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BILD presents original plans of Auschwitz to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Thursday 27. August 2009 - Historic documents to go to Yad Vashem memorial
BILDs Editor-in-Chief Kai Diekmann presented the original blueprints of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, 27th August 2009. The historic documents will be transferred to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem for research purposes. The meeting was part of a brief reception in the Axel Springer Building in Berlin. The Chairman of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, was also a guest at the presentation. The plans are to be publicly displayed in Israel in January 2010 on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.
“These plans have an important function: They remind us of a crime, that, with the passing of time, seems ever more incomprehensible”, Kai Diekmann emphasized in his speech. “Auschwitz, like nothing else, stands for the guilt and the blindness of an entire nation. Something so huge, it can hardly be grasped by new generations. That is why it is of the utmost importance to continue to be reminded of it. Because only those that know the past can act responsibly in the future.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the Axel Springer AG and BILD and called the handover of the plans a “gift of truth”. “These plans of the factory of death are very important documents that will help us preserving the historical truth”, Netanyahu said.
The blueprints of Auschwitz are the only original documents of this kind to have been discovered in Germany. BILD acquired them in late summer 2008 in order to make them available both to the public and the academic world. The German Federal Archives, which confirmed the authenticity of the documents in an expert’s report, refer to them as a most significant find. The plans were displayed for the first time in February of this year in a well-received exhibition in the Axel Springer Building in Berlin.