Ep. 8: Topf and Sons- The Family Who Engineered the Holocaust with Karen Bartlett

            The story of the Topf brothers is one of the most chilling examples of corporate complicity in the Holocaust.  Topf and Sons was the company who designed, built, and installed the ovens used to burn corpses in the concentration camps.  Far being disinterested bureaucrats, the company’s employees were actively involved in problem-solving and helping the Nazis to destroy the bodies of their victims.

            This really enlightening conversation with author Karen Bartlett lays bare the ways in which Topf engineers knowingly enabled Nazi mass murder.  It exp[lores the complexities of perpetrator choices as well as the ways in which their decendants approach the crimes of their family members.

              You can learn more about Topf & Sons as well at the Topf & Sons Memorial and Museum in Erfurt, Germany.

Karen Bartlett is a writer and journalist and the author of several books on the Holocaust. 

Her book on Topf & Sons is:
Bartlett, Karen.  Architects of Death: The Family Who Engineered the Holocaust (2018)

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.704)
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Bourne. And today I am super excited to have journalist and dare I say historian, Karen Bartlett, to come onto the podcast and talk about a topic that has always really fascinated me because it deals with how ordinary people get involved.

in genocide. I think sometimes, sometimes we find it easier to look at or think about the actual killers, people who are physically conducting genocide. And, but today we're going to talk about some people who I would argue are, and I think Karen would agree, are equally complicit in the Holocaust, but didn't participate in actually physically killing people. And that is the people who designed

the crematoria, top and sons. So I'm really excited to have the author of a book, The Architects of Death, the family who engineered the Holocaust. She's also the author of a number of other books on the Holocaust. Karen Bartlett, welcome to the show.

Karen (01:12.472)
Hi there, very nice to be here.

Waitman (01:14.848)
And can you tell us just a little bit about yourself and also how you got into this particular topic?

Karen (01:21.304)
Yes, well I am a writer and journalist. I studied for a history degree originally, then I became a journalist and I wrote for various newspapers like the Times and the Sunday Times, but I had always wanted to write books and it was when I was working on the first book which is called After Auschwitz with Eva Schloss who is the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank and quite a famous Holocaust survivor.

that I came across the Top Family and I was very intrigued and sort of followed it sort of down a down a wormhole and eventually it led to this book.

Waitman (02:04.064)
I kind of came into the same way that you did. The introduction that I had to Toppen Sons was a German language book. I think it accompanied the exhibition at Auschwitz, but it's really, really fascinating. And I don't want to spoil it because I'm going to let you talk about it. So maybe as we start out, can you just give us a brief or a longer introduction into...

tough and sons and who are these people and what are they doing pre -Nazi period?

Karen (02:38.488)
Well, that is how I started with the project really. I came across their name when I was doing research for the previous book. And that was my question really, who are these people? Who are the kind of company or the kind of people that would do something as kind of grim as design crematoria for concentration camps? What's the story behind this family and this company? And the more that sort of you reveal about them, the more interesting it becomes because...

Of course, Topf and Sons were not originally associated with crematoria. They come from a city in Germany called Erfurt, which is near Weimar. And they sort of grew to prominence really in kind of the German Industrial Revolution. They were a small family company and they were connected to brewing and making kind of like firing pans and equipment for the brewing industry. And so I was really interested to think about.

how on earth did that change and become the major suppliers of, sorry, my coughing. So I was really interested in how on earth did that transform itself into a company that produced crematoria. And initially working on crematoria was this tiny, tiny, tiny sort of side part of their business, mainly that arose from one of the two brothers,

who had sort of fought for control of the company, the top brothers who were called Ludwig and Wolfgang. And they competed with each other, they were very competitive. And Ludwig was kind of a playboy and he never really did very well at school, he dropped out of university and he needed to sort of find his place in the world and in the company. And fortunately for him, or sort of unfortunately, there was an engineer at the company called Kurt Prufer.

who was also feeling, you know, very much kind of not appreciated and lower class and also was very, very ambitious to make a name for himself. And they sort of teamed up and developed some of the first crematoria in Germany. And of course, originally this had absolutely nothing to do with the Nazis or concentration camps. They wanted to be part of the kind of crematoria movement, which was something that was kind of taking place in Europe.

Karen (05:00.664)
the early 20th century and it was very much the idea that this was a kind of modern, a modern way of dealing with people dying, it was hygienic, it was sort of technologically superior and so they became a sort of a small part of that movement in terms of designing those kind of like first civil crematorias for people.

Waitman (05:23.744)
And this is just to note, this is also a revolution in some ways, as you suggest, in the acceptability, right, of being cremated. And also the legality of whether or not, you you really, it's okay to be cremated for people, right? Because it seems like in the early, you know, the 19th century, you know, that's not something that's really done. And it's not acceptable sort of religiously, socially, culturally, et cetera.

Karen (05:50.264)
Yes, I mean, what was interesting about the sort of cremation movement is that it's a real sort of ideology. They have magazines and they write articles and they sort of advocate for the idea that this is a kind of ideological, modern, hygienic approach to death and disposing of people's bodies. So it's quite sort of, you know, forward thinking and revolutionary at the time. And Kurt Prufer and Ludwig Topf.

both want to be part of that. They think of themselves as being quite intellectual and they write articles for these magazines and things. So yes, it's very much a kind of, it's an idea as well as a sort of a mechanical process.

Waitman (06:31.04)
And it's also, you know, there are sort of different veins of this too, right? Because you have sort of the cremation for human beings in the sort of the funerals sense, which comes with its own set of regulations, requirements. And then you have sort of the industrial version, which is, you know, slaughterhouses, medical waste, you know, other things that you need to burn to completion, right?

Karen (06:55.32)
Yes, and that's the that's the debate that Kurt Prufer and Ludwig Topf have to enter into. They have to, you know, convince people and write about the fact that this is for human beings and it's dignified, you know, and there's, there's all sorts of things that happen in a human civil cremation that wouldn't happen to an animal. So your body would never touch the flames, your ashes would be sacred, and they would only be your ashes and not the ashes of another person.

So yes, there's all these regulations that they have to sort of design and then tell people about as to why this is a very dignified human form of sort of body disposal as opposed to an animal.

Waitman (07:36.32)
And so then, and as you point out, and think you pointed us out in the book as well, you know, this is still, even at its height is a tiny sort of percentage of the interests of the company. But obviously for the reasons we'll see in a minute, it overshadows everything else. How do the top, and so how does Ludwig and Wolfgang and I guess Kurt Prüfer as well, the engineer, I mean,

How would you characterize them and their political stances? Are they Nazis? Are they, how do they, and how do we know, right? Which is another difficult sort of question.

