A complete set of blueprints for the construction of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz will go on display in Berlin on Tuesday, documents which reveal that the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish nation originates earlier than previously thought.
The architectural plans, which were discovered in a Berlin apartment last November, are not the first to have been uncovered, but they are the only ones ever discovered in Germany and will be the first to be displayed in Berlin, the capital of the attempted Nazi empire. Two other Auschwitz blueprints are available to the public – one at the Auschwitz Memorial, and another in a Moscow archive.
Consisting of 28 pages, the plans map out the building of a gas chamber, crematorium and corpse cellar at the infamous Polish death camp.
Aside from bearing witness to the Nazis' scrupulous planning, the blueprints shed light on the true initiation of the "Final Solution", Adolf Hitler's bid to wipe out the entire Jewish people.
The decision to kill the Jews has historically been dated to the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. But the newly discovered Auschwitz plans are dated Oct 23, 1941, evidence that the industrial mass murder machine of the Nazis was formulated earlier than historians have estimated.
Dr. Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal archives office in Berlin, said the plans clearly illustrate that architects knew human beings would be exterminated in the buildings. One green ink sketch on the plans appears to be in the hand of SS chief Heinrich Himmler, according to Kreikamp.