A sobering story of an industrial family’s cold efficiency behind the design of the ovens at Auschwitz Architects of Death tells the astonishing story of how the gas chambers and crematoria that facilitated the murder and incineration of more than one million people in the Holocaust were designed not by the Nazi SS, but by a small respectable family firm of German engineers. Topf and Sons designed and built the crematoria at the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Belzec, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Gusen. At its height, 66 Topf triple muffle ovens were in operation—46 of which were at Auschwitz. These were not Nazi sadists, but men who were playboys and the sons of train conductors. They were driven not by ideology, but by love affairs, personal ambition, and bitter personal rivalries. Even while their firm created the ultimate human killing and disposal machines, their company sheltered Nazi enemies from the death camps. The intense conflagration of their very ordinary motives created work that surpassed in inhumanity even the demands of the SS. But the company that achieved this spectacularly evil feat of engineering typify the banality of evil. In the 1930s their family firm produced apparatus for all sorts of industries—baking, brewing, the firing of ceramics. Ovens for crematoria accounted for only a small proportion of their business, but it is for these that the Topf brothers became infamous. Their name can still be seen stamped on the iron furnaces of Auschwitz.
Still, this is not a book without hope.
Rudolf Hoss has been called the greatest mass murderer in history.
Throughout the book, Scheer examines both the theoretical bases and the practical consequences of these changes.
Drawing heavily on new materials and archival sources, supported by nearly 270 plans, photographs, and drawings, the book is not only a definitive work on the design of cemeteries but is also the cultural history of an age.
The definitive monograph on Swedish modernist architect Sigurd Lewerentz. Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) is one of the most highly revered--as well as one of the most heavily mythologized--protagonists of modern European architecture.
As the first survey of Italy’s monumental cemeteries, the book explores the relationship between architecture and politics, or how architecture is formed by political forces.
This collection includes essays by Kazi K. Ashraf, David Bertolini, Simone Brott, Peggy Deamer, Didem Ekici, Paul Emmons, Donald Kunze, Todd McGowan, Gevork Hartoonian, Nadir Lahiji, Erika Naginski, and Dennis Maher.
A thoughtful exploration of modern architectural monuments and memorials Structures built in response to death pose unique architectural challenges-challenges that transcend the physical to encompass symbolism, beliefs, and culture....
A Celebration of Death: An Introduction to Some of the Buildings, Monuments, and Settings of Funerary Architecture in the Western...
A mystery of obsession exploring the heights and depths within the world of architecture: Who would you kill to satisfy your creative ego?