Karen (08:19.32)
are really, you know, their main interest is becoming prominent well -to -do citizens in their city. And they're not affiliated with politics. They don't really show any interest in politics. They do show quite a lot of interest in, you know, building modern nice houses and buying fur coats and nice cars and being sort of quite splashy people. But I think the key thing is that they have to actually fight for control of their company.

And this happens in 1933. Their father who had been running the company committed suicide and he left it to his wife, their mother, pretty much on the basis that, you know, they would take over when they were old enough. But what happened was when they were old enough, their mother didn't want them to take over and they had to actually fight their mother to control the company.

And of course, this coincided with the rise of the Nazis. And so they realized that a big thing in their favor would be if they became officially Nazis. So they sort of aligned themselves with the Nazis at that point, and they joined the party. And they did get control of the company. But, you know, there's never any evidence, really, at any point that they are interested in any Nazi ideology, that they believe any Nazi ideology.

there's never any evidence that they talk about people in an anti -Semitic way. In fact, they have many Jewish friends and they never sort of, they never write anything in any of their correspondence that indicates that they really believe in the Nazi cause, but it's very much a means to an end for them. What do they get out of it? And clearly they do get a lot out of it.

Waitman (10:07.136)
Well, and this is something that comes through, I think really well in your writing and something that I wasn't aware of because the German language stuff that I've read doesn't, it really focuses just on what they're doing with building crematoria. And of course, one of the things that you unpack or that you're trying to unpack is some post -war justifications as well and statements made by people. But it seems that...

the Toppinson's company was not antagonistic to people who were socialists, communists, organizers, and even may have helped some Jewish employees, et cetera. Which again, I think it bears some discussion because it makes this again more complex in terms of, you know, on the one hand, these people can do this thing, but on the other hand, they can support the Nazis.

Karen (11:06.486)
Yes, that's right. I mean, there's quite a lot of evidence that there were a lot of certainly communist supporters that were part of Topfen Sons and there's kind of an ongoing debate about that. I think they had at least four employees that they sort of harbored throughout the war who were part Jewish. One was quite well known called Willy Wimockley, who was half Jewish, but I think not on his mother's side. And so there was sort of technicalities about how they could...

how they could get away with it. I mean, they weren't in any way supporting resistance to the Nazis and, you know, nor were they saving Jewish people's lives, not at all. But they never said anything that was anti -Semitic. And they did have these employees that were kind of, you know, borderline cases that they sort of went out of their way to help and employ and sort of keep on board. And after the war, they did use that as a justification to say, look, you know,

We were the good guys.

Waitman (12:07.072)
And this is one of those things that I often talk about when I'm teaching, you know, is that it's this whole idea of perpetrator, victim, resistor, bystander, you know, it's not a sort of binary zeros and ones on and off. It's a spectrum, right? And so, you know, you have, I think that the Toppinson's, Ludwig and Wolfgang are a good example of that because, you know, you have people who, when it comes to sort of,

the resistor, I suppose, or rescuer side of things. You know, they're definitely, in some ways, a small step in that direction because they could, there are things they could have done that would have victimized their employees or notified the authorities or stuff like that. But as you say, they're not, they're also not going out of their way to resist the Third Reich or to, you know, help people in a more proactive way. And,

going in the other direction, as we'll see, they are deeply complicit in what the Third Reich's doing.

Karen (13:13.24)
Yeah, I mean, they are deeply complicit and, you know, as we know, as we sort of talk about this more as, as, as those years progress, I mean, they, they kind of drive the agenda further and further towards sort of, you know, being more efficient in how many people are murdered and how they're disposed of and they take a very active part in that. I mean, they're in no way kind of forced to do that or reluctant to do it. I mean, they, uh,

They might not be doing it for ideological reasons. They might be doing it for all sorts of reasons of self -interest, but they are, you know, at the forefront of driving that further.

Waitman (13:49.088)
Yeah. And this is something that, that as you say, I think we'll talk about, and I want to make sure that we highlight, but you know, one of the things that, that your book sort of changed my mind about was, you my initial sort of impression based on, you know, coming across top and sons is this kind of banality of evil sort of desk murder situation. Um, but actually, as you, as you suggest, whether it's ideological or not, these people are not just sort of, um, humming along.

you know, doing what they've always done to sort of support the Third Reich. I mean, they are very, very active and in some cases escalatory, you know, in what they're doing and taking a very sort of open eyed interest in what they're doing, which I think, you know, has really changed the way I think about them as as sort of perpetrators or.

people.

Karen (14:50.104)
I think what's really interesting is that there are clearly sort of red lines. And without knowing sort of too much about the story in advance, you know, you're never really sure where those red lines come. And, you know, is it hard to know where those red lines have been crossed? But actually, they crossed the red line almost immediately and never gave it a second thought. And that came with when they started to work on the first kind of mobile

incineration oven for Buchenwald, you know, in 1939, before the war had even started. You know, and until then, they've been involved in the cremation movement, as I say, they'd, they've made all these kind of highfalutin statements about it. They devised their own rules about, you know, all the things you couldn't couldn't do for human creation. And yet the moment that they were first asked to produce this mobile incineration oven, as they called it, and

know, which disregarded every single one of those rules. They just tossed those rules straight out the window and did it. So it's interesting because there was a red line and they just crossed it immediately and never looked back.

Waitman (16:03.294)
Yeah, it's for in many ways, it's like the it's like the doctors and a medical establishment, which, you know, has its own very clear red line, right? The Hippocratic Oath. And of course, that that also, you know, is sort of the the reddest of red lines and goes out the window, you know, quite quickly. So can you tell us we sort of move now? How do top and sons go from the absolutely mundane, socially acceptable, legal?

creation of crematoria for both commercial as well as funerals purposes. How do they go to building ovens for the Nazis and then what are they being used for?

Karen (16:45.304)
Well, so as I said, I mean, this was the first mobile oven at Buchenwald. And if you go to the Topfen Sons building, and you go up to kind of the third floor on the top floors where they all sat, they actually, you know, they look out and they can see the hill in Buchenwald in the distance where the camp was. So they were aware that it was there. And, you know, by that stage, sort of in 1939, the Nazis had been kind of

relying on kind of taking people's dead bodies down into the town crematoriums that were used for ordinary people. But this was, you know, problematic for all sorts of reasons. Non, you know, people would see how many bodies were going down there, they'd realize how many people were being killed. Sometimes people's bodies fell out of their coffins and people could see they were in a terrible state. So, you know, the camp authorities were very, very keen to keep this enclosed and kind of within the campground so that people would not know and

So they asked Hopf and Sons if they could produce a kind of a crematoria within the camp. At first, it wasn't something that was kind of built as a kind of static site. It was a sort of like a mobile oven. If you look at it, it's like a giant horrible barbecue that you can kind of move around. Yeah. And...

