass extermination of innocent people?
Schultze responds:
I must admit that [ … ]. However, when I was doing this work, I assumed that the SS wouldn’t be killing innocent people in the crematoria and gas chambers, but that they would only be killing criminals who had been sentenced to death for their actions against German troops and authorities in Poland and other occupied territories.
The interrogator says that, in addition to Jews and other non-Aryans, the SS did murder people who were fighting for liberation from German rule of their homelands – but why does Schultze consider these people criminals?
Architects of Death Page 17
