Architectural plans of Auschwitz death camp found in Berlin
By JPOST.COM STAFF
The German paper Bild revealed never-before-seen architectural plans of the Auschwitz extermination camp on Saturday. The floor plans, cross-sections and maps on yellowing paper, mostly on a scale of 1:100, were allegedly found during the evacuation of an abandoned Berlin apartment. They were drawn up between 1941 and 1943, when the Holocaust was at its peak. The 28 documents include detailed blueprints of prisoner barracks, gas chambers marked clearly Gaskammer in a gothic-inspired font and even a cross-section of the gate into which entered the rails of trains carrying Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, disabled persons and other people the National Socialists sent to die in the most horrifyingly efficient genocide in history. One of the maps carries the handwritten signature of Gestapo commander Heinrich Himmler. The plans were not construction plans but were drawn after Auschwitz-Birkenau was built (on the foundations of an existing military base of the Austro-Hungarian empire.) On 20 January 1942 Nazi officials met in the resort of Wannsee east of Berlin where they devised the Final Solution, and this has traditionally been taken by historians as the beginning of the Nazis' extermination campaign. One of the drawings, predating the Wannsee Conference by eight months, sheds new light on the chronological extent of the German genocidal machine. Dr. Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, Chief Director of the Bundesarchivs, the federal archives in Berlin, said the find was of "extraordinary importance." "The plans are authentic certificates of a systematically planned genocide of European Jews," he was quoted by Bild as saying. What the documents tellingly reveal, however, in their unequivocally marked sections, is that any persons involved in the operation of Auschwitz knew full well that it was intended for the systematic extermination of human beings, and were not simple "labor camps." French right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen claimed no people were gassed in Auschwitz as recently as April this year. As the plans show a "Laundry and shower room" leading into a "Dressing room" and then to the "Gas chamber," there could be no doubt what the purpose of the large room marked Gaskammer was. The documents rebut the last Holocaust deniers, Bild states in its report. |
