To murder over a million people at Auschwitz required meticulous planning and design.
To achieve it in just four and half years and do it in a way that disposed cleanly and effectively of all the bodies requires a level of technical mastery that borders on evil genius.
A new book published by the Auschwitz Museum sets out in shocking detail how the full potential of German technology and industry took part in building the death apparatus that claimed the lives of 1.3 million victims.
Entitled “Auschwitz Bauleitung. Designing a Death Camp” the book centres on the Bauleitung Auschwitz building office and its role in the construction of the death factory from the gas chambers all the way down to individual pieces of furniture.
The book shows how SS soldiers and prisoners alone could not have built the world’s biggest-ever death factory but instead needed the know-how, talent and expertise of the whole German nation.
The Polish-English book “Auschwitz Bauleitung. Designing a Death Camp” centres on the Bauleitung Auschwitz building office and its role in the construction of the death factory from the gas chambers all the way down to individual pieces of furniture.
Bauleitung was an SS-led office staffed by German engineers and prisoners with technical training. It designed nearly every structure erected within the concentration camp.
The office’s architects spent the four and a half years of the camp’s existence creating countless blueprints, technical drawings, plan views, cross-sections, façade designs, models, furniture and interior designs, cost estimates, and photographic documentation for its current needs.
The office’s architects spent the four and a half years of the camp’s existence creating countless blueprints, technical drawings, plan views, cross-sections, façade designs, models, furniture and interior designs, cost estimates, and photographic documentation for its current needs.
They even made extensive plans for the camp’s planned expansion, which never materialised.
While many of the blueprints were used to construct the buildings, others were either never realised or were outright rejected because they were deemed unnecessary to the war effort. At other times, many plans existed for the same structure, pointing to a more involved decision-making procedure.
The plans included prison blocks and barracks, watch towers, crematoria, gas chambers, railway ramps, water supply networks, drainage ditches, model farms, vast factory halls, entire residential estates, army barracks, offices and hospitals.
Book author and Auschwitz Museum director Dr Piotr Cywiński wrote: “All aspects of German construction engineering were used to build practically from scratch and within a relativity short space of time thousands of extremely diverse structures and installations.
“These included prison blocks and barracks, watch towers, crematoria, gas chambers, railway ramps, water supply networks, drainage ditches, model farms, vast factory halls, entire residential estates, army barracks, offices and hospitals.”
Bauleitung was headed by Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff, who was assisted by SS-men, Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl. Dejaco oversaw the design team at Bauleitung, and Ertl served as the organization’s advisor.
Bauleitung was an SS-led office staffed by German engineers and prisoners with technical training. It designed nearly every structure erected within the concentration camp.
In addition to them, there were German and Austrian engineers and architects and more than a hundred prisoners from the Bauleitung commando.
The labour conditions were appalling, and the death rate of the prisoners was especially high in the winter months. Polish prisoner Alfred Czesław Przybylski recalled: “In the course of digging and building the foundations, the prisoners worked in the fall, in winter and frost, standing waist-deep in water.”
Dejaco and Ertl were instrumental in planning and building out the entirety of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. They both knew that the inmates would be living in squalid conditions in barracks with no windows or ventilation.
Bauleitung was headed by Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff (pictured third from left in front row) who was assisted by SS-men, Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl.
They also helped design the camp’s security system, such as the guard towers and electric fence, and the cells for the detention centre in block 11.
Their most notorious project, however, was probably the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau.
Birkenau was initially designed to hold Soviet prisoners of war, but when Himmler decided to convert Birkenau into an extermination camp, Bauleitung was given the task of building the death apparatus.
In 1942, Bischoff subcontracted the task to the German company Topf and Sons, a world leader in crematoria construction and the crème de la crème of German industrial advancement.
Dejaco and Ertl were instrumental in planning and building out the entirety of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. They both knew that the inmates would be living in squalid conditions in barracks with no windows or ventilation.
The company was tasked with developing a system of gas chambers that could murder as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, and to cover the traces of the crime as effectively as possible.
What it produced was an integrated system of gas chambers and crematoria that could ‘process’ as many as 8000 victims a day.
Bauleitung did not stop work at Auschwitz until November of 1944. Himmler finally gave the order to stop the genocide of the Jews, and the Germans immediately began dismantling the death camps.
Although the Germans systematically demolished much of Birkenau, the camp was still mostly operational when the Red Army arrived on January 27, 1945.
In 1942, Bischoff subcontracted German company Topf and Sons, a world leader in crematoria construction to develop a system of gas chambers that could murder as many people as possible in as short a time as possible, and to cover the traces of the crime as effectively as possible.
At their trial in Austria after the war, Dejaco and Ertl claimed that they did not know what was really happening in the camp and that they were unaware of what the projects they worked on were actually used for.
Despite prosecutors offering evidence to the contrary, the Austrian court found them not guilty.
Karl Bischoff also never had to pay for his role at Auschwitz, dying in freedom in 1950.
Almost half of the over a hundred Bauleitung prison workers were executed by shooting or hanging, ten were sent to the penal company, and twenty-five were moved to other camps.
Book author and Auschwitz Museum director Dr Piotr Cywiński wrote: “All aspects of German construction engineering were used to build practically from scratch and within a relativity short space of time thousands of extremely diverse structures and installations.
The book features over 130 scans of architectural designs at Auschwitz as well as images from SS documentation.
Most of Bauleitung’s technical, financial, and photographic records have been preserved. The majority of these documents are now housed at the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, while others are at the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow.
German archives also contain some of the original copies sent there for approval. Some of them made it to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.
The book is published by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum: https://www.auschwitz.org/ksiegarniaprodukty/karta-produktu/auschwitz-bauleitung-projektowanie-obozu-smierci-auschwitz-bauleitung-designing-a-death-camp,342.html#1
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