Waitman (18:01.344)
on a trailer.

Karen (18:06.648)
They talked to Topfen Sons and they talked to Proofer and they decided that yes, they could supply these and they started to supply a mobile oven. And that was really where their relationship started.

Waitman (18:15.648)
When the, yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt. When, who, who is the, um, who asks them, is it, is it sort of a local connection because they're in the town where someone from the camp comes and says, Hey, I know you're accompanying the town that works on this. Can you build this? Or is it a more sort of higher level hierarchical? Cause I think one thing is interesting is how that relationship develops too. And they sort of go up the food chain of importance.

Karen (18:39.704)
Yes, that's right. I mean, it is a local connection between the camp and the company to start off with and sort of something that seems, you know, just very logistically convenient. But of course, you know, these things progress quite quickly and soon, you know, it transpires that the mobile ovens don't work very well and they're quite difficult for people to handle. And, you know, since it's obvious that there's going to be sort of a lot of people dying and being murdered.

And they're going to need more capacity. And so they start to talk about, well, let's build a building. Let's have a static oven. And they start to develop that. And as it progresses, that always progresses as completely separate to their work in sort of civil crematoria. So right from the very beginning, you know, there's no notion of the body being sacred or the body not touching the flames. The bodies are, you know, set on fire and they burn.

And, you know, as they progress from sort of a single person to like, what they call double muffler, triple muffler ovens, you know, all of the ashes and remains are kind of mixed together. And it's a completely separate process, much closer to the process that they use for like animal incarceration. But of course, that's also kept secret. And they're

The camp authorities go to quite great lengths to preserve this idea that people are being sort of cremated in the same way as they are civilized. So they have like, you know, the urns and the fire bricks and they pretend to people that, you know, this is an individual urn of ashes of one person and none of that is true.

Waitman (20:24.192)
And so at the same time, are they still continuing to produce the sort of regulation crematoria for funeral homes that meet the requirements of dignity and separation of remains and all that kind of stuff, while they're also literally violating all of the regulations for those with another set of crematoria?

Karen (20:42.84)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yes, yes, and it's interesting because Kurt Prufer obviously has to make a distinction in his own mind about this and so he calls the the ovens that he produces for the SS incineration chambers as opposed to cremation chambers which are the civil ones. So he does know he's crossed this red line, he knows it's different and he's sort of obviously for his own mental way of thinking he has to

it by separate names so that he knows the distinction and the difference as if that's important.

Waitman (21:20.576)
And presumably this is one of those really interesting things within the company, right? That for the bureaucracy, you know, that I suspect that an incinerator, right? That gives us, in our minds, we think about medical waste and, you know, garbage and animal carcasses, right? Those are the kinds of things we incinerate. We don't incinerate, we cremate people. So right there, as you point out, there's a linguistic distinction.

But was anybody within the company kind of looking at that and saying, you know, wait a second, we're literally sort of violating the rules of our industry here.

Karen (21:58.2)
Well, you know, there's no documentation or evidence to suggest that any of those conversations ever took place. They were very matter of fact about, you know, okay, we've been asked to do this, we will do it, what will we call it, how will we do it? Of course, they record it all quite meticulously. And, you know, as it progresses, of course, you know, and you were talking about the banality of evil and desk murderers, I mean, you know, there is a large element of that in their records of, you know, there's no concept that these are human beings or...

thinking about what might have happened to them or, you know, it's very much a kind of, then it's very much a kind of negotiation and commercial enterprise.

Waitman (22:38.272)
Well, and also, as you point out, when you start to dig into this, it's not just Kurt Prufer and it's not just Ludwig and Wolfgang. And I think this is where the idea of a banality of evil makes a little bit more sense because you have, you know, drafters and engineers and, you know, people within a business, within a section of a business who are all involved in doing this. You know, it's just that now the aim has been directed at something else, right?

Karen (23:06.776)
Yeah, and I mean, I think this is what's so interesting about Topf and Sons and what I always found quite sort of relatable about it is that, I mean, when you talk about things being banal, you talk about it being sort of nondescript and people not being interested. And actually, all of these people are passionately interested in what they're doing, because they're fighting for their own status in the company, you know, and they've got work politics and, you know, office politics and rivalries.

this is kind of what's driving them on all the time. And so even if even if sitting here today, we can't imagine, you know, being administrators for concentration camps, we can all relate to what it's like to be working in an office or an organization and kind of hating your boss or thinking you need a raise or you know, somebody's done this to you and how do you respond and sort of all of that sort of thing. And that's kind of what drives them on.

And so that's what makes it sort of a more, a more human story, I think.

Waitman (24:07.52)
Well, there's also the war piece too, right? That for some of these people, this job is literally what's keeping them from fighting in the German army.

Karen (24:19.672)
Yes, that element of self preservation for the people working there and then even for the top brothers themselves. I mean, as things sort of like progress and the war begins, Ludwig gets called up and by this stage, they have quite a strong relationship with the SS, but it goes through Kurt Prufer and he has to kind of throw himself on Kurt Prufer's mercy and ask him to intervene and get him out of this call up.

And of course, Kurt Prufus, who's sort of hated the Topf Brothers for so long and felt for so long that they didn't appreciate him. You know, this is his moment of glory and power that he has, you know, he actually has this hold over them. So yes, it's also that sort of, you know, on their part, how are we going to kind of navigate this Nazi system? How can we use it to our advantage? How can we stay out of the war? We definitely do not want to fight on the Eastern Front. You know, all of that kind of thinking too.

Waitman (25:15.616)
Well, and one of the things that comes through really well, I think in your book, and again, I highly recommend anyone who's interested, please check it out. But also is this is not a nameless bureaucratic relationship with the SS either, as you've suggested with Kurt Prufer. I mean, this is a personal, like it's based on personal relationships as well. You know, we often get this, I think sometimes false sense that the Nazi state is just this massive bureaucracy of

paper being flying around, but actually, you know, these are relationships between individual people. And that's, and again, in this instance, with regards to the military service, you know, it's the personal relationships slash friendships, whatever, that are driving this train.

Karen (26:03.32)
Yes, and I mean, they they certainly cultivate those relationships, particularly as you say, they go they go up the food chain, they work sort of quite closely with people in Berlin. And they try to cultivate those personal relationships, you know, they go to visit them, they're very friendly, but they're also, I mean, one of the things that I find quite surprising is how rude they are to the SS, and their communications, you know, I mean, they, you know, at various points, you know, as we know,

the idea of German efficiency at this time was a bit of a myth and they weren't very efficient and they didn't pay their bills. The TOPs would write them really rude letters about, you haven't paid, we're not supplying anymore until you pay. You'd think that they were like trembling in terror, but actually they weren't. They were quite rude in a lot of their communications too.

