How many ovens at auschwitz

He would become one of the more significant workers in the company. Forty percent of Topf oven sales were to the SS. By the end of the Holocaust, at least twenty-five Topf and Sons ovens were in operation in Germany, occupied Poland, and the Soviet Union.

For example, new designs incorporated a rounded opening rather than the standard square coffin-sized opening in order to allow multiple bodies to be burned simultaneously despite the fact that this was still illegal under German law.

As mass gassing began to take place there, corpse disposal became even more urgent. Further, the crematorium complexes in Auschwitz-Birkenau included the gas chambers themselves. Topf designed and provided ventilation systems to remove Zyklon B from the underground gas chambers. Collaboration went beyond design and production. At least four fitters from the company travelled to Auschwitz to oversee the installation of the systems and to ensure they functioned properly.

These tasks required them to observe the murder of Jews. The speed of corpse disposal was the fundamental obstacle slowing killing process at Auschwitz.

Immediate postwar justice for the criminals of Topf and Sons was insufficient at best. They were sentenced to 25 years. Neumann, R. Pressac, J. Furet ed. Sachs, N. Schneider, W. Penguin Books Ltd , No. Semprun, J. Sennett, R. Steiner, G. Verweyen, T. Weinke, A. Wieviorka, A. Zywulska, K. Bib at www. Dawidowicz ed. Significant parts, including the interrogations of Sander and other Topf engineers, are available in microfilm at the archive of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Comparison of the texts of Mulisch's and Neumann's book proves beyond reasonable doubt that Mulisch took his information from Neumann. Interestingly, Mulisch did not acknowledge his debt to Hitler: Aufstieg und Untergang des dritten Reiches. Pollock, 3 March , in the van Leer family archive, Jerusalem. Donovan, E. Stevens, Nuremberg prosecution exhibit , RG This was the designation of a patent issued by the Reichspatentamt between and The number referred to the patent issued by the West German Patent Office in , and hence the title is formally erroneous: it should have been DP In addition, the title is also historically erroneous, because DP was not based on the patent application of The translation, entitled Sonderbehandlung Special Treatment , contained many changes, and van Leer was very unhappy with the result.

It was never performed. A copy of Sonderbehandlung is in the van Leer family archive. Pollock, 3 March An electronic version of this report is available at www. Penguin and Lipstadt transcripts, day 9 25 January , pp. For the electronic edition see www.

An electronic edition is available at www. OSO version 0. University Press Scholarship Online. Sign in. Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Advanced Search. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Destruction and human remains: Disposal and concealment in genocide and mass violence.

Find in Worldcat. Go to page:. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Search within book. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot your password? You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Sinnreich Erdacht: machines of mass incineration in fact, fiction, and forensics Sinnreich Erdacht: machines of mass incineration in fact, fiction, and forensics Chapter: p.

On burning people, and corpses On 10 May , students at the University of Berlin threw 25, books on a large pyre located in the square in front of the university. The association with the medieval image of hell was direct: Every chimney was disgorging flames. Smoke burst from the holes and the ditches, swirling, swaying, and coiling above our heads. Sparks and cinders blinded us.

Through the screened fence of the second crematory we could see figures with pitchforks moving against the background of flames. A patent application Sinnreich erdacht ingeniously devised : we know that if the Germans did not exactly plan the deaths through disease and starvation in the ghettos, they at least welcomed the high mortality. It goes on: A number of multi-muffle ovens were installed in some of those camps, which according to their design are loaded and operated periodically.

Troeltsch: You mean fuel oil? Baumann: No Herr Troeltsch, not fuel oil. Corpses, in other words body-fats. That's the whole idea, don't you see. The corpses them-selves supply the fuel. Troeltsch: Oh, I see.

Carry on Baumann, this is fascinating. Baumann: If you look here at Station A, the hopper containing some corpses feeds onto a conveyer-belt.

We have an advantage —and here the particular construction of the body comes to our aid —that the head and limbs are dehydrated first, being of relatively small dimensions. They now separate from the body, and drop off into this funnel-shaped duct onto grid B.

Since all circulating air passes through this grid, the limbs burn fiercely in the draft. Troeltsch: And the body itself? Baumann: When the dehydration phase is over, which takes longer because of its larger volume, it will disintegrate in the same way. Troeltsch: So you have to light the furnaces only once a day. Baumann: Yes, for an hour or so until she is at 1, degrees. Then you can switch off, and the corpses keep the furnace going. It is a tremendous fuel saving. High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, I In the era of the witness, the mass-incineration ovens, embodied in the Topf patent application, did, indeed, cease to have significance as a means to understand the Holocaust.

Mr Justice Gray: I am simply asking what case is sought to be made, but perhaps it is better elicited from Professor van Pelt. Mr Rampton: The case sought to be made is that it explains how it was that they were able to incinerate as many corpses as they could, and also how they managed to use as little fuel as these were able to do. The gas chambers at crematoria II and III, like the undressing rooms, were located underground, while those at crematoria IV and V stood at ground level.

About 2 thousand people at a time could be put to death in each of them. According to calculations made by the Zentralbauleitung on June 28, , the crematoria could burn 4, corpses per day—1, each in crematoria II and III, and each in crematoria IV and V.

This meant that the crematoria could burn over 1. Prisoners assigned to do the burning stated that the daily capacity of the four crematoria in Birkenau was higher—about 8 thousand corpses. The construction of another facility according to a new design, crematorium VI, never progressed beyond the planning stage. In principle, all Jews classified because of their age or physical condition as unfit for labor were subject to immediate extermination directly after their arrival in the camp, without being registered or assigned a number.

In addition to the Jews, a certain number of Soviet POWs, estimated by witnesses as several thousand men, were killed with gas. A certain number of Poles were also killed in the gas chamber. So in November Nadjari stuffed his page manuscript into a thermos flask, which he sealed with a plastic top. He then placed the thermos in a leather pouch and buried it near Crematorium III. Under a garden there are two enormous cellars. One is where people undress and the other is the death chamber.

People enter it naked and once about 3, are inside it is locked and they are gassed. After six or seven minutes of suffering they die," he wrote. He described how the Germans had installed pipes to make the gas chamber look like a shower room. They then dropped the gas through openings - and half an hour later our work began.

We dragged the bodies of those innocent women and children to the lift, which took them to the ovens. The ashes from each adult victim weighed about grams 1. Read more on the Holocaust:.

The Holocaust year by year. Who are the missing million? The hidden graves of the Holocaust. Survivor art depicts Auschwitz horrors. It is clear from his notes that he expected to die in the camp - but this was his message to the outside world.

A message that would have meant death for him had the SS found out. Thirty-six years later a Polish forestry student by chance unearthed the thermos, at a depth of about 40cm 16 inches , during digging at the site.