Hair which belonged to prisoners is seen in the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, January 12, 2007. REUTERS/Katarina Stoltz
A sign saying "Conservation works" hangs in one of the barracks in the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, January 12, 2007. REUTERS/Katarina Stoltz
One of the barracks and a watch tower are seen in the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, January 12, 2007. REUTERS/Katarina Stoltz
By Erik Kirschbaum Sat Nov 8, 2008 10:12am EST
BERLIN (Reuters) - The original construction plans believed used for a major expansion of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1941 have been found in a Berlin flat, Germany's Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.
The daily printed three architect's drawings on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of blueprints it obtained. One has an 11.66 meter by 11.20 meter room marked "Gaskammer" (gas chamber) that was part of a "delousing facility."
No one from the federal government's archives was immediately available for comment on the authenticity or importance of the documents.
The plans, published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the "Kristallnacht" or the Nazi pogrom that was a harbinger of the Holocaust, also include a crematorium and a "L. Keller" -- an abbreviation for "Leichenkeller" or corpse cellar.
A drawing of the building for Auschwitz's main gate was also found in the documents that Bild said were believed to have been discovered when a Berlin flat was cleaned out.
The mass-circulation newspaper quoted Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal archives office in Berlin, as saying the blueprints offered "authentic evidence of the systematically planned genocide of European Jews."
There were mass killings of about one million Jews before the Nazi's "Final Solution" was formulated in late 1941. The decision to kill Europe's 11 million Jews was made at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942.
A copy of the minutes, known as the "Wannsee Protocol," is one of the most important documents from the war.
The newly found Auschwitz blueprints are dated October 23 1941 and could offer historians earlier evidence of Nazi plans to kill Jews on a mass scale, Bild said.
"These documents reveal that everyone who had even anything remotely to do with the planning and construction of the concentration camp must have know that people were to be gassed to death in assembly-line fashion," Bild wrote.
"The documents refute once and for all claims by those who deny the Holocaust even took place," it added.
The concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland was the largest -- at least 1.1 million Jews were killed there.
Auschwitz I was set up in May 1940 in an old Polish army barracks. The first victims were gassed in September 1941. Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, opened in October 1941. Four large gas chambers were added to the camp in January 1942.
Ringside Seat featured in the Texas Observer Listen to David on uprisingradio.org
David Dorado Romo, like the people he writes about in Ringside Seat to a Revolution, is a fronterizo. He grew up knowing both sides of the Rio Grande as his home. As a cultural activist in the 1990s, he felt the shadows of the Revolution in the streets and barrios of El Paso and Juárez, the cities where he grew up. He began a passionate four-year search through the archives of Mexico and the U.S. looking for the history that casts those shadows. The stories he tells reveal an intellectual renaissance born of conflict, a revelation of the fronterizo spirit that is so essential in understanding the U.S.-Mexico Border region.
Romo, the son of Mexican immigrants, is an essayist, historian, translator, and musician. He has studied at the Centro d’Attivitá Musicale in Florence, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and received a degree in Judaic Studies from Stanford University.
If you wish to contact David about a presentation, or you have questions about his book, please contact us at info@cincopuntos.com
At the customs bath by the bridge... they would spray some stuff on you. It was white and would run down your body. How horrible! And then I remember something else about it: they would shave everyone's head... men, women, everybody. They would bathe you again with cryolite. That was an extreme measure. The substance was very strong.
For decades, U.S. health authorities used noxious, often toxic chemicals to delouse Mexicans seeking to cross the border into the United States. A new book tells the story of what happened when a 17-year-old Mexican maid refused to take a gasoline bath and convinced 30 other trolley passengers in 1917 to do the same.
The maid, Carmelita Torres, crossed every day from Juarez to El Paso to clean American homes. The gasoline bath was noxious, but effective at killing lice, which carry typhus, says David Dorado Romo, an El Paso, Texas, author whose new book is called Ringside Seat to a Revolution. Before being allowed to cross, Mexicans had to bathe, strip nude for an inspection, undergo the lice treatment, and have their clothes treated in a steam dryer.
When Torres and the others resisted the humiliating procedure, onlookers began protesting, sparking what became known as the Bath Riots.
The Mexican housekeepers who revolted had good cause to be upset. Inside a brick disinfectant building under the bridge, health personnel had been secretly photographing women in the nude and posting the snapshots in a local cantina. A year earlier, a group of prisoners in the El Paso jail died in a fire while being deloused with gasoline.
U.S. and Mexican troops eventually quelled the riot, and young Torres was arrested. Though she's been compared to Rosa Parks, Torres' protest had little effect, Romo says.
The baths and fumigations (DDT and other insecticides were later used) continued for decades, long after the Mexican typhus scare ended. The practice was finally discontinued as health authorities realized the chemicals were dangerous. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5176177
Excerpts: 'Ringside Seat to a Revolution' .. pictures, inside .. first i'd heard that Hitler took notice of the US 'fumigations'.
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