Waitman (26:54.56)
And so how do they get, so we have 1939, they've sort of dipped their toes into supplying the camps with crematoria via the mobile ovens, which as you point out, sort of are not, they're not the major selling point. And so then they get involved in building stationary ovens, the kind that we're all familiar with from photographs and visits to places.

How does this begin to escalate and how do their designs change? How do they get, I suppose, more deeply involved in the Nazi genocidal sort of project?

Karen (27:36.056)
I think it's those two men, Kurt Prufer and then his boss Ludwig Topf and they're very keen to develop this kind of area of Topf and Sons as kind of their area of the business and they go out of their way to kind of cultivate relationships with the SS and get more contracts and clearly once they start to build those static ovens that we've all sort of seen.

the, you know, there's a sort of mutual understanding that these actually work quite well. They're quite efficient at getting rid of a large number of bodies quite quickly. Pruf is an innovator. He's keen to kind of like make them more even more efficient. You know, if you can have, you know, two bodies at the same time, why can't you have three and sort of so on and so on. So he's constantly looking at kind of which camps he can service, what designs he can create, how can he...

make them more efficient. And so he's always sort of there at the forefront of saying, look, we can, we can do this even better for you, we can get rid of even more people's bodies, you know, we can do it quicker. And, and it needs that kind of, like on site person to kind of oversee things, because obviously, you know, it's a horrible, terrible mass process. And,

from the engineers point of view, it doesn't always work the way that it should. So they do have to be there a lot of the time, not just Kirk Prufer, but two of the other, they have sort of specific engineers that go and install them and work with them. And, you know, they have to be there to make sure they're working and seeing kind of what's breaking down and what's not working well, and how can they adapt it. So they sort of work hand in hand, really, throughout the system of those camps to, to try and kind of...

facilitate this sort of mass murder and disposal of people's bodies.

Waitman (29:34.304)
And one of the things that if we just pause for a minute, I know it's a little grim, but I mean, this is a, this podcast can often be grim. I think it, I think it bears discussions about what precisely some of these technological advances are. Because I think that they, in some ways the devil's in the details, but it does tell us quite a bit. And then one that has always struck me is that the civilian,

cremation ovens have a square entry because you go in in some form of a casket and so that it fits right into the square entry and it closes. Whereas very quickly, the oven supplied to the camps have a rounded entrance so that you can literally stack bodies because you're no longer putting them in. So in just that one detail, and I want you to talk also about some of the other ones. But in that one detail, you have

I sort of physical representation of the understanding that we are now essentially violating our, our code of our industry's code of conduct. And we know what we're doing. We know that we are burning multiple people at the same time because we've literally altered our design to make that easier. What are some of the other things that we should know as well as some of the terminology I think that we'll probably be using later on.

Karen (31:00.248)
Yes, I mean, that's right. I mean, they, as you say, I mean, they have no sort of pretense that people are going in coffins. I mean, bodies are sort of shoveled directly into, you know, the chamber. They are burned by the fire, so they're not sort of incinerated by hot air, which is what happens in some of the civil crematoriums. And then afterwards, all of those remains are kind of like scraped together and mixed with everybody else's and, you know, disposed of.

They find that, I mean, obviously in a civil crematorium, you know, it's one person, one body. They find that by having like two or three next to each other, what they call double and then triple. And I think, you know, for one camp, they even designed the one that had eight. They find that that's much more efficient in terms of the fire, you know, they can heat them and also the fire from one body that's burning kind of.

contributes to heating another body. So in a sense, it's like using the bodies themselves as the fuel, because they're concerned about the cost of, you know, having to keep these furnaces kind of fired up all the time. And then they, I mean, we'll probably talk about this, but as sort of as the war progresses in the latter stages, I mean, they, Kurt Prufer and his sort of rival, who's his boss, Fritz Sander, at Topfront Sands, they kind of compete to sort of...

create almost the ultimate incineration chambers. And, you know, Fritz Sander has one that's like a designs one that's like a conveyor belt, where bodies are kind of like continuously incinerated. And, you know, they feed off each other in terms of fire and energy. And, you know, they even come up with a system where there's a hole in it. So if a body gets stuck, someone can kind of like stick something in it and the body is shoved and

it's really, really, really heinous. And then Kurt Prufer says that won't work, you know, he writes to Thompson's and says, this idea is ridiculous, it won't work, but I've got my own idea. And he has his own idea for this kind of like cremation ring, which is like, you know, it looks like the sort of circles of hell, if you see it, which is kind of like, feeding bodies down into a sort of continuous pit of being incinerated. So

Waitman (33:19.68)
And this is the one that they apply for a patent for.

Karen (33:24.024)
Yes, yes, and it never got the plan I think was eventually that they would use it at Mauthausen, but then the war ended before they got to use it. But they also I mean, because they were on site and was such a sort of integral part of building the cremation chambers at Auschwitz. They also, you know, saw an avenue there for getting involved in they could see that, you know, people were gassed above and then sort of like cremated and how could they

they wanted to get involved in the technology of that so that they could be involved in the technology of actually gassing people and as they would say making that more efficient. So they were very keen to be involved in every stage of the process and be more and more and more commercially involved in this project.

Waitman (34:13.632)
And one of the things that I just want to clarify, I think for everyone else, this idea of a muffler, right? A muffler. What does that mean? And how does that sort of fit into this process a little bit?

Karen (34:28.696)
Yes, I mean, that's the sort of, you know.

Karen (34:35.222)
I don't know if what you would call it a stretcher or something would, you know, that the thing that would come out that you would put the body on, and then you would push it into the oven. And it would be that sort of that rounded chamber. And, I mean, originally, of course, they're designed for like one person, and then there would be another one sort of next to it and another one next to it. But once they got in there, there'd be no separation between the chambers. So all of the bodies would be together and also

Waitman (34:41.726)
Right.

Karen (35:02.89)
it sort of progressed. I mean, the people who are operating in the camps would kind of load several bodies onto one plate at the same time anyway. And quite often it would break down and then the top brothers would get very upset and say you're not using it properly. And so, yeah.

Waitman (35:20.96)
And so the mufflers then, or the muffles are the openings, like per chimney. And so that's how we sort of, when you hear like a double or quadruple, okay.

Karen (35:25.336)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So that's like the opening where you would put each, you know, if you had sort of three, they would be sort of designed originally for three, three bodies.

