Archive/File: orgs/german/topf.a.j. topf.001 Last-Modified: 1994/12/05 From: dpaldric@email.unc.edu Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish.holocaust Subject: Builder of Holocaust ovens wants to reclaim property Date: 5 Sep 1994 15:16:00 GMT Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Message-ID: <34fcng$10gt@bigblue.oit.unc.edu Title: Topf family descendent attempting to regain family estate Originator: dpaldric@isisb.oit.unc.edu In a recent news article by Mary Williams Walsh of the Los Angeles Times, it was reported that Dagmar Topf, a 50 year old therapist from Schleswig-Holstein, has recently filed a claim in the name of the Topf brothers' descendents in an attempt to regain more than $3 million in confiscated real estate. The family business of A.J. Topf & Company constructed ovens during WWII which were used to systematically dispose of the millions of bodies of victims killed at Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. The doors to the crematoria were proudly emblazoned with the name "Topf" in large brass Gothic letters. The family estate was seized by the Soviets at the end of the war, and like other Germans, Dagmar Topf is now seeking to have the land returned to her. Ms. Topf denied that her ancestors had known about the use of their ovens. "I feel quite sure that they didn't know how their ovens were being used," she said in the interview. But records show differently. The brothers joined the National Socialist Party in 1935. Later, one company engineer took out a patent on his "Auschwitz-style" oven that could burn 30 to 36 corpses in 10 hours. This engineer, Kurt Pruefer, went on to create a 46-chambered oven, and was given the nickname "the Wizard of Cremation." Dagmar Topf, when faced with these facts, argued that the brothers joined the Nazi party because they had to, and that the crematoria that were built on such large scale were "civil crematoria." It is doubtful that any normal funeral home could ever employ such a large scale crematorium for "civilian" purposes. At issue is not the fact that this woman is attempting to regain her family's property, like many other Germans. More importantly, the fact is that she is denying her past, the past of her family which helped the Nazis to dispose of the "evidence" of their crimes. Some have argued that without the improved technology of machines like these, the Nazis would have had a more difficult time killing so many. Without the engineers who made the trains to the camps more efficient, without the chemists who developed Zyklon B, without these men who built 46-chambered "civil" crematoria, perhaps a few more lives could have been spared from the ever efficeient military-industral complex which chewed up Jews and used their labor and remains to build the Third Reich. =30= The following was submitted in December, 1994, for the Holocaust Research Mailing List: RTna 12/01 1608 Germany against paying camp crematorium claim By Arthur Spiegelman NEW YORK (Reuter) - The heirs of the family that built Hitler's death-camp crematoriums will have their claims for financial compensation rejected, according to a letter by Germany's minister of justice released Thursday. The heirs to J.A. Topf & Sons are seeking compensation for property worth more than $2 million that was confiscated after World War II by the then-East German Communist regime. Their plea for the return of the factory site in Erfurt where the crematoriums were built for Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps has already been rejected. German Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, in a letter to Berlin Mayor Wolfgang Lueder, said that the heirs are not eligible for compensation under the country's restitution laws. The letter, dated Nov. 12, was released in New York by the World Jewish Congress which received it from Lueder. The minister of justice, while noting that it is up to a provincial government to make the final decision on compensation, said the law was quite clear on the issue. She said the law stated no compensation could be granted to the heirs of an "enterprise that acted against the principles of human rights or state rights." The letter added, "This exclusion should be valid concerning Topf & Sons. The cremation systems it developed and the crematoria it built for mass extermination in Auschwitz were a substantive contribution to maintain in force the murder machinery of the extermination camp, since several thousand bodies had to be eliminated every day. "The claim for compensation will therefore also have to be rejected." The World Jewish Congress said it welcomed the justice minister's letter, adding that it showed sensitivity and moral substance. J.A. Topf & Sons was hired during the war by the SS to build the crematoriums used to burn the bodies killed by poison gas and other means at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and several other death camps where millions of Jews were murdered. Ludwig Topf, who ran the company during the war and dispatched engineers to build the crematoriums, committed suicide in 1945. His surviving brother Ernst-Wolfgang fled the Soviet zone of occupation and in 1953 received patents for the crematoriums his company built. The company's top-of-the-line furnance was dubbed "the Auschwitz model" and declared perfect by the company's engineers who said it actually burned one-third more bodies than originally predicted. The Topf heirs were seeking compensation under laws passed after Germany's unification in 1991. REUTER
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