Auschwitz plans go to Israel

       Architectural plans for the Auschwitz death camp that were discovered in Berlin last year were given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for display at his country's official Holocaust memorial.
       The 29 sketches of the death camp that was built in Nazi-occupied Poland date back as far as 1941, and include detailed blueprints for barracks, delousing facilities and crematoria, including gas chambers. The sketches are considered important to helping understand the genesis of the Nazi genocide.
       They are initialed by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess.
       They turned up in an apartment in Berlin in 2008; how they got there is not clear, but their authenticity has been verified by Germany's federal archive.
       While they are not the only original Auschwitz blueprints that still exist -others were captured by the Soviet Red Army and brought back to Moscow they will be the first for Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, its chairman said.
       "This set is a very early one, which was found here in Berlin, from the autumn of '41," Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said.
       "It brings a better understanding of the whole process, and the intention of the planners of the complex, and from this perspective it is important."
       The blueprints were purchased from the unidentified finder by Germany's Axel Springer Verlag, the publisher of top-selling Bild newspaper, and put on display in the company's headquarters.
       The publisher is now giving them to Yad Vashem for its permanent collection.
       Mr Shalev said they will be put on display at Yad Vashem on January 27,2010, to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.