7 Blackbourn, op. cit., p. 205.
8 Ibid.
9 Schüle, op. cit., p. 64.
AS footnote 5: AS interview with Udo Braun, 31 July 2001.
Chapter Two: A deal with the devil
10 J. A. Topf commemorative brochure, Landesarchiv Thüringen – Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
11 E. W. Topf justification, Power without Morals, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
12 Willy Wiemokli letter and CV post war, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
13 Bernhard Bredehorn’s statement, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
14 Kurt Prüfer’s letter of application to Topf and Sons, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
15 Schüle, op. cit., p. 48.
AS footnote 154: Kurt Prüfer personnel file, ThHStAW, J.A. Topf & Söhne, no. 14, p. 398.
16 Schüle, op. cit., p. 49. Prüfer finds a way of dealing with death within ordered parameters.
17 Kurt Prüfer letter, Oct 1943, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
Chapter Three: A beautiful name
All quotes used in this chapter have been taken from an author interview with Hartmut Topf.
Chapter Four: Buchenwald
18 Richard Alewyn quoted in Michael H. Kater, Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present, Yale University Press, 2014, p. 263.
19 Max Mayr quoted in Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (ed.), Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945: A Guide to the Permanent Historical Exhibition, Wallstein Verlag, 2004.
20 Michael H. Kater, op. cit., p. 118.
21 Ibid., p. 126.
22 Ibid., p. 134.
23 Ibid., p. 212.
24 Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (ed.), op. cit., p. 24.
25 Eugene Kogon quoted in ibid., p. 29.
26 Ibid., p. 27.
27 Ibid., p. 31.
28 Ibid., p. 19.
29 Kater, op. cit, p. 256.
30 Ibid., p. 268.
31 Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (ed.), op. cit., p. 20.
32 Kater, op. cit., p. 266.
33 Schüle, op. cit., p. 108.
AS footnote 164: Erich Haase in Das war Buchenwald [This was Buchenwald], Leipzig, p. 79.
34 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 107–108.
AS footnote 162: Buchenwald Memorial, Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937–1945. Begleitband zur ständigen historischen Ausstellung [Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945: A Guide to the Permanent Historical Exhibition], Göttingen, 2005, pp. 115–18.
35 Schüle, op. cit., p. 117.
Austrian president Franz Bera’s account. AS footnote 197: Report by Franz Bera, Buchenwald Memorial Archive 31/455.
36 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 117–18.
AS footnote 198: Eric Haase in Das war Buchenwald [This was Buchenwald], p. 80.
37 Author interview with Hartmut Topf.
38 Kurt Prüfer, Soviet interrogation records, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
39 Schüle, op. cit., p. 122.
AS footnote 212: Sworn statement by Johanna Büschleb, Gudensberg, 1/4/1946, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac no. 81, sheets 83–90. This quote has been taken from sheet 87.
40 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 122–3. Ludwig Topf’s post-war explanation concerning the epidemic at Buchenwald.
AS footnote 213: Kurt Prüfer personnel file, ThHStAW, J A Topf & Söhne Erfurt no. 14, sheet 119.
AS footnote 214: Minutes of Works Council meeting, 27 April 1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac no. 32, sheet 230.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Schüle, op. cit., p. 124. Lilly Kopecky quotes about urns.
AS footnote 218: Lore Shelly (ed.), Schreiberinnen des Todes, Bielefeld, 1992 (first published as Secretaries of Death, Shengold, 1986), p. 255.
44 Schüle, op. cit., p. 151.
AS footnote 2: Report of Max Girndt, 1945, Buchenwald Memorial Archive 32/IX-63.
45 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 151–2.
AS footnote 3: ‘August’ presumably refers to August Brück.
AS footnote 4: Report of Hans Neupert, Buchenwald Memorial Archive 31/42.
AS footnote 5: Report of Hans Neupert, 24 July 1954, Buchenwald Memorial Archive 50-2-33.
46 Kurt Prüfer’s request for a bonus, dated December 1941, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
47 Kurt Prüfer’s letter regarding a bonus, November 1942, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
48 Kurt Prüfer’ letter regarding a bonus November 1942, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
Chapter Five: Always at your service
49 Letter to Kurt Prüfer December 1943. Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
50 Topf memo concerning Kurt Prüfer, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
51 Prüfer’s resignation, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
52 Ibid.
53 Memo regarding a company meeting; Kurt Prüfer’s comments, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
54 Topf and Sons application for Uk status, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
55 Letter from Prüfer to Bischoff about Ludwig Topf’s army status, Landesarchiv Thüringen -Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
56 Memo about E. W. Topf calling workers ‘Communist pigs’ 1942, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
57 Topf and Sons memo concerning the discovery of an explosive capsule, 1942, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
58 Fritz Meier resignation, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
59 Memo about anonymous letter regarding Topf and Sons, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
60 Memo about Department D being the department that complained the most, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
Chapter Six: Auschwitz
61 Eva Schloss and Karen Bartlett, After Auschwitz, Hodder and Stoughton, 2013, p. 105.
62 Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the ‘Final Solution’, BBC Books, 2005, p. 48.
