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

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This Place of Remembrance is important to me

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for various reasons, both personal and professional.

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I’m a historian specializing in the history of the Holocaust,

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and I consider it very important to understand

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how the participation in the Holocaust

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 became so deeply entrenched in the German society,

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in the everyday life of German society.

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There were people here in Erfurt

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 who designed technology for the mass murder committed in Auschwitz.

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That shows that not just Berlin, Munich, etc.,

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the others, Germany’s major power centres,

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played a role in this crime.

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This place, the Place of Remembrance,

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also holds personal significance for me.

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 Apart from my professional practice as a historian,

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I am the son of Holocaust survivors

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and I have many relatives, my grandparents

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and many aunts and uncles,

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who perished in the Holocaust.

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 Several of them were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Even though this topic is not the subject of my own research,

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I am extremely interested in it,

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and try to understand this entire historical complex.