
A visitor at an exhibition featuring original architectural plans of the Nazi Auschwitz death camp in Berlin
Blueprints of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, found recently in a rubbish skip, have been put on display in a Berlin shopping centre as a public challenge to Holocaust deniers.
The plans, which show gas chambers, huge storage halls for corpses, and a crematorium, have been put up in a busy foyer between sandwich shops and a sushi bar.
“It’s shocking, deeply shocking,” said Tobias Prennzler, 27, a design student, as he leant forward to decipher the signature of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi security machine. “This was 1941 and they were already drawing up plans for some kind of a death factory. And it looks like they wanted to make it permanent.”