NOT SOLD (BIDDING OVER)
0.00USD+ applicable fees & taxes.
This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2012 Sep 27 @ 11:00UTC-04:00 : AST/EDT
Chilling relic of a company as complicit in the Holocaust as any individual, a porcelain sign once suspended at the Erfurt manufacturing facility of Topf & Sons, 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. The white porcelain sign bears black lettering: J. A. TOPF & SOEHNE ERFURT and measures 9 3/4" x 12 1/2". Some substantial chips are present at two corners and along the bottom edge, possibly caused when the sign was pried from a wall or post. That force was used is also apparent as these corners are very slightly bent, especially when examined from the reverse. The fabrication of the sign, and wear and tear indicate that it is entirely original. Topf & Sons was founded in 1878 in Erfurt as a customized incinerator and malting equipment manufacturer. 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 camp’s 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. The firm knew what their incinerators were being used for, following numerous visits by company administrators to Auschwitz and Dachau. In fact, Kurt Prüfer, 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 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 Prüfer.
Estimate: $3,000 - 4,000.
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Part I: Lots 1-979 - September 27th, 2012
Part II: Lots 980-1845 - September 28th, 2012
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