Pronađen građevinski plan za proširenje Auschwitza

Njemačke novine Bild prenose da je u stanu u Njemačkoj pronađen originalni građevinski plan za proširenje Auschwitza.

The plans for a place of terror and death.

German newspaper "Bild" says these are the original construction plans for the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz - they were found in a Berlin apartment.

The architect's drawings are believed to have been used for a major expansion of Auschwitz.

One plan shows a room marked as a gas chamber that was part of a "delousing facility" - another shows a crematorium and a cellar to store corpses.

The first victims were gassed at Auschwitz in September 1941.

Bild journalist Ralf Georg Reuth says the documents, dated 1941, could offer historians new information:

SOUNDBITE: Ralf Georg Reuth, Journalist at "Bild" newspaper, saying (German):

"Science will not be rewritten with them, that is certain, but perhaps the odd nuance will come out of them for some experts."

Reuth says Bild has researched the documents and is sure they are authentic.

The publication of the plans coincided with the 70th anniversary of "Kristallnacht" - where Hitler's Nazis destroyed and looted Jewish houses and shops on the night of the ninth of November 1938.

Many see this pogrom as a precursor of the Holocaust.

UPSOUND

Kristallnacht was being remembered in Germany at memorial services and here at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.

David Silberklein from Yad Vashem publications unit says the blueprints show the Nazis' long term plan to turn Auschwitz from a concentration camp into a death camp:

SOUNDBITE: David Silberklein, Editor of Yad Vashem publications unit, saying (English):

"Here you have a concrete piece of evidence on the beginning of that expansion planning in detail for what developed into the final solution, and many historians now believe that that important turning point from 'lots of murder' to a systematic plan to murder the Jews was just around then, October of 1941."

The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland was the largest - at least 1.1 million Jews were killed there.

No one from the German government's archives was immediately available to comment on the authenticity or importance of the Auschwitz documents.

But some say they could provide evidence of Nazi plans to kill Jews on a mass scale before the "Final Solution" was formulated in late 1941.

Joanna Partridge, Reuters