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Elliott Broidy: Why Philanthropy Matters to Me

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Philanthropy has always been one of the most meaningful expressions of what I consider true success. As a businessman, I’ve had the good fortune to achieve financial success. But I have always believed that achievement without giving back remains incomplete.

I view giving not as a checkbox or a duty, but as a privilege. From the earliest stages of my career, I understood that thriving in business often means having the ability to help other people thrive—whether that means supporting hospitals, education, or the institutions of community that bind us together. On my website, I wrote the following words: “The true measure of philanthropy isn’t in what you give, but in the lives you help transform. There’s no greater reward than seeing your efforts turn into lasting impact—and knowing you played a part in making the world a little safer, kinder, and more just.” The sentiments behind these words motivate me every single day.

Central to my giving has been support of Jewish and pro-Israel causes. I believe deeply in the enduring value of Jewish life, Jewish heritage, and the strength of the State of Israel. Supporting institutions that nurture Jewish education, community, identity, and safety is about ensuring that future generations are grounded in values, culture, and purpose. I’ve been proud to contribute to organizations that embody that mission because I believe in vibrancy, continuity, and strong foundations.

Motivated by my passion for Jewish continuity and the need to fight Jew hatred, I served on the Simon Wiesenthal Center-Museum of Tolerance board for eight years and have donated to more than 100 Jewish organizations, including The Clarion Project,  StandWithUs, The Jewish Agency for Israel, AIPAC, Friends of the IDF, and Magen David Adom.

Following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, my wife Robin and I intensified our support for initiatives combating antisemitism and extremism by becoming involved with The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) and legal efforts aimed at reducing antisemitism on U.S. campuses and elsewhere.

I provided some of the funding that enabled CEP to purchase the former home of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, located directly next to the site of the death camp. This house has been transformed by CEP into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism, and Radicalization: ARCHER at House 88 (88 was and is code for “Heil Hitler” because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet). ARCHER is dedicated to fighting antisemitism and other forms of ideological and violent extremism that represent a threat to humanity by, among other things, using cutting-edge technology to disrupt extremist financial networks. I am Co-Chair of The Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism & Hate which raises funds to ensure that ARCHER has the financial support it needs for its vital work.

Subsequently, I acquired an original architectural drawing, or whiteprint, of the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This evil, but highly significant, document represents the earliest design concept of Crematoria II and III at the massive Birkenau complex, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. I secured the artifact for $1.5 million, a symbolic amount honoring the 1.5 million Jewish children who were killed by the Nazis. That money will support an early childhood curriculum that will inoculate young students against hate and extremism by teaching values like altruism and empathy.

We are living through dark times of resurgent antisemitism and increasing Holocaust denial.

The whiteprint is irrefutable proof of the Nazis’ genocidal intent, and the meticulousness with which that was manifested. It is my strongest hope that it will help to undermine Holocaust denial while, at the same time, educating future generations about the Holocaust. As such, it will be exhibited at Holocaust memorials and institutions dedicated to fighting antisemitism before it is permanently donated to a Holocaust museum.

My philanthropy also extends into other spheres, including healthcare and hospitals. Health is the bedrock of opportunity, of life itself. Giving to hospitals means supporting the caregivers, the research, the infrastructure that allow people to survive and thrive. It means being part of something larger than oneself—making sure that when people face their hardest moments, there is help. I’ve supported hospitals because I know that no matter your background or your beliefs, the fragility of life is universal—and our willingness to step up when people need care says something about our community, our values, our humanity. Specifically, my wife and I are donors to Boca Regional Hospital, The Cleveland Clinic in Weston, FL, and the Boca West Children’s Foundation.

Giving back has become integrated into how I see my place in the world. For me, philanthropy is about responsibility, legacy, and hope. It’s about creating conditions where others can flourish, where communities are stronger, healthier, and more stable. I believe that when we invest in others, the return is moral as well as financial or reputational. It’s the feeling of making a difference, of doing something that matters.

In a world of challenges—including antisemitism surging to levels not seen since the Nazi era—giving back offers a way to say: “I see you. I’m with you.” It reminds us that success carries with it a purpose and a duty to help others. That’s why philanthropy matters to me.

Elliott Broidy is an entrepreneur who has used his extensive experience and talent to found, invest in, and in some cases manage as CEO more than 160 companies over his four-decade career. He has given extensively to support the Jewish community and other causes during his career. He currently is the Co-Chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate which supports the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, an initiative of The Counter Extremism Project.