63 Rees, op. cit., p. 49.
64 Ibid., p. 54.
65 Ibid., p. 90.
66 Schloss and Bartlett, op. cit., p. 122.
67 Ibid.
68 Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (eds), Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 262
69 Rees, op. cit., p. 171.
70 Ibid., p. 172.
71 Ibid., p. 206.
72 Ibid., p. 146.
Chapter Seven: Is there anyone left to burn?
73 Schloss and Bartlett, op. cit., p. 144.
74 Rees, op. cit., p. 327.
75 Taken from a Soviet report on the liberation of Auschwitz. Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
76 Schüle, op. cit., p. 136.
AS Footnote 252: Hilberg, Raul, Vernichtung der europäischen Jüden [The Destruction of the European Jews], Frankfurt am Main, 1999 (first published 1982; English edition 1961), vol. 2, p. 934.
77 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 137–8.
AS footnote 260 (on p138): Ur/T, 8.1.1941. Re: Extension to the crematorium at the Auschwitz concentration camp o/S, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 6, sheet 180; Buchenwald Memorial Archive Pressac Collection, sheet 121. [My best guess is that the ‘Ur/T’ will be the SS internal reference: Ur = Urbanczyk, T probably the initial of
the typist.]
78 Schüle, op. cit., p. 142.
AS footnote 287: Topf and Sons to the SS Construction Management Dept, Auschwitz, 4 November 1941, Russian State Military Archive, Moscow, Special Archive Division, 502-1-313, sheets 81–3; copy in ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 6, sheets 81–3; Buchenwald Memorial Archive Pressac Collection, sheets 221–3.
79 Schüle, op. cit., p. 155.
AS footnote 14: ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 41, sheet 33; Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac collection, sheet 314
80 Rees, op. cit., 2005, p. 215.
81 Schüle, op. cit., p. 163.
AS footnote 45: Construction Management Dept, Building expenses book, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 42, sheet 42; Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac Collection, sheet 775. Construction Management Dept, Advance Payments Book, p. 2, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 42, sheet 50, and Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac Collection, sheet 783.
82 Schüle, op. cit., p. 164.
AS footnote 47: Kurt Prüfer makes note of a phone call for the company directors, 8 September 1942, ThHStAW, J A Topf & Söhne Nr 95, sheet 40.
AS footnote 48: In later practice, the number of corpses cremated was significantly higher – up to 8,000 corpses per day across all the Birkenau crematoria, whereas Prüfer had assumed the number was only 3,200.
83 Braun–Prüfer head to head in Soviet Interrogation, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
Chapter Eight: Innovators until the end
84 Fritz Sander letter to Topf and Sons regarding patent, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid.
87 Fritz Sander, Soviet interrogation report, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
88 Kurt Prüfer, Soviet Interrogation, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
89 Schüle, op. cit., p. 201. ‘SS men were forever coming and going at Topf … not a secret.’
AS footnote 170: Hans Mommsen concludes that ‘ordinary workers, especially if they had Communist leanings, recognised the reality of the Holocaust more clearly than nationalistically inclined functionaries in the government apparatus, who didn’t want to believe what they were just as capable of knowing’. Hans Mommsen, ‘Erfahrung, Aufarbeitung und Erinnerung des Holocaust in Deutschland’, in Hanno Loewy (ed.), Holocaust: Die Grenzen des Verstehens, Reinbek 1992, pp. 93–100, this quote is taken from p. 95.
AS footnote 171: Author interview with Walter Bredehorn on 5 May 2010.
AS footnote 172: It has been proven that the workers in the SS camps included Soviet forced labour, i.e. the very men with whom KPD members stayed in contact with for political reasons. Iwan Hanjutschenko, a young Ukrainian forced labourer, reported that he and a German foreman built trolleys for inserting coffins, which were used with the double- and triple-muffle furnaces in the camps, and which can be seen in the crematorium of the Buchenwald Memorial. Author interview with Iwan Hanjutschenko, 6 May 2003.
90 Schüle, op. cit., p. 196. ‘The flames from the incineration were visible for miles around.’
91 Schüle, op. cit., p. 27.
AS footnote 178: Piper, Vernichtung, p. 286f [Bibliography lists a number of books by Piper, Franciszek, but none with Vernichtung [extermination or annihilation] as the key word in their title.]
