Topf and Sons

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.

It is now infamous as the largest of 12 companies that designed and built crematoria ovens for concentration and extermination camps during the Holocaust, planned and carried out by the Nazi regime from 1935 to 1945. The company not only made crematoria ovens, 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 de: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 also built crematoria ovens for Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen-Gusen, Mogilev ghetto, and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Out of the five ovens at Dachau concentration camp, four were made by H. Kori and one by Topf & Söhne. In all, Topf built 25 crematoria 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 Töpf & Söhne, because, to a greater extent than its competitors, it used its considerable expertise to assist the Nazi regime to make mass execution into an efficient, industrial process. Without its complicity, the SS site managers of Auschwitz would not have had the ability on their own to plan and build the crematoria, which were an essential part of the mass murder process.

From 1941, Topf & Söhne used forced labour in its factory, as did many other German firms in the Nazi period. At least 620 foreigners were forced to work for the company. These people received wages, but they were paid 25–30% less than the German employees. After the war, the company was confiscated and nationalised by the Soviet administration. The company's history was not fully researched until after German reunification in 1990.

The site of the former factory is now a holocaust memorial site and a museum. It is the only memorial of its type relating to a civilian company's collaboration in the Holocaust.