The original blueprints for the construction of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau have gone on display at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. The collection of 29 plans, four of which are now on display, was given to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Germany in August 2009.
"There is an evil in the world that can spread, and it is threatening the security of the Jews," Netanyahu said at the official opening. "We know that it just starts with the Jews and then continues on to the rest of the world.” The lesson of the Holocaust was to "stop bad things when they are small”, Netanyahu said, adding: "There is new Jew-hatred in our midst. There are new calls for the extermination of the Jewish state."
Shortly afterwards, Netanyahu left for Poland to participate in ceremonies set for Wednesday marking 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. An estimated 1.1 million Jews were murdered there; most of them in the huge gas chambers at Birkenau, which were in operation from Spring 1942 to January 1945.
Have your say and email us your view on this news story.
