The knowledge of the "ordinary" employees about the extermination

Within the company Topf & Sons there were no attempts of secrecy regarding the participation in the Holocaust. There were many departments engaged in the processing of orders, planning, production, shipment and communication and accounting with the SS, e.g. the administration, the facilities, the shipment, the accounts department and the management.

Picture: The mechanic Martin Holick

The mechanics monitored the smooth functioning of the facilities. Therefore they were on site for up to 12 months and became eye witnesses of the crimes:

Martin Holick watched as a sowjet prisoner of war was burned alive. He and Wilhelm Koch worked in Auschwitz when the SS exhumed 50000 dead bodies and burned them under the open sky in 1942.

The knowledge of the ordinary employees at Topf & Sons can be proved with notes from phone calls and working hours attestations of mechanics in Auschwitz. The SS terms "undressing cellar" and "gas cellar" were used as a matter of course in these documents, which were passed around inside of the company. The management had to sign the contracts with the SS and therefore they were inducted into the details anyway.

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