 

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Times of Israel: Call From the Past

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This essay was originally published in The Times of Israel. 

By Inna Rogatchi

At the end of 2025, an eye-catching headline appeared in several major news outlets: Robin and Elliott Broidy had paid $ 1.5 million for an original architectural drawing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria.

The fact behind the news was both significant and unusual. Private individuals rarely spend such a substantial amount on a single artifact, particularly one of such grave nature. In my 35 years working in this field, I can recall very few comparable acts. I wanted to understand the decision behind it in more detail.

Robin and Elliott Broidy acquired the white-print for the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria. © Boca News. With kind permission from the owners.

It is known that only two original versions of this document exist: the one recently acquired by Robin and Elliott Broidy for philanthropic and Holocaust-education purposes, and another that was seized by the Soviet Army when it liberated Auschwitz in January 1945. The latter has been sealed in a Russian state military archive ever since, aside from a brief de-classification period in the mid-1990s when researchers were allowed limited access. It has not been available for review since.

Importantly, the amount the Broidys paid for the whiteprint was chosen to honor the one and a half million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust. This dedication tells you everything about the significance of their acquisition.

Commemoration to the children who were victims of the Shoah. Poland. © Rogatchi Archive.

The above photograph of murdered Jewish children hangs in the centre of my husband, artist Michael Rogatchi’s studio, and always will. The children are at his side as he works, and he spends most of his time there. They are always with him.

So we understand the power of Elliott and Robin Broidy’s gesture completely.

 White-print of mass murder

Before me lies a typical product of a European architectural bureau or engineering office from the 1940s: clean, sophisticated, precise, confidently drawn lines, all executed by hand, lending the document an unsettling authenticity.

White-print of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria. © Robin and Elliott Broidy Collection. With kind permission of the owners.

You look casually at the document, yellowed with age. It appears to be a precise drawing of an ordinary house. Then your eyes reach the two vertical lines at its centre, and your heart stops: a chimney, disproportionally large.

No wonder the Nazis tried to destroy all material evidence of their unspeakable crimes. Yet according to first-hand accounts I studied in the Simon Wiesenthal Archive, Soviet troops approaching Auschwitz in January 1945 were guided by the stench of burning bodies. The crematoria were operating until the very end.

Chimney in the white-print for the crematorium in Auschwitz. Fragment. © Robin and Elliott Boridy Collection. With kind permission of the owners.

Once you recover your breath, you notice the German bureaucratic stamps surrounding the carefully drawn structure with its heartrending vertical lines. The images become much more than an architectural plan.

As it is known, the first large-scale Zyklon B gassing experiment occurred on September 3, 1941, when 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 sick Polish prisoners were murdered in the basement of Block 11 at Auschwitz. Following the gassing, it became evident that the existing crematorium at the Auschwitz site could not adequately dispose of the bodies. Within seven weeks, SS architects from Berlin arrived in Auschwitz to address this ‘problem’.

Architect Walter Dejaco and others spent two days – October 22 and 23 – with Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and others to determine the necessary scale of the new crematoria. The white-print in question is dated October 24, 1941. It is also known that the plans were later amended and expanded and presented at the Wannsee Conference on January 20th, 1942, as proof that their plan to eliminate all the Jews of Europe –  the “Final Solution” – was feasible.

The aged white-print produced 85 years ago is clear evidence of the careful planning that made the worst crimes in human history possible.

Crematorium I in Auschwitz. © Auschwitz Memorial and Museum Archive. With kind permission.

Today, sadly and alarmingly, the historic evidence of the crimes against humanity is seen with an additional gravity in a new context of the unleashed hatred that intensified after October 7th, 2023.

We are now living in a time when irrational hatred of Jews is being normalized and spreading rapidly. Within days of the October 7,  2023 massacre – the worst mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust – virulent antisemitic lies were spread across traditional and social media by the antisemitic zealots and those who are orchestrating the new “normality”.

Within one year of the attacks, antisemitic incidents reached their highest level since the end of the Second World War.

One recent disturbing example: at the 2026 Winter Olympics, the International Olympic Committee ordered, produced, and sold merchandise featuring imagery from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were a triumph of Nazi propaganda. This is a profound insult to the victims of Nazism and their families. Yet today it is a new normal, or rather an old one returning, because we have seen it before.

Personal dimension

I have been to Auschwitz many times, to work, observe, film, and think. It is a difficult place to be, as is any Nazi camp. Without being there, one cannot grasp the meaning of Nazism. The horrors of what happened there are beyond rationality. They can only be understood through raw feeling after having seen such a place firsthand.

