Engineering thought never stands still. It develops especially rapidly during periods of wars and other cataclysms. Dr. Guillotin, a very compassionate and even sentimental person, invented a method of humanely executing criminals - a special device for chopping off the heads that received his name - the guillotine.
Everyone knows how the "humane invention" of Dr. Guillotin was used during the Great French Revolution. German engineer Kurt Prüfer lived a century and a half later. But his inventive gift kept pace with the times. The engineer Prüfer improved the crematorium ovens in the Nazi death camps.
Good worker
It is known about Kurt Prüfer that he was born in the Thuringian town of Erfurt on April 21, 1891, that is, he was only two years and one day younger than Adolf Hitler. Kurt's father worked as a locomotive driver, which at that time was considered a very advanced profession. The boy's childhood was the most ordinary, the family was the most ordinary, he also studied without obvious success.
After graduating from high school, Kurt decided to pursue a construction degree. However, he could not enter the famous Erfurt University - probably, he lacked knowledge. Therefore, I went to the School of Applied Arts to study as a bricklayer, and after receiving secondary specialized education I decided to get an engineering degree and spent six semesters in high-rise construction at the Royal College of Civil Engineering.
In 1911, after training, Prüfer was hired by the well-known Erfurt firm Topf & Sons, which was engaged in a wide variety of activities. He started out as a simple draftsman and designer of malting equipment. Good firm, stable salary, slow but guaranteed career growth. However, the stability lasted only a year. When Kurt was 21 years old, he was drafted into military service, and a couple of years later, in the summer of 1914, the First World War began. Prüfer found himself on the Western Front and experienced the same "pleasures" as his older contemporary Hitler.
However, unlike Hitler, Prüfer did not draw political conclusions from the military experience. He dreamed of a calm, peaceful life and a good salary. In order to increase the chances of obtaining it, he underwent additional training and was graduated with a civil engineer diploma. Fortunately for Prüfer, Topf & Sons has proven to be surprisingly resilient to adversity. She did not go broke and even managed to keep a job for Prüfer. It was worth a lot in those hungry years! The company's management was also not mistaken in its choice: Prüfer was its real patriot, he worked not for fear, but for conscience.
Promotional video:
Prüfer specialized in a narrow segment of the company's activities - the construction of furnaces for civil crematoria. This segment in the company occupied only about 3% of orders. Obviously, this is why Kurt's salary was low. But Prüfer endured. He carried out his duties honestly, trying to provide his employers with the maximum income.
Prüfer's head worked well, he made one rationalization proposal after another. True, this did not bring practical material benefits. Yes, and prestige in your own company - too. Although he was appointed chief engineer in 1935, he had neither the right to sign financial documents nor the right to formulate strategic plans for the industry. Prüfer remained just an engineer. A good engineer. And then the Second World War began, and after its end, Prüfer suddenly found himself among war criminals.
Keeping piety
Since the last quarter of the 19th century, cremation in Germany has become more widespread. Lectures and discussions were held on the topic of cremation, where pundits explained to the public how much wiser it is to turn a dead body to ash than to bury it in the ground and give worms work. Articles about pious burial in urns were published in magazines and newspapers.
With the coming to power of the Nazis, who introduced ancient pagan rituals, cremation was considered much more correct than Christian funerals. In general, this was due to the Great War and its aftermath - epidemics that shook the country when there were a lot of corpses, and they could cause the spread of the infection. Crematoria began to be built en masse in German cities.
They were built and maintained by the employees of Topf & Sons. The firm has been in contact with other companies in the field, as well as with incinerators and animal carcasses. However, the law on pious burial forbade the burning of human bodies in the same way as was done with the corpses of animals. According to this document, the human body had to be burned without direct contact with fire, in a separate coffin, so that the ashes of the deceased would not accidentally mix with the ashes of another burned body. Violation of the cremation process could be brought to justice. The firm respected the laws of the state and supported all government regulations. In 1933, both Topfs themselves and all employees of the company voluntarily joined the NSDAP.
Prüfer honestly designed the ovens that met the requirements of German law as closely as possible. He managed to develop such a device, that productivity increased, but "piety" was preserved. Even the cremation of the infected corpses was fully legal. But with the outbreak of hostilities, everything changed.
The Topfov company came under the command of the Reich General Security Office. Now she was filling government orders for the mass disposal of bodies. Of course, crematorium furnaces were built for this purpose in concentration camps. Attempts to use conventional crematoria for mass cremation failed immediately. It turned out that there were too many victims. And when a massive typhus epidemic broke out in Mauthausen, it became clear that there was only one way to escape the epidemic - to put bodies on fire. The pious burial law forbade mixing ashes with ashes, but this only applied to city crematoria. Different rules began to apply in the camps.
Before the judgment of history
Engineer Prüfer improved the incineration system using the experience of enterprises for the disposal of animal carcasses. He turned a single-muffle crematorial oven into a two-, three-, four-muffle furnace. Together with another engineer, Fritz Sander, he received a patent for a "continuous incinerator", the so-called "circular crematorial kiln", which - unlike a muffle - could work without stopping.
The management of the Auschwitz camp sincerely thanked the engineers of the company and personally Kurt Prüfer for creating this miracle of technology. Did Prüfer know for what purpose his invention was used in the camps? Of course he knew. He had to go to the facilities in case of breakdowns, his installers installed equipment, removed chimneys. Prüfer was not an evil person. But he never asked himself unnecessary questions. As, however, and other employees of "Topf & Sons". During the war, these Reich engineers built 66 crematoria furnaces.
Interestingly, the firm employed many people who could have ended up in the same camps. The topfs were not afraid to hire half-breeds, Jews, communists, internees, prisoners of war and other objectionable people, and if their people got into the police, the directors found a way to get them out of trouble.
Probably, the improvement of crematorium furnaces was carried out on the basis of the principle “if not us, then someone else”. Burials were tried in Auschwitz - and the groundwater was poisoned. I had to dig up the dead - and burn. The hour of reckoning came when Germany was occupied by the Allied forces. However, the Americans did not show the slightest interest in the engineers of Topf & Sons. But the Soviet authorities arrested the entire development team in 1946. The firm's chief engineer, Fritz Sander, died of a heart attack during interrogation. His colleagues Karl Schulze and Gustav Braun, who were sentenced to 25 years in the camps, partially unwound him and were released in 1955. Kurt Prüfer was the most unlucky: according to the court's verdict, he was sent to the GULAG, where, after a stroke and partial paralysis, he died and was buried in a common grave.
Nikolay KOTOMKIN