Waitman (35:40.416)
And does this take its inspiration in some ways from the sort of animal incinerators? Do they often have sort of that format? Or is this something completely new that they've developed basically out of whole cloth?

Karen (35:56.184)
I think it's based on the animal incinerators, but it's sort of a, I think it's like a bit of a hybrid really, because it's sort of, you know, originally they are designed for like one person, even if that's not how they're used, but then when they actually get pushed inside the oven, they're all together. So yes, it's that sort of multiple.

Waitman (36:16.352)
And so the Auschwitz piece, I think, is, you know, obviously that's, I suppose, what makes them infamous, gains them the most notoriety because of course their trademark is literally stamped on the ovens themselves. But can we, can we talk, you've suggested already a little bit about it, but can we talk about, you know, how they get involved with Auschwitz, when, and you know, what their role is there?

Karen (36:44.152)
Well, I suppose Auschwitz is the camp that I think they're the most involved in. They're involved in it really from the very beginning and they're involved in sort of like the creation of those cremation chambers. So by that stage, you know, they've already done quite a lot of work for the SS elsewhere, but they see this opportunity and as we know, I mean, building Auschwitz was actually quite chaotic. It wasn't very efficient as people tend to think.

And for them, for the Topf Brothers, it's a big contract, you know, to work on creating these sort of big new cremation chambers at Auschwitz. And again, with all of these things, it sort of starts on a smaller scale, and then it kind of builds up to those, you know, I think it's those two sort of big crematoriums. And they spend a lot of time on site. The engineers go and, you know, they go and live in Auschwitz for, I think one of them was there for like nine months, building it.

testing it, making sure it worked. So they were kind of really embedded in embedded in the camp. And

Waitman (37:51.008)
And are these the crematoria, are these the two, three, two, three and four? Were they involved at all with the, because I know that the first gas chambers, right, in the little red house and the little white house didn't have ovens associated. Crematorium one in Auschwitz one does. Did they install that one as well or was that already, so they already knew that there was this idea of a gas chamber co -located with a crematoria.

Karen (38:02.176)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Karen (38:12.12)
Yes. Yes.

Karen (38:20.322)
Yes, and they were interested in that and how they could sort of see if they could take advantage of that.

Waitman (38:26.624)
Because then we have, you know, the crematoria that we're all, I suppose, more familiar with, the sort of iconic ones in Auschwitz II Birkenau. This is crematoria two. Two and three are the sort of the most modern, and then three and four are the sort of more ad hoc stone or brick ones. But those are our, you know, purpose -built crematoria. And so then, or purpose -built gas chambers and crematoria, but co -located. So how...

How does Topp and Sons get involved with those? Are they involved in the planning process, the design process from the Bao Laitung in creating these?

Karen (39:04.696)
Yes, I mean, I think over Auschwitz, they're probably at the height of their involvement with the SS and planning. I mean, they're really kind of involved in, you know, all of the planning. They have two engineers who are sort of, you know, they're more or less all the time. Kurt Prufer goes backwards and forwards. There's no evidence, I don't think that the Topf brothers went, but they were kind of seeing all of the documentation and overseeing it. So,

And they're really, you know, I think, you know, they write about, you know, being there with their stopwatches, doing experiments and sort of like timing how well these crematoria are working. So they're sort of involved in kind of every step of designing and building those crematoria.

Waitman (39:52.256)
And then this is another place where the historical evidence in terms of like the material objects are evidence of their complicity, right? Because they also get involved in ventilation, right?

Karen (40:07.192)
Yes, yes, and that's what I was sort of referring to a bit earlier. I mean they see these sort of these opportunities, they know about the gas chambers and you know they have ideas about how they would make that sort of the ventilation process you know more efficient and sort of how it would be easier to kill people and...

that's a sort of a new step for them. And that's a sort of another red line, really, if you can talk about red lines, because, you know, up until then, they've been involved, everything they've been involved in was about sort of disposing with human remains. But you know, this is the first time that they're starting to think about actually getting involved in the killing of the people and how what is a better way of doing that.

Waitman (40:51.648)
Of course, this is way outside of their corporate history. They're creating, as you point out, boilers and cauldron kind of plumbing equipment. Then they get this side business in acceptable cremations, commercial and funerals, but they're not involved in fans and...

and ventilations at all, right? So they have to almost create and are they actually building that or are they sort of contracting for those parts to be put in?

Karen (41:30.424)
Well, I don't think there's any evidence that they actually ever sold any of their ventilation solutions. They just designed them. But it's always, I mean, that's, that's what's always so striking to remember is that even at very height when they were doing all of this stuff, and such a sort of fundamental part of, you know, what was happening in the concentration camps, it was always a tiny part of top and sons, you know, it never became more than 10 % of their business. And so they still had this.

Waitman (41:35.776)
Oh, okay.

Karen (42:00.184)
business that they were running, that was completely unrelated to all of this and that people were working on. And so, you know, it's just, it's amazing really to think that, you know, they were sort of like so devoted to this tiny part, you know, they could have not done this and still had a very successful business basically, you know, that it, they were not driven by, you know, money to do this or sort of financial need to do it.

Waitman (42:25.536)
Well, because presumably they, they were, it was a relatively easy transition for their, their peacetime, other aspects of their business, that other 90 % into military uses as well, right?

Karen (42:40.706)
Yes, that's right. I mean, of course later, I mean, the people who survived the war at Topf and Sons would say, oh, you know, we were we felt like we were forced to do it or we had to do it. But there isn't really any evidence that you know, they would have suffered or been punished if they haven't been so sort of active in in supporting this.

Waitman (43:01.216)
And this is one of those things that you brought up already, but I think it bears, it bears repeating for listeners and something that's always, I've found incredibly chilling and sort of, it's a nice contrast, right, to the zone of interest film that just came out, you know, where you have people whose, you know, their job is engineer in the same way that you have an air conditioning engineer or a boiler engineer. And so, you know, when you have a new boiler put in or a new heat pump, if you're United States,

or a new washing machine, whatever, somebody comes out, they do all the connections, you know, they make sure that it's, and then they make sure that it works, you know, and in the case of sort of HVAC stuff, they probably turn on your heat or turn on your air conditioning and make sure that it literally works, which is totally fine and normal. But in this context, you have those engineers who again are living, some of them in Auschwitz, the town, in Auschwitz probably,

but are daily commuting to their job site, which happens to be crematoria too. And in order to test to make sure that their equipment is working, they have to be present at the mass murder of people in the gas chambers. And so the door is wide open to what the Nazis are doing and it's completely clear and they have to be there for that to test it.

