An exhibition displaying the original Auschwitz blueprints was unveiled yesterday in a moving ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and BILD editor in chief Kai Diekmann opened the exhibition containing the concentration camp plans, which BILD unearthed two years ago.
Yesterday, the weather fit the occasion. Ice cold rain lashed Mount Zion in Jerusalem, ceder trees bent in the storm and dark clouds gathered over the Holocaust memorial site Yad Vashem during the emotional opening ceremony.
Inside the pavilion the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened the ‘Architecture of Murder’ exhibition made up of the original blueprints of the concentration camp in Auschwitz – a gift from BILD to the memorial site and to the Jewish people.
The prime minister thanked BILD editor in chief Kai Diekmann for the blueprints, in the presence of ministers, Holocaust survivors, diplomats from over 60 countries, rabbis and Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat.
In his speech Netanyahu called the blueprints an important contribution to the proof of the Holocaust.
He said: “This is an opportunity to express a basic truth”.
At the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (27 January 1945), Avner Shalev, President of Yad Vashem, said that it should be a duty for future generations to preserve the memory of the mass murder carried out by Nazis in Auschwitz and other concentration camps to ensure that such a crime will never be allowed to happen again.
"The original plans detailing the construction of Auschwitz constitute a graphic illustration of the Germans' systematic effort to carry out the Final Solution," said Avner Shalev.
The special exhibition presents concrete proof, said Shalev, that the German National Socialists had already at an early stage meticulously planned and prepared the factory-murder of the Jews.
On one of the plans, drawn up in November 1941, a cellar is labelled 'corpse cellar', and a staircase is labelled 'chute', for the dead bodies to slide down.
Editor in chief Kai Diekmann confirmed that it was BILD's aim from the outset to give the documents to the Jewish people “as a sign of respect” and for them to be exhibited in Yad Vashem.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and Chairman of the Yad Vashem advisory board, thanked BILD, “that you have brought these documents here, where they belong, in the central place of remembrance for the millions of victims of the Holocaust”.
A travelling exhibition of the Auschwitz blueprints is also on display from today at the UN headquarters in New York
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