BERLIN — Architectural plans for the Auschwitz death camp that were discovered in Berlin last year were handed over to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for display at Israel's Holocaust memorial.
Meanwhile, with memories of the Holocaust as their backdrop, Netanyahu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke about the need to keep the Jewish state safe from threats like a nuclear-armed Iran. Merkel also underlined her country's desire to see Israel stop building its contentious settlements, telling reporters after meeting with Netanyahu that "time on this is short."
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 Hess.
"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, obtained the plans from a private person who said he found them when cleaning out a flat in what was formerly East Berlin.
The company and Germany's federal archive have confirmed the blueprints' authenticity.
But the publisher said the numbering found on the backs of the plans indicate they may have been taken from an archive, possibly the collection of documents on the Third Reich kept by the East German secret service, the Stasi. Axel Springer Verlag said several other documents from the same archive had surfaced after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
Bild Editor Kai Diekmann told Netanyahu and Avner Shalev, the chairman of Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, that the publisher decided to give them the sketches because it wanted to ensure that as many people as possible could see them.
"These plans have an important function - they remind us of a crime that, with the passing of time, seems ever more incomprehensible," Diekmann said. "It is of the utmost importance to continue to be reminded of it."
While they are not the only original Auschwitz blueprints that still exist - others were captured by the Soviet Red Army and taken back to Moscow - they will be the first for Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, its chairman said.
"This set is a very early one, which was found here in Berlin, from the autumn of '41," Shalev said. "It brings a better understanding of the whole process, and the intention of the planners of the complex, and from this perspective it is important."
Shalev said the sketches will be on display at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem beginning Jan. 27, 2010, as part of a special exhibit marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
More than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died in the gas chambers or through forced labor, disease or starvation at the camp, which the Nazis built after occupying Poland.
Netanyahu's talks with Merkel in the German capital came a day after a rare sign of progress in bringing Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, with both sides indicating a first meeting between their leaders was likely to take place within weeks.
A meeting between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which the officials said could happen in September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, would be an important symbolic step toward resuming peace talks.
But Netanyahu offered no indication that Israel would agree to a settlement freeze, the Palestinian condition for resuming the peace talks.
Some 300,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, besides 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas.
The United States, a strong ally, has urged Israel to stop expanding the settlements.
Turning to Iran, Merkel and Netanyahu underlined the need for Tehran to stop its nuclear program or face stiffer sanctions.
Merkel noted after their meeting that the Group of Eight's position made it clear that a "definitive point" on the existing offer for Tehran to resume talks on the issue would be reached in September.
"If there is no answer, then we will have to talk about stronger measures and sanctions in the energy, financial and other important sectors," Merkel said.
Information for this article was contributed by Matti Friedman of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 08/28/2009