Karen (44:29.72)
Absolutely, I mean they see it, you know, they know what the gas chambers are, they witness what happens in them and then they oversee those, you know, cremations and as they say, I mean, you know, they do have a, they time it, they have a stopwatch and they have to time it. So there's no, there's no way that they're, you know, only engaged it theoretically. I mean, they have to see all of the horrors that it involves and they understand completely what they're doing. And I think there's one kind of really chilling.

communication where they go back to Topf and Sons in Erfurt and they're having a meeting about this with Gustav Brown, who's, you know, the general manager. And he's not specifically involved in this project any more than he is with, you know, the rest of their work, but he kind of gleefully says to them, well, boys, is there anyone left to burn? You know, and it's like, it's a joke, you know, you've, you know, you've disposed of so many people who's left and that's just a terrible, terrible...

you know, thing to read and think about.

Waitman (45:30.432)
Do we know what, I mean, and this gets into sort of the historical piece of this and the historical sources piece of this, right? Because a lot of the information that we have about what these people thought about what they were doing comes from the post -war and some of it comes from Soviet captivity. And so, you know, there are issues with it, but do we have a sense of what these people were thinking while they're sort of standing there with the stopwatch overseeing their installation?

Karen (45:59.864)
I mean, there are gaps, you know, there are things that we don't know. I mean, for example, Kurt Prufer, who's such a central character in all of this, you know, all we have from him in terms of like actual documentation are, you know, letters that he writes, and, you know, communication that he has with top friends and sons. I mean, he does kind of express himself quite freely. I mean, you get a sense of kind of what a cantankerous, quite unpleasant person he is with, you know, a big chip on his shoulder. So,

it's not as if there's not a lot we can learn from that. But I mean, we never have his, you know, his diary from the time or his thoughts or his his personal letters. So there are gaps about, you know, what we know about some of these people as people. And he doesn't have any family, either. So Gustav Brown has a son who I met and who's part of the book. The tops obviously have relatives who also but so so the sort of this big gaps about.

what we know about some of these people. But so we don't know if Kurt Prufer went home to his wife and said, I'm doing this because I need the money, but you know, God, it's really terrible. But there's nothing in any of his communication that he does have with the tops that indicates that he has any qualms about it. And there's nothing in any of the communication that any of them have that sort of indicate that they're troubled by any of this. And there is quite a lot of

documentation from the time because all of those records were kept and they were sort of hidden for sort of decades on site at Topf and Sun. So we have quite a lot of the original, you know, all of the sort of the papers, the letters and all the sort of work related documents we do have access to. So we can tell quite a lot.

Waitman (47:47.744)
And before we get before we get to the post war, because I think the post war is is equally fascinating in some ways. Are there other companies that are doing this as well?

Karen (47:56.216)
Yes, I mean, Topfrensons has a big competitor, which is the Corrie company, which is based in Berlin. And I think there's a German book that's recently been written about them by Annegret Scholl, who wrote the German book about Topfrensons and was the director of the museum there for many years. But, you know, there's less documentary evidence about that. And so I suppose it's been less written about.

And I know we've sort of come on to this, but I think one of the things that's like enabled us to think about the Topf and Sons and their story is that those documents were kept. And also that site was turned into a museum, which is quite unique. I mean, it's the only kind of industrial site, I think, in Germany, which has been related to the Holocaust in that way, where they've, you know,

acknowledged it, built a museum to it and you can go to the site and you know you can see the story, you can see the draftsman's desks and they will tell you the whole story there and so that's that makes it quite a unique story and quite a unique place.

Waitman (49:06.4)
Well, this brings us, I think, nicely to the post -war period, because as you point out, I mean, one of the areas that is, I think, in many ways has remained in the dark, certainly probably until the 80s, 90s, was this industrial piece and the sort of the business lineages of modern corporations that were the same back then, but also corporations that sort of are descended from corporations that, you know,

deeply complicit with the Nazis. So what happens to the top brothers but also to these people that are involved in creating and installing these gas chambers or the crematory? What happens to them after the war?

Karen (49:48.952)
Well, so, well, ultimately, most of them are arrested by the Soviets and imprisoned. As you say, they do have to give sort of statements talking about what they've done, which is sort of dubious in terms of sort of reliability. In terms of the Top Brothers themselves, though, they get off, well, potentially relatively easily.

when he understands that the sort of, Erfurt's going to be controlled by sort of Soviet forces, Ludwig Top shoots himself in the head and commits suicide. And Wolfgang ultimately escapes with his family to West Germany. And there's a whole sort of another interesting strand of, of what happens to him then. The engineers themselves and Kurt Prüfer are incarcerated by the Russians. And Kurt Prüfer sort of, I think,

dies by the sort of early 1950s. He's never released. So we never really know kind of truly his part of the story. But some of them like Gustav Brown, he is incarcerated for quite a few years by the Russians, but he is released and he comes back to Erfurt and sort of lives with his family and has sort of quite a troubled relationship with them when he comes back. So really, it's then the story of what happens to that company and then what happens to Wolfgang Topf.

in the years afterwards, because the company continues. And it's still top from sons and it kind of goes back to being a brewing company and a sort of an industrial company and many of the people who worked for it during the war continue to work for it. And obviously it becomes a state owned enterprise. And for some time after the war, Wolfgang fights quite hard to stop it being turned into a state owned enterprise, but then realizes, you know, this is this is hopeless.

And he goes with his family and his children and he lives in West Germany. And basically, he then tries to kind of refound a sort of West German version of Topfen Sons. And what's fascinating is that he tries to sort of recreate the crematorium part of the business as well, and even applies. I mean, you know, I'm laughing because it's just so unbelievably awful, but even tries to sort of apply for a patent.

Waitman (52:08.832)
Whoa.

Karen (52:16.76)
for some of the sort of cremation technologies that they had developed in the war that he can then use in peacetime in West Germany, which is just quite unbelievable really. And he's never very successful. And there's sort of like, oh, is this risk that he's going to be exposed? And the company never does very well. And he sort of, you know, dies in sort of relative poverty and sort of obscurity.

a few years later, but the kind of that part of the story is, you know, probably says a lot about the kind of the mindset of the Top Brothers, you know, if nothing else, that, that they still wanted to pursue this and thought that it was acceptable.

Waitman (52:56.992)
And so were the German authorities, I guess, are speaking West German, but I suppose also in some ways East German, were they not interested in trying to prosecute these people? Because of course, you know, as you know, and the listeners may know, one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials was the E .K. Farben trial, which was directly focused on business and businesses that utilize slave labor, you know.

Karen (53:08.152)
They were.