It is for that reason that I worked with colleagues at the European Parliament to propose mandatory school visits to Auschwitz and the other extermination Nazi camps. The proposal failed, officially due to parental objections, although perhaps some countries were simply unwilling or uninterested.

I work in Auschwitz, I think about the camp orchestras. Three large ensembles: two male orchestras and one female orchestra. The latter was led for a time by my great-aunt Alma Rosé. So, Auschwitz is personal to me.

Prisoners recalled that the orchestras were forced to play, among the other grim compulsions, during selections, when SS men decided at a moment’s notice who would live and who would die. Who could forget such a thing?

Professionals such as doctors and architects planned and implemented the extermination of millions of people. Many architects were never held accountable for their crimes, or were acquitted at their trials, despite knowingly designing facilities whose purpose was mass murder.

An Acquitted  Holocaust perpetrator

The white-print’s author was Walter Dejaco, an Austrian architect with no notable career before the Second World War. An enthusiastic Nazi, he joined the SS in 1933, when it was still illegal in Austria, five years before the Anschluss.

Walter Dejaco, the Nazi architect of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria. © Memorial de la Shoah Archive, from the SS database. With kind permission.

This unremarkable man – so many of them were unremarkable, including Rudolf Höss – thrived for the first time in his life during Nazi rule, and he proceeded with his tasks happily. He even joked on his architectural plans, writing ‘Auschwitz’ as  ‘Au / Schwitz’ , a pun suggesting sweat. Such ‘humor’ tells you a great deal about the atmosphere in which the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria were planned.

My dear friend Simon Wiesenthal told me about Dejaco many years ago. Together with Auschwitz prisoner and writer Hermann Langbein, Wiesenthal tracked Dejaco for years. Dejaco had been held by the Red Army as a prisoner of war from 1945 in the camp in the USSR until 1949 or 1950, when he was inexplicably released.

So, one of just four architects who had planned and constructed the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria returned home and resumed his profession. He built parish buildings and was thanked and rewarded by local clergy.

 After persistent efforts by Wiesenthal and Langbein, the investigation started in 1962. It took ten years before it reached the courtroom. Dejaco and two of his assistants were finally brought to trial in 1972.

It was a fiasco. One assistant’s case was dropped, and Dejaco and Fritz Ertl were acquitted on the grounds that they had acted under “duress”.

Dejaco died peacefully in his bed in 1978.

One detail from the trial still haunts me. The trial was public, but nobody attended it.

“The hall was empty”, Simon Wiesenthal told me. “ Just empty. You understand?”

I did. And I did not. I still do not.

“We did it for ourselves” – a couple ensures remembrance  

Elliott and Robin Broidy are well- known philanthropists and key supporters of the Auschwitz Research Centre on Hate, Extremism and  Radicalisation (ARCHER) at House 88, which is located in the former home of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. ARCHER, an initiative of the Counter Extremism Project, actively combats antisemitism, extremism, and terrorism while preserving historical memory. Elliott is co-chair of The Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate, which fundraises for ARCHER.

But the acquisition of the crematoria whiteprints was a personal decision for the Broidys.

“We wanted to find a way to use the money spent on this terrible, but historically important, document for something good”, Elliott Broidy told me. “In conversations with Rabbi David Baron of the Temple of Arts in Beverly Hills, we decided to dedicate the sum, honoring the one and a half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis, to fund the Temple’s creation of a global curriculum that would teach empathy and altruism to children under five, inoculating  them against the scourge of extremism”.

Michael Rogatchi (C). Faces of the Holocaust. 1991-1992.

I hope this new curriculum, teaching altruism, understanding, tolerance and humanity, will flourish. This is one of those rare stories showing that even the darkest history can, through human will, be transformed into something constructive.

Evil can, and must, be answered and overcome by good, even generations later. It can prompt us to rethink, revisit, and reckon with the most painful lessons of history and to draw from them, against all odds, understanding and moral clarity.

It is never too late, so long as the memory of every soul lost in the Holocaust remains alive.

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JNS: Why I acquired the whiteprint of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria

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Preservation isn’t enough; this document must be seen, studied and understood.

Elliott Broidy
This piece was originally published on JNS on February 18, 2026.

