Topf and Sons

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J. A. Topf and Sons (German: J. A. Topf & Söhne) was an engineering company, founded in 1878 in Erfurt, Germany by Johannes Andreas Topf (1816–1891). 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 World War I, it made weapons shells, limbers (carts for carrying artillery) and other military vehicles. In World War II, it also made weapons shells and aircraft parts for the Luftwaffe. J. A. Topf and Sons was the largest of 12 companies that designed and built crematorium ovens for concentration and extermination camps during the Holocaust, planned and carried out by the Nazi regime from 1935 to 1945. It also made ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Topf & Söhne's main competitor in making concentration camp ovens was the Berlin firm H. Kori GmbH, founded in 1887. At its peak, Topf & Söhne was the largest company of its type in the world. It sold its products globally, as far afield as Russia, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. In the 1940s, less than 2% of its total business came from its concentration camp contracts. In addition to Auschwitz and Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Topf & Söhne built crematorium ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Of the five ovens at Dachau concentration camp, four were made by H. Kori and one by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematorium ovens which had a total of 76 incineration chambers (called 'muffles') for concentration camps. H. Kori built 42 single-chamber ovens at various camps. Epithets such as "the engineers of the final solution" and "the technicians of mass murder" have been applied to Topf & Söhne, because, to a...