Additional information
Commemorative site at former stable
Information can be found here.
Link
"Topf & Söhne" Place of Remembrance, Erfurt
Detailed information can be found here.
The crematorium
The two courtyards of the crematorium are surrounded by a wooden fence.
Pathology department
The dissecting room located directly adjacent to the crematorium.
Interior of the crematorium
The crematory ovens of the Topf & Sons Company, Erfurt.
Model of the facility for execution by shooting in the neck.
Yardstick in the reconstructed facility for execution by shooting next to the crematorium.
Crematorium
Initially, the SS had the bodies of persons who had died in the camp incinerated at the Weimar municipal crematorium. In 1940, Buchenwald Concentration Camp had its own crematorium constructed. The incineration system installed in it by the Topf & Söhne Company of Erfurt had been developed specifically for the needs of the SS. The work was carried out by inmates who also had their living quarters in the building.
Another section of the building housed the dissection rooms of the pathology department. There the SS had the corpses plundered before incineration. The gold fillings of the dead were removed; medical specimens were made from their skin, organs and skeletons.
The dead were collected in the mortuary cellar and transported to the oven room with the aid of a lift. One of the camp’s execution sites was likewise located in the cellar. There the SS had some 1,100 men, women and adolescents – concentration camp inmates and Gestapo prisoners – hanged on hooks in the walls.
A model in the crematorium annex demonstrates the function of the facility for execution by shooting in the neck originally located in a stable outside the camp. Beginning in October 1941, more than 8,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered there.