When I first saw the faded whiteprint, an architectural drawing of the earliest design concept for what became Crematoria II and III at Auschwitz-Birkenau, I felt the crushing weight of evil. This piece of paper with its neat geometric lines—so professional, so precise—was proof of the intent to incinerate the corpses of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children who would be murdered on an industrial scale.

I have dedicated much of my philanthropic work to support Jewish organizations and to combat antisemitism. I knew immediately that this artifact had to be brought to light, especially in our era of surging Holocaust denial and resurgent antisemitism.

That’s why I acquired the whiteprint for $1.5 million, a sum chosen to honor the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The document, drawn by SS architect Walter Dejaco in October 1941, has been authenticated by Robert Jan van Pelt, one of the world’s leading experts on Auschwitz. Van Pelt has called it “quite literally irreplaceable.”

The whiteprint represents crucial architectural evidence of Nazi extermination infrastructure. It is a tangible link to the systematic planning behind the Holocaust and an irrefutable record of genocidal intent. Physical artifacts such as this provide enduring evidence of the Nazi pursuit of the “Final Solution.”

Yet preservation by itself isn’t enough. The whiteprint must be seen, studied and understood.

For that reason, I intend to exhibit it at various Holocaust museums and institutions dedicated to fighting antisemitism before permanently donating it to one such institution. Each viewing will be an opportunity to educate, to remember and to inoculate future generations against denial and distortion.

The proceeds from the acquisition will support an early-childhood curriculum designed to combat extremism and hate before they take root. By emphasizing altruism and empathy in young children, we can build immunity against the dehumanization that makes hatred and ultimately violence possible.

‘A particular responsibility’

The whiteprint acquisition is part of a broader commitment.

Working with the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, I helped fund the purchase of the former home of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. At 88 Legionów Street in Oświęcim, Poland, the house sits directly adjacent to the camp where he oversaw mass murder on a scale that will forever be incomprehensible.

CEP has transformed the house into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, which uses the very latest technology to disrupt the shadowy financial networks that extremists use to foment antisemitism, extremism and terrorism. What was once the home of a principal architect of genocide now houses scholars, researchers and activists working to fight against the mainstreaming of the evil Höss embodied. I serve as co-chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate, which helps enable ARCHER’s vital work.

We are living in a time of acute danger. Antisemitic incidents have reached levels not seen in generations. Holocaust denial proliferates online, often cloaked in the dishonest guise of “just asking questions,” as it edges ever closer to the mainstream—a harrowing development. The survivors who bore witness to history’s greatest crime will not be alive much longer. And when they are gone, artifacts like the whiteprint, Holocaust museums and organizations like ARCHER will become our primary vehicles for transmitting memory and combating lies.

The Jewish philanthropic community carries a particular responsibility. We cannot shirk it. We must support education that cultivates moral responsibility and seriousness; fund research that exposes and disrupts contemporary forms of antisemitism; preserve and display evidence of the Holocaust (in addition to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the most devastating massacre since the Holocaust); and build communal institutions that will outlast our lifetimes.

We must confront the most dangerous form of contemporary antisemitism: the systematic delegitimization of the State of Israel.

We must push back against those who accuse Israel of committing genocide, a modern-day blood libel that was once confined to the fringes of radical academia, but has escaped containment into the broader discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We must proudly support Israel and champion a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. We can differ in our views of particular Israeli policies, but we must never lose sight of what is at stake: the survival and security of the world’s only Jewish state, home to nearly half the Jews on the planet.

For a small people—there are only about 16 million Jews in the world today, fewer than on the eve of World War II—this work is not optional.

Elie Wiesel moved beyond vowing “Never Again” in his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, insisting instead: “Sometimes, we must interfere.”

Fighting antisemitism must be a sustained commitment expressed through action, scholarship and memory.

Elliott Broidy is an entrepreneur who has used his extensive experience and talent to found, invest in, and in some cases, manage as CEO, more than 160 companies over his four-decade career. He has given extensively to support the Jewish community and other causes during his career. He currently is the Co-Chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate which supports the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, an initiative of The Counter Extremism Project.

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Preserving proof: Acquiring ‘profoundly evil’ Auschwitz-Birkenau whiteprint

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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. 

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Finding Faith: Boca couple fights antisemitism through philanthropy, education

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This article was originally published in The Coastal Star.

By Janis Fontaine

In November, Elliott and Robin Broidy of Boca Raton paid $1.5 million for an old drawing. Not a piece of fine art, but an architectural sketch drawn on cheap newsprint dated Oct. 24, 1941. 

