he Auschwitz camp complex has become a universal symbol of the Holocaust. Research scholars at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum estimate that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz, of whom a million were Jews. The Auschwitz complex was not built overnight. This was a major construction project that lasted years and was never completed. A number of organizations and companies were involved in the building process, as well as thousands of workers, both German and foreign. What started as a single camp with 22 buildings in 1940 became a complex of 3 main camps and 40 sub-camps.
In the course of the planning phase, hundreds of technical drawings of the different construction sites and the buildings to be erected on them were produced by the different offices and companies involved in the project. The plans were drawn up by SS draftsmen, prisoners with a technical background who were employed by the planning offices, and civilian draftsmen. These plans were used by the contractors to present the project, and to carry out the construction work. The plans included detailed drawings of the gas chambers and the crematoria.
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