Testimony of Engineer Fritz Sander on Crematorium Design
(March 7, 1946)
I decided to design and build a crematorium
with a higher capacity. I completed this project of a new crematorium
in November 1942 - a crematorium for mass incineration, and I
submitted this project to a State Patent Commission in Berlin.
This "Krema" was to be built on the
conveyor belt principle. That is to say, the corpses must be brought
to the incineration furnaces without interruption. When the corpses
are pushed into the furnaces, they fall onto a grate, and then slide
into the furnace and are incinerated. The corpses serve at the same
time as fuel for heating of the furnaces. This patent could not yet
be approved by the Main Patent Office in Berlin, because of its
classification (as a state secret).
Q. Although you knew about the mass
liquidation of innocent human beings in crematoriums, you devoted
yourself to designing and creating higher capacity incineration
furnaces for crematoriums - and on your own initiative.
A. I was a German engineer and key member of
the Topf works and I saw it as my duty to apply my specialist
knowledge in this way to help Germany win the war, just as an
aircraft construction engineer builds airplanes in wartime, which are
also connected with the destruction of human beings.
Sources: Quoted from the interrogation transcripts
by Prof. Gerald Fleming from the University of Surrey, New York
Times, (July 18 1993). The
Nizkor Project
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