The landscape-oriented drawing, about 3 feet long and 2 feet wide, is sepia-toned with age and protected by plastic; it depicts a house of horrors: the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where millions of Jews were systematically exterminated.  

What the Broidys now own is one of only two known original drawings produced in preparation for meetings where the logistics of killing Jews on an industrial scale would be discussed. 

“The drawing we have is clear proof of genocidal intent,” Elliott Broidy wrote in a Nov. 21 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “To behold it is to confront the deliberate design of evil. My most sincere wish is for this whiteprint to be memorialized as part of an irrefutable body of evidence that negates Holocaust denial and helps to forever silence malevolent revisionists while also educating new generations about the lessons of the Holocaust.”

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Robin Broidy recalled the first time she stood before the drawing:  “It’s a horrible feeling. You’re standing so close to evil. These people created this document that you’re holding in your hands with the purpose of murdering, exterminating, terminating mass numbers of people. And you’re just, you’re sad.”

The document itself is nothing special: “The paper isn’t premium,” Robin Broidy said. In wartime paper is expensive. “They were doing as much as possible on very cheap paper, so all the blueprints are on low-quality paper.” 

The significance of the document lies in the date. Drawn by SS architect Walter Dejaco under the authority of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, it’s the snapshot of the moment when the men who planned the execution of millions of Jews actually put pen to paper and drew up the plan for the place the extermination would happen. The whiteprint is stark and irrefutable proof that the Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, was conceived months before the announcement of the “final solution” in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference. 

The Broidys purchased the artifact from Rabbi David Baron of Temple of the Arts Synagogue in Beverly Hills, who had received it from a friend of a congregant who had bought it at a Nazi memorabilia auction in Germany. Neither the buyer nor seller was aware of its historical significance. According to journalist Benjamin Raziel of Forbes, the Nazis understood the power of documentation and they tried to destroy as many records as possible as the Allies approached, so finding artifacts of this import is rare. 

Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, the foremost expert on Auschwitz architecture, authenticated the document, but when asked to place a value on it, Robin Broidy said, “He couldn’t. He said, ‘I can’t value it. It’s priceless.’” 

In an act of remembrance and reverence, the Broidys agreed to pay $1.5 million to the Temple of the Arts for the drawing. The money would be earmarked for Baron to use to create a global early-childhood curriculum promoting empathy and altruism. The rabbi’s curriculum aims to reach children when they are young, long before extremist ideologies can take root. 

“He has done research that indicates that children’s values are formed between zero to 5,” Robin said. “Therefore, if you can teach children altruism, empathy and listening to another person’s point of view then, they will be less likely to become an extremist and less likely to create hateful attitudes.”

That you become what you are taught isn’t a new idea, but Robin said, “Education is always the key. Education is the key to succeeding in life and to being a good person, getting your values straight.”

It’s also quite simple. Robin likes to tell the classic story of Rabbi Hillel, who was asked, “Can you teach the entire Torah standing on one foot?” Robin says his answer is the answer: “Sure I can. Whatever is hateful to you, do not do unto others. That’s what Jews are taught from their infancy.”

Baron told the Broidys how much money he would need to start his program, and they settled on a number. “It was a number that had some meaning,” Elliott said, “because out of the 6 million that died, 1.5 million were children.”

It’s not the first time the Broidys have stepped up like this. They’ve been actively fighting antisemitism and extremism for years. Their support turned “hell-on-earth” into a symbol of truth and light when the Counter Extremism Project transformed Rudolf Höss’ residence at 88 Legionow St. into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88.

The lovely private villa with its gardens and swimming pool where the Höss family lived in comfort and affluence — Höss’ wife called it “paradise” — sits just outside the fence of Auschwitz. The Höss children played under skies darkened by the smoke rising from the crematoria next door. While they hosted lavish parties with decadent food, Jews starved just feet away.

Today the property has a mezuzah on its front door. ARCHER at House 88’s goal and message are to turn a site of mass murder into a global center dedicated to exposing the machinery of hate and educating the world. Education must begin with children, but it has to continue through adulthood. Truly, no dog is too old to learn. 

Today’s battle is against misinformation and how easily it spreads. Researchers and educators, policymakers and activists work to prevent the spread of online extremism, promote safety on digital platforms and counter misinformation and radicalization. 

“What ARCHER is fighting against is the mainstreaming of extremism — the same propaganda, the same misinformation, the same lies that enabled the Germans and the SS to be able to do this without a second thought, without remorse, without thinking,” Robin Broidy said. “That is the message that we are trying to send to today’s young people. Anytime somebody tries to tell you that the other someone else is less than human, don’t believe them.”