Waitman (53:25.128)
Enable the Nazi genocidal project, enable the Holocaust. So, I mean, this is not something that at the time was not recognized as a problem.

Karen (53:33.784)
Well, I was curious about that too and what I realized sort of when I investigated a bit further was that...

know, the sort of the system that was set up to investigate and then prosecute former Nazis in West Germany, you know, it was absolutely enormous. The scale of the people who could potentially be prosecuted and how you kind of, you know, sieved your way through that in terms of who should be investigated and who should be prosecuted, and then what happened to them. And there was just so many people. And in a sense, I suppose, compared to some of the other people who could have, you know, potentially been prosecuted.

maybe Wolfgang Topf wasn't even that high on the list. So he was kind of, there were sort of like a couple of media exposés of him and saying, you know, this guy lives in West Germany and this is what he's doing and it's unbelievable. And it sort of led to his financial ruin. But he always managed to sort of slip through the cracks.

Waitman (54:32.992)
Which is kind of amazing because, you know, literally it says Töpfen Sons, you know, on the ovens. When you visit Auschwitz or you visit some of these other camps, you know, literally there's a big trademark with the Töpfen Sons, you know, and so if there was anybody who was at least a poster child for a symbolic person that we could prosecute for as an example of businesses that enable the Nazis, he seemed to be the obvious one, but he's...

he's living in the open apparently without repercussions.

Karen (55:10.328)
Well, yes, without repercussions. I mean, certainly not well off. And, you know, neither he nor his family had sort of a very happy life after that. But nonetheless, they did get to live their life, which is more than can be said for all of their many victims. So, yeah, it was quite surprising and shocking, really.

Waitman (55:29.408)
So one of the things that was really interesting from the book as well was your interactions with some of the family. Can you talk a little about you talked to, I think, with Gustav Brown's son, right? So Gustav Brown is the head of section that Kurt Prufer worked in, right? So he was he would have been sort of his superior, but not his line manager. But he's obviously very familiar with everything that's going on. Right.

Karen (55:40.824)
Mm, yeah.

Karen (55:45.016)
Yes. Yes.

Waitman (55:57.76)
And did you talk to any tough people as well?

Karen (56:00.888)
Yeah, I mean, so one of the the main characters in the book and one of the main people I worked with was Hartmut Topf. And he was a sort of a cousin of the Topf family who'd grown up in Berlin. So his family had always been based in Berlin. He was a sort of a young boy in the war. His immediate family, his father was quite an active member of the Nazi Party. And he spent a lot of time kind of going to Erfurt.

the summer and sort of spending time with his relatives. So he knew a lot about the business and the Topp family but he wasn't a direct descendant and he didn't kind of like, you know, they didn't have any financial stake in Topp and Sons company. And he talks about the fact that after the war he went to a sort of a cinema in Berlin and he was watching a newsreel and he was watching the kind of the news footage that Germans

had to watch after the war about like what had happened in the concentration camps and the Holocaust. And he was watching this newsroom and he suddenly saw the name Topf as you say the poster child on the on the ovens and he was absolutely astonished and he was like is this Topf and Sons is this my family and he went home and talked to his mother about it and I think she said oh well we don't know anything about it and it was kind of like brushed under the carpet and he had

know, siblings, but Hartmut actually, they lived in East Germany, East Berlin. Hartmut kind of escaped to West Berlin and lived for sort of most of his life in West Berlin and was involved in kind of like puppet theatre and radio and journalism himself. And then as kind of, you know, the 1960s and the 1970s progressed, he really wanted to find out about sort of the history of his

his family and the history of this company and he started to travel backwards and forwards across the border and visit Erfurt and kind of the site of the factory and where he really, you know, got engaged with this story was that.

Karen (58:08.982)
some of the other top relatives in West Germany who were related to Wolfgang wanted to have restitution for the company and for their houses that they'd owned in Erfurt. So this was obviously after the sort of after the end of East Germany and sort of the reunification. And they were sort of petitioning to have like a claim on the company and a claim on their former properties and Hartmut just thought this is wrong.

Waitman (58:21.344)
Oof.

Karen (58:38.87)
know, this is absolutely wrong. We should not benefit financially from any of this. And so he went to to Erfurt and kind of led the campaign against members of his own family and said, No, no, absolutely, we do, we will not get any money out of this. And in doing so sort of raised a lot of awareness about top from sons and what had happened. And, you know, that was something that at the time was not kind of widely talked about in Erfurt or in in East Germany at all.

he managed to salvage, to find and salvage all of the original documentation relating to all of this that had been kind of like hidden, I think, buried in the cellar at Topfrensans and he rescued that. And that was originally all taken away and sort of used by a historian in France. And then he set up a foundation and kind of created the site of the former company as, you know, a memorial, which would have this

kind of like huge exhibit about what had happened there and you would be able to see the desks and things. And so he was the person who was really sort of instrumental in setting all of that up and faced a lot of local opposition. You know, people were not, as you can imagine, massively enthusiastic about creating this memorial and sort of in their eyes dredging all of this up and why do you want to talk about all of this again? And you know, there was a lot of sort of hostility to him doing it. So

all credit to him for doing that. And as I say, the work that he's done there is actually pretty unique.

Waitman (01:00:13.44)
And I suspect it didn't endear him to his family either.

Karen (01:00:17.208)
It certainly didn't endear him to the other top relatives in West Germany, but, you know, in sort of knowing Hartmut, I also went with him to visit his sister who lives in the same house that he grew up in that was once in East Berlin. And she had stayed there, so she'd stayed in East Berlin. And we were kind of looking at photo albums together and I said, but what did you think about all of this?

you know, knowing that your family was involved in this and she just kind of looked at me quite blankly and said, I just never thought about it at all. And, you know, that was.

Waitman (01:00:54.418)
in the sense that she hadn't reflected on the morality of it or the fact that she didn't really know much about it or think about the fact that they had done it.

Karen (01:01:05.43)
I think they were aware that they'd done it, but they just hadn't had never been able to think about it. And it was quite interesting. So at the time, it was quite surprising. I mean, I sort of I suppose I expected two reactions either that she would say, you know, it was terrible. I was very ashamed of it. You know, I couldn't live with it all. Well, you know, they did bad things, but I'm proud of them because they were my family. I was expecting sort of like something like that, but just I have never thought about it. The sort of blankness.

And it was sort of similar to when I talked to one of them meant Gustav Brown's son and talked to him. And a similar kind of like blankness and I suppose that's part of denial really. Not denying, they couldn't actually sort of deny the facts about what their relatives had done, the kind of just a real blankness about what that meant or how they felt about it or you know, what that meant in terms of the human, you know, they were also not engaging with.

what had happened to all of the human beings that had suffered because of top -front suns, just I guess in the same way that their relatives haven't originally.

