Auschwitz oven builders scrutinised at exhibition

Reuters ^ | 7/22/05 | Alexandra Hudson

[wagglebee]

Fresh archive evidence shows the brothers who ran Topf, cousins of Hartmut's father, were not fanatic Nazis and faced no personal risk for declining orders for furnaces from Hitler's elite SS guards.

Nor were they in it for the money. Crematoria and ventilation systems for the concentration camps comprised only two percent of their turnover, and the SS paid late.

Rather a picture emerges of a firm of meticulous technocrats, motivated by the "challenge" of perfecting and installing incinerators capable of burning thousands of corpses daily, and blinded by the detail to their moral crime.

So they weren't doing it for the money or out of loyalty ot the Nazis, they just wanted to find a more efficient way commit genocide -- that is truly sickening.

[wagglebee]

Ping.

[MNJohnnie]

So they weren't doing it for the money or out of loyalty ot the Nazis, they just wanted to find a more efficient way commit genocide -- that is truly sickening.


Yes, that is one of the really sickening things about the Nazi era. So many Germans found it so easy to rationalize their support for mass murder. Like the euthanasia movement. Most of those advocating the murder of the "useless mouths" considered themselves to be applying a rational, "scientific" solution to the issue of dealing with the handicapped.

[CzarNicky]

Scrutinized hmmm? Perhaps they are looking for someone to create a final solution to the muslim problem.

[Mark was here]

A fifth of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust were killed at Auschwitz, along with homosexuals, Gypsies, Polish political prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war.

It is shocking that the Socialist Liberals of the Left, would not embrace homosexuality.

As far as the Topf brothers go, they did just provide a tool to be used in the clean up of a mess, created by government workers (just doing their job), they aren't as bad as the government workers who actually did the killing, but they (the Topf brothers) still should of found different costumers. Looks like they got what they deserved.

[tutstar]

ping

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Hartmut Topf has spent a lifetime trying to comprehend why family firm Topf & Soehne agreed 64 years ago to build crematoria for Auschwitz and enable industrialized mass murder.

When the government starts endorsing it, the citizenry tends to go along.

[tutstar]

Sounds about right to me.

[Porterville]

I've read that IBM made much of the sorting possible.

[Artemis Webb]

Mrs Mark if your post made any sense at all, which it does not, I would probably find it and you disgusting.

[wagglebee]

It is shocking that the Socialist Liberals of the Left, would not embrace homosexuality.

I believe that one of the main goals of the left is the destruction of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The left did not understand until a few decades later that the homosexual agenda could be used for this.

[tet68]

If you can find a copy, read "The Cunning of History"
shocking insight into the efficiency of bureaucracy. Basicly what saved the world was the LACK of bureaucratic efficiency in the Hitlerian system.

The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future, New York: Harper Torchbooks. Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987 Rubenstein, Richard L. In this skillfully argued work Rubenstein seeks to set the mechanical nonhumanity of the perpetrators of the Shoah in a vast historical context, on the one hand of slavery (essentially making humans into consumer disposables) and on the other the rise of the inhuman city, where functionaries survey the lives of the city-dwellers from behind closed doors. Profoundly controversial but life changing if its prophetic message is taken seriously.

[Mark was here]

Mrs Mark if your post made any sense at all, which it does not, I would probably find it and you disgusting.

LOL! I Might find you disgusting also!

The guys who made the ovens committed suicide or died in a Russian prison camp. They got what they deserved.

The people who actually did the killing are worse than those who made the ovens. Not a difficult concept to comprehend.

The Nazis were socialist from the Left. That the Left has a problem with homosexuality is interesting, considering the Left of today.

[farmer18th]

He knows there can be no satisfactory answer.

A few months back our family had a chance to trade some commercial property for a local building that housed a planned parenthood clinic. When we walked through the building, we saw the clinic and we said--"Sorry, we won't rent to murderers." If civil enineering firms refused to design abortion clinics, if contractors refused to build them, if civil servants of conscience asked to be excused from the plan check, we could end our own holocaust.

Certainly, there will be people of darkened conscience who will take the jobs, but they will do it knowing they are the objects of scorn.

[Mark was here]

I believe that one of the main goals of the left is the destruction of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The left did not understand until a few decades later that the homosexual agenda could be used for this.

I think you are correct. I see politics being played with the homosexuals being placed higher and higher up the list of victims of the evil. Once their victim-hood is firmly established, next come the special rights. Special Rights weaken the regular rights of everyone else.

[jamaksin]

As an FYI, in the sentence:

" ... Nor were they in it for the money. Crematoria and ventilation systems for the concentration camps comprised only two percent of their turnover, and the SS paid late."

the usage of the word "turnover" might seem odd. In Europe, the business term - turnover - means revenue.

[jimboster]

Uhh...this is Reuters. Some parts of this story don't make sense.
Fresh archive evidence shows the brothers who ran Topf, cousins of Hartmut's father, were not fanatic Nazis and faced no personal risk for declining orders for furnaces from Hitler's elite SS guards
Did the SS leave notes saying, "If these guys refuse to build the ovens, don't hurt them or anything. And make it crystal clear it's just fine and dandy with us if they don't want to do the work." From what I've heard about the SS, they weren't the kind of guys to say, "No problemo", if you decided not to cooperate with them.
And then there's this:
His brother Ernst-Wolfgang fled to western Germany and was put on trial by the Americans. He talked his way out of the charges, maintaining the ovens were "innocent," and founded a new incinerator business, operating until bankruptcy in 1963.
So the guy who willingly collaberated with the Nazis just talked his way out of it? And the Americans were just a bunch of boobs who said. "okay, that sounds reasonable"?

[MosesKnows]

they just wanted to find a more efficient way commit genocide

They were able to find an efficient way to dispose of the results of genocide, not to commit genocide.

[wagglebee]

Without the means to quickly dispose of the dead bodies, the Nazis could not have carried out the Holocaust, the corpses would have created a huge sanitation risk. If you research the progression of the Holocaust, the numbers killed were far less when bodies were being buried, the ovens allowed the Nazis to accelerate the genocide. So, I stand by my previous statement.
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body-disposal/
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/topf/
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/19430129-electricity/

[x]

So they weren't doing it for the money or out of loyalty ot the Nazis, they just wanted to find a more efficient way commit genocide -- that is truly sickening.

If they were really trying to make genocide quicker and easier and more efficient, they would probably have been loyal, indeed fanatical, Nazis.

It sounds more like a case of "tunnel vision." They had their "job" or "duty" or their "bit for the war effort" to fulfill and they were doing it exactitude and professionalism.

It is sickening. And it was wrong.

But it was very German -- all the emphasis on duty and fulfilling one's "calling" whatever one's personal inclinations. You can see a lot of that in Germany's history and culture.

It's not exclusively German, though. It has a lot to do with the "do what your told and don't ask questions" mentality that the World Wars encouraged.

I don't think we necessarily disgree. It was a horrible thing to do, but are you trying to say it would have been better or more understandable if the motive had been different?