The fight continues right in our own backyard. 

In January, several news agencies, including WPEC CBS12, reported that Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies had investigated a swastika and racial slurs painted on the pavement outside Florida Cancer Specialists, a medical office plaza in West Boca. An employee discovered the white lettering which targeted both Jewish and Black communities. A discarded paintbrush and empty paint can were recovered nearby but no usable fingerprints were found. The damage was estimated at about $500, and the graffiti was quickly removed. But the implications will last. 

Antisemitism is part of being a Jew, but Jews don’t fight hate with hate, Robin says: “You move on, and you try to show the world that you’re decent, wonderful human beings. You try to be positive, try to educate.”

To that end, the Broidys plan to display the whiteprint at institutions and organizations dedicated to combating antisemitism and preserving the memory of the Holocaust, before making a long-term gift of it to one institution. “Probably the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum,” Elliott said. 

The Broidys relocated to Boca Raton from Los Angeles to be closer to their children, grandchildren and about three dozen of Robin’s relatives. Elliott, chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings, is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist with a career spanning four decades. Robin is a former film producer and movie executive who with Elliott has been devoted to the fight against antisemitism — they call it “our major fight” — for decades. 

Philanthropically, the Broidys support organizations dedicated to countering antisemitism, hate and extremism, including the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, the Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab (CELL), the George Washington University Program on Extremism, and StandWithUs.

“This document is our way of changing the world a little bit, if possible, and that’s no small feat,” Elliott said.

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Jeff Jacoby: The drawing that killed my father’s family

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What a pristine Nazi blueprint reveals about professional complicity in genocide.

By Jeff Jacoby
On Oct. 24, 1941, an Austrian architect named Walter Dejaco sat at a drafting table in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz and sketched a preliminary design for what would soon become the camp’s main crematorium. In its clarity, precision, and carefully calculated dimensions, Dejaco’s drawing plainly reflected his professional training and experience.
It also reflected something new in the history of architecture. What Dejaco — a Nazi loyalist who had joined the SS in 1933 — drafted that day was the first rendering of a facility capable of incinerating human remains on an industrial scale. Over the next few months, his initial concept would be expanded into a crematorium with the capacity to incinerate 1,440 corpses per day. It was the first of four massive crematoria that would eventually be operating in Auschwitz, where 1.1 million people, nearly all of them Jews, would be murdered by Nazi Germany.
In the spring of 1944, my father and his family entered Auschwitz in a sealed boxcar from Hungary. Within a few hours of their arrival, my father’s parents and two youngest siblings were dead; before long, two older siblings were dead as well. The infrastructure that killed them — the gas chambers, the crematoria, the system for transporting corpses by the thousands to ovens each day so they could be turned to ash and smoke — had been designed by Dejaco and other SS architects: professionals complicit in facilitating genocide.
Earlier this month, I traveled to Los Angeles to see Dejaco’s original 1941 architectural drawing for the Auschwitz crematorium. The schematic, known as a whiteprint (a high-quality type of blueprint), was acquired in 2025 by Elliott Broidy, a businessman and philanthropist. Only two of Dejaco’s initial drawings still survive; the other, locked in a Russian military archive, is inaccessible to Western scholars.
Read the rest of Jeff Jacoby’s powerful piece in The Boston Globe. 
Elliott Broidy Auschwitz gate

Elliott Broidy in The Jerusalem Post: An original Auschwitz plan, a warning for our time

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I have acquired an original architectural drawing – a “whiteprint” – of the very first design of the crematoria built in Birkenau as an expansion of Auschwitz by Austrian architect Walter Dejaco.

This piece was originally published in The Jerusalem Post on January 14, 2026.
By Elliott Broidy
The massacre on Bondi Beach brought home to every Jew, everywhere, that no Jew is safe, anywhere.

As an American Jew, I watched the images of the antisemitic attack in Australia with horror – images that, like those of October 7 in Israel, brought back into our present-day lives the antisemitic violence of the past. Alongside this horror was a determination to fight back, using every means at our disposal to ensure that history is not forgotten.

As part of that fight, I have acquired an original architectural drawing – a “whiteprint” – of the very first design of the crematoria built in Birkenau as an expansion of Auschwitz.

