FORT BENNING, Ga., (April 8, 2015) -- A new exhibit at the National Infantry Museum takes the story of the Holocaust beyond the heart-wrenching images of starving prisoners, marches to the gas chamber and bodies in ditches. The exhibit, called Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints, examines the details that went into planning and building the Germans' systematic effort to carry out the "Final Solution" to annihilate the Jewish people.
The exhibit is made up of 29 pieces - blueprints, drawings, photos and documents - that were discovered in an abandoned apartment in Berlin in 2008. They were acquired by German newspaper Bild and turned over to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, for safekeeping.
The Nazis produced hundreds of technical drawings of various building sites, among them detailed sketches of the gas chambers and crematoria. Some of the documents bear notes in the margins or signatures by senior Nazis, including Heinrich Himmler, widely considered one of the men most responsible for the Holocaust. Most of the documents were prepared in the fall of 1941. The editor of Bild called them "plans of hell."
The traveling version of the exhibition is provided by The American Society for Yad Vashem, which is headquartered in New York. The exhibit debuted at the United Nations in 2010, on the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
"This exhibition delivers a vital message that bears repeating again and again: the Holocaust did not just happen; it was planned. The abominable crimes committed against so many millions of Jews and others were not just incidental casualties of war; they were its very intent. The blueprints for Auschwitz-Birkenau show just how many people it took to build this enterprise of death," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the debut.
Jack Goldfrank, a National Infantry Museum Foundation board member who has seen pieces of the exhibit, said the exhibit made him think of the backgroud people involved.
"It makes you think about the people who made this happen - the architects, the engineers, the workers who delivered supplies and built the structures," he said. "Could they have known how their work would lead to one of the darkest periods of our history?"
Temple Israel Rabbi Beth Schwartz said she looks forward to seeing the display.
"It is especially fitting that this exhibit has come to the National Infantry Museum because of the role that American Infantry and Armor Soldiers played in liberating so many victims of Nazi evil," she said.
Schwartz's father-in-law, Richard S. Washington, was part of the 11th Armored Division when it liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945.
The exhibit opened April 7 and will remain on display throughout the month. It coincides with the 70th anniversary of the camps' liberation and is timed in conjunction with the nation's Days of Remembrance.
The Maneuver Center of Excellence will hold its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day observance at the museum on April 16.
Guests are encouraged to visit the museum's permanent Holocaust installation in the World at War gallery. It includes a video that tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of both survivors and the Soldiers who liberated them. The exhibit is dedicated to retired Colonel and Judge Aaron Cohn, who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Ebensee, Austria, while serving with General George Patton's Third Army in May 1945.
The National Infantry Museum is open 9 a.m.-5p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sundays.
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