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Why is the Topf & Sons – Builders of the Auschwitz Ovens – Place of Remembrance important to you?

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I still have very clear memories of standing here at the factory fence of the EMS,

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the Erfurt Malting Plant and Silo Construction company.

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That was shortly after it went bankrupt.

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 It was a typical industrial ruin of the post-reunification era,

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and it was sad to see

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how quickly a formerly proud operation had gone down the drain.

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And at the same time there was this horror about its past.

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The EMS was in reality Topf & Sons,

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 the builders of the Auschwitz ovens, a repressed past.

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That was an oppressive feeling.

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 But despite these contradictory, unpleasant feelings,

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 I’m happy this place exists.

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It makes me happy as a filmmaker

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because real places like this are pretty much all we filmmakers have,

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 apart from documents and testimony from people who experienced the events first-hand.

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And as a citizen of Erfurt,

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I’m glad Topf & Sons has remained a part of the city’s history.

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Topf & Sons is not a nice place, but an important one.

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And in my experience,

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it does no good at all to repress and forget things.

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Places like this remain hopeless if you do that.

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The only thing that helps is knowledge,

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is dealing with the place,

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and that’s what is happening here today in exemplary manner.

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Yes, and not least importantly,

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it makes me glad as the daughter of a Buchenwald concentration camp survivor.

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When the weather is good, you can see the Ettersberg clearly from here.

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So there’s a relationship between these two places.

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I have a deep sense of that relationship; I have no choice.

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It’s part of my life.

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I’m glad and thankful

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that there are new impulses here to help me think about the old question:

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“How were the concentration camps possible?”

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Because if you look at the beginnings, at the technical details,

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here at Topf & Sons, you get a few answers.

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Yes, I’m thankful for that

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and I hope the Place of Remembrance still has many, many years ahead of it.

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I hope it remains part of the city’s history in the future,

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and gives many other people food for thought on the question:

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How responsible are we for our actions?