Auschwitz concentration camp, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.
Auschwitz concentration camp, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during the Holocaust. (credit: WALLPAPER FLARE)

The term ‘genocide’

The term “genocide” was first used in a legal context at the Nuremberg Trials, which began on November 20, 1945, almost exactly 80 years ago. It was intended to describe Nazi Germany’s systematic project to annihilate, with intent, an ethnic, racial, or religious group: the Jewss.Today, however, the concept of genocide has become debased and misused, most flagrantly in accusations leveled against Israel that it has committed genocide in Gaza. Holocaust deniers, of whom there are still too many for comfort, have been joined by a large and vocal crowd – including the United Nations and governments in Europe – who abuse the term genocide by applying it to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Prior to acquiring the whiteprint, in 2024, I helped the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit organization, purchase a house next door to Auschwitz. Commandant Rudolf Hoss lived there from May 1940 to December 1943, and again in early 1944, with his wife and five children. His chillingly dispassionate approach to the horror he oversaw at Auschwitz was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film The Zone of Interest.

I obtained the whiteprint from a rabbi in the Los Angeles area, who had been given the document a decade earlier by a collector of Nazi memorabilia known to one of his congregants. The donor had come across it at an auction in Germany without knowing its true historical value.

Whiteprint ‘literally irreplaceable’

In exchange for the whiteprint, I committed to fund $1.5 million for an educational project that the rabbi is currently developing. It is an early-education curriculum on altruistic behavior – a “catch them while they are young” approach to safeguarding children from extremism. The sum is intended to honor the memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.

The whiteprint is of immense historical significance. A member of my research team consulted Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a leading authority on Nazi concentration camp architecture. He authenticated the whiteprint, describing it as “quite literally irreplaceable.”

Van Pelt explained that Dejaco created the design while visiting Auschwitz, where he would have been a guest of Hoss. The crematorium was initially planned to be located next to the Hoss family home, where he lived with his wife and young children. In 1942, the Nazis instead chose to build four crematoria in the nearby camp of Birkenau. These were later blown up by the Nazis as the Soviet Army advanced.

The four crematoria had an incineration capacity of nearly 4,400 corpses per day. Given their central role in the genocide of the Jews, van Pelt noted that Hoss “would have followed this project very intensely. It was a major capital outlay at a time of general rationing of resources like building materials and steel.”

Gassing and burning, starvation and disease

Although historians now estimate that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, roughly one million of them Jews, Hoss testified at Nuremberg that he believed the number was far higher. He stated that “at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated [at Auschwitz] by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead.” This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners.”

Today, the two largest crematoria exist only in ruins.

Given the extraordinary rise in antisemitism across the globe and the threat it poses not only to Jews, but to Western civilization itself, we must make it impossible for anyone to deny that the Holocaust occurred. The whiteprint, in effect, makes denial untenable even for the most committed revisionists.

Elliott Broidy is a philanthropist and chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings, LLC. He is co-chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Hate, and Extremism.
Broidy - Auschwitz-Birkenau Crematoria Whiteprint (2)

Philanthropist Elliott Broidy Acquires Rare Auschwitz Crematoria Whiteprint to Combat Antisemitism

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This piece was originally published on Voice.media on January 6, 2026.

By Alinasir Nasir

Philanthropist and entrepreneur Elliott Broidy has acquired an extremely rare artifact of historical significance: one of only two surviving original architectural drawings—a whiteprint—of the first design of the crematoria at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

According to Broidy’s announcement, the artifact is “a chilling and irrefutable piece of evidence documenting the start of the systematic, industrialized murder of millions of Jews that defined the Holocaust.”

The only other known copy is held in a Moscow archive that is inaccessible to Western scholars.

Created in October 1941 by SS architect Walter Dejaco under the direction of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, the drawing informed the design of Crematoria II and III at Birkenau, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered beginning in the spring of 1943.

Broidy purchased the document for $1.5 million from Rabbi David Baron of the Temple of the Arts Synagogue in Beverly Hills, California, an amount symbolically honoring the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust. The funds will support Rabbi Baron’s development of a global early-childhood curriculum focused on empathy and altruism.

In the announcement, Broidy described the whiteprint as crucial evidence at a moment of rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial. “To behold it is to confront the deliberate design of evil,” he said. “My most sincere wish is for this whiteprint to be memorialized as part of an irrefutable body of evidence that negates Holocaust denial and helps to forever silence malevolent revisionists while also educating new generations about the lessons of the Holocaust.”

The document was authenticated by renowned Auschwitz scholar Robert Jan van Pelt, the author of, among other works, Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present (with Deborah Dwork) and The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial and an expert witness for the defense in David Irving’s civil libel suit brought against Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt.