Waitman (01:02:12.032)
I mean, I think that's one of the fascinating things that comes out of your book, but also something that some German sociologists, Harold Walser and others have sort of identified, which is this ambivalent relationship between different generations of Nazi perpetrators towards what happened. Because of course, as you rightly identify, even if they didn't believe it,

The obvious thing to say to someone who's writing a book about Töpfen sons in the Holocaust, right, is that was really terrible. And I'm really upset that my family did that. And I think it was really wrong, right? So that even, you know, one would expect, as I think you point out, right? One would expect them to, you know, either legitimately or lying, say something like that, because that would be the obvious thing to say. And so the fact that they don't say that gives us some insight into...

Karen (01:03:00.024)
Yeah.

Waitman (01:03:08.32)
perhaps how they're actually feeling about this because it's, you know, you wouldn't expect just out of basic self -interest and understanding of kind of what would be the socially acceptable response to that, you wouldn't expect them to sort of be like, I don't really think about it.

Karen (01:03:24.824)
Yeah, exactly. Yes, it really is interesting as a way of, you know, how they cope with all of that is just to not think about it.

Waitman (01:03:33.12)
And did you ask them, you know, a particularly, maybe a little bit more of a pointed question about, you know, how, how, how would you judge your, your relatives behavior during this period?

Karen (01:03:46.808)
I think.

Waitman (01:03:48.69)
Or did you get a sense of what they might've answered to that?

Karen (01:03:51.896)
Well, yes, they did talk about I mean, they would all tell you that they believed it was wrong. I mean, I didn't talk to anybody who in any way tried to defend what they done and nor did they make nor did they use those kind of false excuses that you know, the top president used if you know, we were forced to do it by the authorities or you know, we had to do it or we didn't they didn't use any of that they just you know, they acknowledge that it was completely wrong.

But they were all very keen for me to understand their fathers or their uncles as people and keen for me to know that they had done these things and they were the wrong things to do. But also their fathers were lovely and great and good dads and you know, you know, and that they'd suffered too at the hands of the Soviets. And, you know, you know, that that story too. So nobody tried to.

claim that it hadn't happened or that it wasn't a terrible thing. But it also didn't really that was something that was very separate to their view of the kind of their father or their uncle as a person and how they felt about them. And they could still have like very warm feelings about them as a person while saying yes, but they did these things and they were wrong.

Waitman (01:05:09.632)
And I think this is the, the.

really interesting.

paradoxes, contradictions in looking at perpetrators in general, but also this example, and also to look at zone of interest, I mean, people even like Rudolf Hus, is that all those things you just mentioned can be true. I I'm sure that they did suffer under the Soviets, right? I'm sure that they did suffer potentially under Allied bombing or whatever else, right? It is also possible that they're

their father, uncle, you know, was a nice human being to them. What challenges us, I think then, is the fact that, but we also know for a certain fact that this other side of them existed, you know, and that's awful and wrong and they knew it. I mean, obviously we can't necessarily prove that, you know, they knew what they were doing was wrong, which is a different, it's a slightly different argument, but.

Certainly they knew what they were doing. And if we accept that most Nazi perpetrators were not sort of sociopaths incapable of, you know, empathy and human reasoning, at some level, they must have known that what they're doing is transgressing all bounds of morality and normality. And knowing all of that, they continued to do what they were doing.

Waitman (01:06:45.216)
So having looked at this in detail, what does this tell us about this group of perpetrators? I think it is fair to say that these are not bystanders. These are perpetrators just in a sort of different manner than the people pulling triggers or actually being guards in camps, that kind of thing.

Karen (01:07:09.912)
Absolutely, yes. And all of those that were involved in the Topp enterprise were perpetrators and I completely agree with that. They weren't bystanders or even administrators, but you know, active, active perpetrators and participants. I mean, the most, the most interesting, one of the most interesting stories that emerged was that we turned out that Ludwig Topp had a son that no one knew about.

Waitman (01:07:25.056)
So how do you parse these people?

Karen (01:07:38.306)
who was sort of emerged in the course of looking at this book. And Hartmut, who was of course like his cousin or second cousin, met up with this guy who was alive and living in Switzerland. And he'd always heard that he was Ludwig Topf's son, but there was no evidence of it. And he'd sort of, you know, grown up separately and had always sort of felt very much the loss of having...

this man who we believe was his father in his life. And so anyway, in the course of this book, we arranged for Hartmut to go and meet him. And this guy took a DNA test. And, you know, he is Ludwig Topp's son, which is quite a big sort of revelation. And after this, I talked to him about that and how he felt about it. And I really wasn't sure how he was going to feel that I mean, the emotional,

I thought the emotional impact of finding out who your father is, and he's a terrible war criminal, and has done the most atrocious, heinous things. I mean, how on earth do you process that? How are you going to feel about that? But he was very happy to be Ludford Topp's son. And he didn't really like the other people that I talked to. He didn't really think very much about.

like the crimes that this man had been involved in. And he felt like he'd waited all his life to find out that, you know, he was really Ludwig Topf's son and now he knew. And the Topf family was a sort of very prestigious, well -known German industrial family. And he felt quite honored to be a part of it. So that was fascinating.

Waitman (01:09:25.76)
Gosh, so much to unpack there. I mean, yeah. He's happy to know his father, but obviously very strange that he would sort of be proud of it. Gosh. Well, I actually, I don't want to stop this discussion, but I think we should in the interest of time. Before we close, I always ask, what is one book on the Holocaust?

Karen (01:09:27.128)
Mmm.

Waitman (01:09:55.68)
that you as an author of several have found particularly influential, interesting, that you'd recommend for readers to check out.

Karen (01:10:04.312)
Well, I think one of the books that I read quite early on in all of this was when I was working with Everschloss and I read a book about what had happened to Dutch Jews. I think it's called Winds of Change and it tells the story of sort of the Dutch Jews in the Holocaust. And that to me was a very influential book and sort of telling a story, part of the story that at the time I didn't know, but also in sort of huge detail about, you know, their lives and that community and what had happened to them. So.

that has always stayed with me as being a very sort of influential book to me.

Waitman (01:10:38.752)
Well, Karen, thank you so much. This has just been an amazing and enlightening conversation and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. And for everyone else, you know, I will have a link to Karen's book, which I really, really, really cannot recommend enough in the show notes. As always, if you are finding this podcast to be engaging, important for you, please...

Karen (01:10:47.16)
Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.

Waitman (01:11:06.464)
leave a comment, leave a rating review on all the places. You can also email me if you have questions, suggestions. The email is on the website. And we will see you next time.