This piece was originally published in The Baltimore Sun.
By Armstrong Williams
Florida-based philanthropist and businessman Elliott Broidy, joined by his wife, Robin, speaks with The Baltimore Sun about acquiring for $1.5 million an original 1941 whiteprint of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria, a document that embodies the calculated architecture of genocide during the Holocaust.
The preservation of this whiteprint is more than historical stewardship. It is an act of resistance against denial, distortion and forgetfulness. Primary evidence anchors collective memory, and a healthy democracy depends on shared facts. The interview has been edited for length and clarity
What is the historical significance of this original whiteprint?
Elliott Broidy: This document is the front elevation of the crematoria building at Auschwitz-Birkenau, dated Oct. 24, 1941. It was created by SS architect Walter Dejaco under the direction of commandant Rudolf Höss. It shows the size, scale and smokestack of the structure — the physical infrastructure that would become central to industrialized murder.
This was not spontaneous evil. It was engineered: deliberate, technical, bureaucratic. It reflects the earliest architectural conception of how a prison complex evolved into a mechanized killing site. That precision is what makes it so chilling.
Why did you feel compelled to secure it?
EB: Only two such documents are known to exist. One was last documented in Russia in 1991. When this surfaced, I believed it needed to be preserved, not hidden or lost to private hands.
It demonstrates the intentionality behind genocide, how ideology became design and design became machinery. It exposes the cold, administrative nature of what occurred. It is proof not only of horror, but of planning.
How did it survive from 1945 until now?
EB: A rabbi in California received it years ago. It had reportedly been purchased at a neo-Nazi gathering in Germany, without full awareness of its historical weight.
We believe someone originally removed it from an architectural office at Auschwitz and concealed it. Decades later, it resurfaced. When it was examined by a former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the October 1941 date immediately signaled its importance; it placed the design at a critical early phase of the camp’s transformation.
Read the whole thing in The Baltimore Sun.