1 00:00:00,109 --> 00:00:01,164 “My connection to Topf 2 00:00:01,734 --> 00:00:04,007 is the death of my 49 relatives, 3 00:00:04,250 --> 00:00:06,734 including my parents and my eleven-year-old sister. 4 00:00:07,521 --> 00:00:10,091 They were all incinerated in ovens made by Topf & Sons. 5 00:00:10,482 --> 00:00:13,724 Every year I go to Buchenwald to see an oven, 6 00:00:14,091 --> 00:00:16,099 because it was in an oven of that or a similar kind 7 00:00:16,474 --> 00:00:18,607 that all my family members were incinerated, 8 00:00:18,724 --> 00:00:20,606 and because there are no more ovens of that kind in Auschwitz.” 9 00:00:21,490 --> 00:00:24,193 Those were words Éva Pusztai spoke in 2011 10 00:00:24,287 --> 00:00:26,865 the presentation of a book about the Topf & Sons company. 11 00:00:27,592 --> 00:00:28,927 For us it is inconceivable that 12 00:00:29,396 --> 00:00:31,833 Éva Pusztai doesn’t have a cemetery where she can mourn. 13 00:00:32,552 --> 00:00:34,458 All that remain to her are the ovens in Buchenwald. 14 00:00:35,584 --> 00:00:38,521 The loss of one’s complete family is so incomprehensible to us 15 00:00:39,123 --> 00:00:40,661 that we can hardly find words for it. 16 00:00:41,631 --> 00:00:43,685 Éva describes that time as unbearable. 17 00:00:44,748 --> 00:00:47,318 Nevertheless, until the end, she never gave up hope of returning home. 18 00:00:48,467 --> 00:00:50,521 Despite these occurrences, experiences 19 00:00:50,834 --> 00:00:52,177 and horrible memories, 20 00:00:52,521 --> 00:00:54,240 Éva goes to Buchenwald 21 00:00:54,622 --> 00:00:56,240 every year to commemorate her family. 22 00:00:56,967 --> 00:00:58,935 These ovens at which Éva commemorates her family 23 00:00:59,193 --> 00:01:00,935 were the invention of Kurt Prüfer, 24 00:01:01,990 --> 00:01:04,810 one of many employees at Topf & Sons. 25 00:01:05,256 --> 00:01:07,904 In our opinion, he is nevertheless very much worthy of mention, 26 00:01:08,310 --> 00:01:10,498 because he contributed greatly to – and here I quote 27 00:01:10,545 --> 00:01:12,927 from the exhibition at the Topf & Sons Place of Remembrance – 28 00:01:13,388 --> 00:01:18,349 ‘assembly-line work and the smooth progress of the mass murder’. 29 00:01:19,053 --> 00:01:22,318 We found furnace construction engineer Prüfer’s 30 00:01:22,343 --> 00:01:26,084 economic and technical approach to his work horrifying. 31 00:01:26,537 --> 00:01:30,146 To him, the dead of the concentration camps weren’t people 32 00:01:30,639 --> 00:01:32,521 but numbers on paper. 33 00:01:32,897 --> 00:01:35,638 We can conclude this from a telephone memo 34 00:01:35,959 --> 00:01:37,638 he wrote about the conversation with the SS 35 00:01:37,974 --> 00:01:40,193 in which he advertised his eight-muffle oven. 36 00:01:40,943 --> 00:01:44,513 He cited the performance with the mere number 800. 37 00:01:45,287 --> 00:01:47,966 Here the following questions arise for us: 38 00:01:48,717 --> 00:01:51,568 Why doesn’t he ever talk about human corpses? 39 00:01:52,045 --> 00:01:55,021 Was he conscious of his actions and their consequences? 40 00:01:55,810 --> 00:01:58,771 How did Prüfer reconcile his actions with his conscience? 41 00:01:59,763 --> 00:02:01,122 The individuals involved 42 00:02:01,607 --> 00:02:03,607 in the design, production, 43 00:02:03,998 --> 00:02:05,122 all the way to the installation – 44 00:02:05,131 --> 00:02:06,333 they all could have acted differently. 45 00:02:07,162 --> 00:02:09,568 But – would you act differently? 46 00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:12,005 Supposing in the present 47 00:02:12,084 --> 00:02:15,263 one or two schoolmates were being discriminated by a large group. 48 00:02:16,060 --> 00:02:19,216 Would you help them despite your own disadvantage? 49 00:02:20,303 --> 00:02:22,575 Would you just blindly follow the opinions of the others, 50 00:02:23,060 --> 00:02:24,318 just to belong? 51 00:02:25,529 --> 00:02:29,482 Each individual has to keep constant sight of his responsibility, 52 00:02:29,763 --> 00:02:31,833 and should accordingly ask himself 53 00:02:32,631 --> 00:02:34,240 what he contributes to the whole. 54 00:02:35,099 --> 00:02:38,007 And never forget what happened some seventy years ago.