CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE AUSCHWITZ

CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE FOR AUSCHWITZ 439
expert opinion, some explanations concerning this project are in order.
On October 26, 1942, the Topf chief engineer Fritz Sander wrote a patent
application for a “Continuously operating corpse cremation oven
for mass applications,” which he then rewrote on November 4, 1942.
The stamp “PA” (Patent Anmeldung, patent application) is dated November
5. The patent application opens with the following words:
“In the gathering camps in the occupied territories in the East
with their high mortality rate, as they are affected by the war and its
consequences, it has become impossible to bury the great number of
deceased inmates. This is the result of both the lack of space and
staff and the direct and indirect danger to the immediate and farther
surroundings caused by the burial of the victims of various infectious
diseases. There is therefore a need to quickly, safely, and hygienically
dispose of the constantly great number of corpses.”
He then continued that in this case one could not act in accordance
with the legal dispositions in force in the Reich, but that it was necessary
to cremate several bodies together at the same time and that during
the entire process the flames and the combustion products from the
hearth would strike the corpses directly in such a way that one could not
properly speak of cremation but only of burning of the corpses. Sander
then continues (p. 349):
“To realize such corpse burning – following the principles
sketched above – a number of multi-muffle ovens were installed in
some of those camps, which according to their design are loaded
and operated periodically. Because of this these ovens do not fully
satisfy, because the burning does not proceed quickly enough to dispose
in the shortest possible time of the great number of corpses that
are constantly presented.”
The “multi-muffle ovens” clearly designate the Topf ovens having
two, three and four muffles which already existed at Auschwitz, Buchenwald
and Mogilev. In practice Sander recognized that these ovens
were unsatisfactory, because the cremation was too slow. The reference
to the “occupied territories in the East “ and to “the victims of various
infectious diseases” concerned no doubt the concentration camps,
Auschwitz in particular, where the mortality was extremely high due to
the typhus epidemic which ravaged these camps at that time.