J.A.Topf & Sohne Letter

Typewritten letter with ‘Abschrift!’ underlined at top, ‘J.A. Topf & Sohne’ handstamps at top and bottom. Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash: Topf and Sons politely request of the military detachment in Erfurt that due to a staff shortage and an ‘inability to find a suitable replacement’, the services of Specialist Benno Glicenstein, a Jew, are required in his role as a “construction-fitter”, and that until they are assigned a suitable replacement in the form of a foreigner or prisoner of war they will need to keep the Jew. Topf and Sons was an established, venerable engineering firm located near Erfurt, which -under the Third Reich – profited from supplying crematoria to the SS and their concentration and extermination centers: e.g., Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec and Mauthausen. There were 46 crematoria at Auschwitz alone. The chief engineer of the Topf furnaces was Karl Prufer. In 1942, as the Nazis were experiencing the need for murdering Jews on an industrial scale, engineer Fritz Sander received a patent for a continuously operating incinerating oven “for mass use”.https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/2301/thumbnail.jp