J. A. TOPF & SÖHNE Sign - Manufacturers of Crematoria!

J. A. TOPF & SÖHNE Sign - Manufacturers of Crematoria!
Awesome and ultra rare aluminum plaque of the infamous J.A. Topf & Söhne. In perfect condition with letters in relief and that was in the wall of a Pneumatic Transportation Plant. A piece that could fit perfectly in any Holocaust museum! Chilling relic of a company as complicit in the Holocaust as any individual, a sign once attached to a drying unit manufactured by Topf & Söhne, designers and builders of the crematoria used at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Belzec, Dachau, Mauthausen and Gusen. In total, Topf built 66 cremation muffles at various camps; of which 46 alone operated at Auschwitz. J.A. Topf and Sons was an engineering company, founded in 1878 in Erfurt, Germany by Johannes Andreas Topf . Originally, it made heating systems and brewing and malting equipment. Later, the company diversified into silos, chimneys, incinerators for burning municipal waste, and crematoria. During WW I it made weapons shells, limbers and other military vehicles. In World War II it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe. The firm was close to the Ettersberg Hill, later the site of Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1939, following a massive outbreak of typhus in Buchenwald, Topf and Sons were contacted by Nazi party officials seeking an answer for dealing with the large numbers of dead left in the wake of this outbreak. The company placed a mobile incineration oven at the camps disposal. The device was comparable to an oven type used in agriculture for the incineration of animal carcasses and already in the company?s product range. This mobile incinerator was later replaced with a permanent construction, which was both larger, and more efficient; being able to handle twice the previous incinerator's load. After 1939, and the demonstration or "proof of concept" that the firm could design an incinerator which would handle large numbers of corpses, Nazi officials further contracted Topf and Sons to provide similar incineration furnaces for the Belzec, Dachau, Mauthausen, Gusen and Auschwitz Concentration Camps. It is infamous as the largest of 12 companies that designed and built crematoria ovens for concentration and extermination camps during the Holocaust, planned and carried out by the Nazi regime from 1935 to 1945. The company not only made crematoria ovens, it also made ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. The firm knew very well what their incinerators were being used for, following numerous visits by company administrators to Auschwitz and Dachau. In fact, Kurt Prufer, the original designer of the ovens stated during his interrogation by Russian officials: "I have known since spring 1943 that innocent human beings were being liquidated in KL Auschwitz gas chambers and that their corpses were subsequently incinerated...". At war's end, Prufer was arrested by the Soviets, interrogated, and then sent to a gulag where he would stay until his death in 1952. Ludwig Topf, the firm's chief officer at the time of the war, committed suicide in 1945, leaving a suicide note full of excuses and claims of his own innocence. His brother, Ernst-Wolfgang fled to West Germany and was tried by the Americans. He managed to talk his way out of criminal charges, maintaining that he did not know the intention for the incinerators, placing all the blame on his brother Ludwig, and Prufer. ***THIS ITEM SHIPS FROM OUR EUROPE OFFICE***