BERLIN — Architectural plans for the Auschwitz death camp that were discovered in Berlin last year were handed over Thursday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for display at Israel's Holocaust memorial.
The 29 sketches of the death camp built in Nazi-occupied Poland date as far back as 1941. They include detailed blueprints for living barracks, delousing facilities and crematoria, including gas chambers, and are considered important for understanding the genesis of the Nazi genocide.
The sketches are initialed by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess.
"There are those who deny that the Holocaust happened," Netanyahu said. "Let them come to Jerusalem and look at these plans, these plans for the factory of death."
The Axel Springer Verlag, publisher of the mass circulation Bild newspaper, said it purchased the prints after they were allegedly found by someone claiming they had been stashed in Berlin apartment.
Based on research since they were acquired, however, Bild now believes the documents were probably stored at the Third Reich archive of the East German secret service, the Stasi. Several other documents from this archive have surfaced after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, it said.
The blueprints' authenticity has been verified by Germany's federal archive.