92 Schüle, op. cit., p. 209 – efficiency of the crem – these are outstanding figures writes the SS.
AS footnote 193: ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 42, sheet 212, and Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac Collection, sheet 875.
93 Schüle, op. cit., p. 209. The sentence at the start of this paragraph makes it clear that the info comes from ‘the Topf fitter Heinrich Messing’s timesheet for the period from 8 Monday to 14 Sunday March 1943’.
94 Karl Schultze’s Soviet interrogation record, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
95 Ibid.
96 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 212–13.
AS footnote 203: Record of the statement by Henryk Tauber, former prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp and member of the Sonderkommando [Special Unit – prisoners working in the gas chambers/crematoria], in: Piper, Vernichtung, p. 287f [see my note above.]
97 Ibid.
98 Karl Schultze’s Soviet interrogation record, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
99 Schüle, op. cit., p. 219.
100 Schüle, op. cit., p. 219.
AS footnote 230: ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 42, sheet 452; also Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac Collection, sheet 1117.
101 Ibid.
102 Schüle, op. cit., p. 230.
AS footnote 265: Topf to the SS Construction Management Dept, Auschwitz, 2 July 1943, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr. 42, sheet 388; also Buchenwald Memorial Archive, Pressac Collection, sheet 1053.
103 Topf and Sons sixtieth anniversary commemorative booklet, Landesarchiv Thüringen -Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
104 Schloss and Bartlett, op. cit., p. 130.
105 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 192–6.
AS footnote 145: Karl/Noack, Angeklagter [PK:Accused], p. 67f.
Chapter Nine: Trials and retribution
106 Schüle, op. cit., p. 223. Special unit notices gas chambers being dismantled for use elsewhere.
AS footnote 277: Inmitten des grauenvollen Verbrechens. Handschriften von Mitgliedern des Sonderkommandos [In the Midst of Heinous Crime. Handwritten notes by members of the Sonderkommando, State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oświeçim 1996, p. 184f. This handwritten note was found next to Crematorium III in the summer of 1952. Also Ibid., p. 175.
107 Schüle, op. cit., pp. 234–5. Kurt Prüfer memo regarding rebuilding at Mauthausen.
AS footnote 280: Underlining in original. Quoted from: Terezin Memorial Archive, A 8845 Mauthausen, sheets 1–3.
108 Ernst Wolfgang Topf statement, Power without Morals, 1958, Landesarchiv Thüringen - Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar.
109 Annegret Schüle, op. cit., pp. 240–243. Ludwig Topf’s explanation of the camps to the workers.
AS footnote 10: Tuchel, Johannes: Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager 1938–1945. Das System des Terrors [Inspection of the Concentration Camps 1938–1945. The Terror System], Edition Hentrich, 1994, p. 15.
AS footnote 11: notes from the discussion, belonging to files. Works Council, 27.4.1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 34, sheet 229f. Emphases in original.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid., p. 243.
112 Ibid., pp. 248–9. Ludwig Topf’s suicide note.
AS footnote 35: Ludwig Topf, 30/31.5.1945, sheet 6 of transcript of files, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 34, sheet 211.
113 Ibid., p. 250.
Ernst Wolfgang Topf’s explanation of Ludwig’s suicide to workers. AS footnote 41: Notes from the meeting, 8.6.1945, ThHStAW, J. A. Topf & Söhne Nr 427, sheets 75ff; Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 34, sheets 232ff.
114 Ibid., p. 248. Machemehl’s account of the suicide.
AS footnote 31: Handwritten report by Machemehl (Ma), 31.5.1945, ThHStAW, J. A. Topf & Söhne Nr 427, sheets 244f; Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 34, sheets 212f.
115 Ibid., pp. 254–5. Topf to resume production memo. AS footnote 64: Military Government of Germany Erfurt, 22 June 1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 80, sheet 66.
AS footnote 65: Post list 21.6.-3.9.2945, sheet 2, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 80, sheets 92–4.
AS footnote 66: A letter from Kurt Schmidt to Ernst Wolfgang Topf includes the following: ‘The New Production permit relates to the Malting, Silo and Mill construction departments, excluding furnace systems. We can of course continue to carry out repairs to furn
ace systems.’ Kurt Schmidt to E. W. Topf, 18 July 1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 80, sheet 77.
AS footnote 67: File note, operations division, Braun, 11 October 1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 80, sheet 117.
116 Ibid., pp. 256–7. Archive note about Major Kriwenzow.
AS footnote 76: Wiederinbetriebssetung [Resumption of production], 12.9.1945, ThHStAW, Collection Jean-Claude Pressac Nr 80, sheets 98–100.
117 Ibid., p. 258. Ernst Otto Keyser letter.
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