Van Pelt and another Holocaust historian cited in the press release, Michael Berenbaum, view the document as an especially valuable artifact because it captures the meticulousness with which the Nazis planned, engineered, and implemented mass murder.

Broidy intends to exhibit the artifact at institutions dedicated to Holocaust education and combating antisemitism before donating it permanently to such an institution. He sees this journey as an extension of his broader commitment confronting extremist ideologies, including his help in supporting the purchase and transformation of the former home of Rudolf Höss—located directly next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland—into the Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, which fights antisemitism and other forms of extremism with cutting-edge technology. Broidy co-chairs The Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate, whose purpose is to support ARCHER at House 88.

“The Nazis sought to erase the humanity of their victims and their very existence,” Broidy said. “This artifact—and the education it will support—reasserts that humanity, helps ensure the continuity of the Jewish people, and works to build ways for all people to see the good in others.”

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Rare Architectural Drawing of Auschwitz Crematoria Acquired for $1.5 Million

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This article original appeared in Space Coast Daily on December 19, 2025.

A rare architectural drawing tied to the earliest design of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria has been acquired by South Florida-based philanthropist and entrepreneur Elliott Broidy. Broidy says he intends to use the artifact to strengthen public understanding of the Holocaust at a moment when antisemitism and denial are again on the rise.

The document—an October 1941 whiteprint created by SS architect Walter Dejaco—is one of only two surviving originals. According to the press release announcing the acquisition, the only other known copy is held in a Moscow archive inaccessible to Western researchers.

Such architectural drawings, including the acquired whiteprint, formed the basis for the crematoria and gas chamber complexes that, beginning in 1943, became the principal killing sites at Birkenau, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. Scholars have long regarded the technical evolution of these buildings as central to understanding the Nazis’ systematic approach to genocide.

Broidy called the whiteprint “a chilling and irrefutable piece of evidence documenting the start of the systematic, industrialized murder of millions of Jews that defined the Holocaust.” He purchased the artifact for $1.5 million.

The high price tag is not accidental, however—the amount is meant to represent the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust. The proceeds from the sale of the whiteprint will fund Rabbi David Baron’s global early-childhood curriculum promoting empathy and altruism.

The whiteprint was authenticated by Auschwitz scholar Robert Jan van Pelt, known for his extensive scholarship on the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp’s architectural history.

American Jewish University professor Michael Berenbaum emphasized the value of the whiteprint in illustrating how the Nazi killing apparatus was constructed. “This is one of the most important visual documents showing how the crematoria were created, and showing also the intentionality and professionalism, the intricate detail and the substance, with which the crematoria were thought through,” said Berenbaum.

According to Elliott Broidy, the whiteprint’s value is not only historical but moral. “To behold it is to confront the deliberate design of evil,” he said in the announcement. He hopes the artifact will become part of an “irrefutable body of evidence” capable of countering Holocaust denial and reaching younger generations with the truth of what unfolded at Auschwitz.

Speaking of the document’s significance, Broidy said, “The Nazis sought to erase the humanity of their victims and their very existence. This artifact—and the education it will support—reasserts that humanity, helps ensure the continuity of the Jewish people, and works to build ways for all people to see the good in others.”

Elliott Broidy plans to exhibit the drawing at institutions devoted to Holocaust memory and combating antisemitism before making a permanent donation.

The Boca Raton resident has become known for his involvement in efforts to confront extremism, including helping to acquire the former residence of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss in Oświęcim, Poland.

Under the Counter Extremism Project’s initiative, ARCHER, at House 88, the commandant’s house is being transformed into a research center focused on combating antisemitism and radicalization. Broidy co-chairs The Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism, and Hate, which was created to support ARCHER at House 88.

As Holocaust witnesses dwindle and denial of historical facts increasingly circulates online, the preservation and public display of original documentation, such as this whiteprint, become increasingly important.

The detailed architectural drawing demonstrates that Auschwitz’s crematoria were not improvised structures—they were engineered components of a bureaucratic and industrial system built to carry out genocide. Each surviving document that records this process serves as an antidote to historical amnesia.

Broidy - Auschwitz-Birkenau Crematoria Whiteprint

Boca Raton Couple Preserve a Chilling Document As A Reminder Of The Holocaust’s Dark Path

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This piece originally appeared in Boca Daily News on December 23, 2025.

By Daniel Nee

As Hanukkah concludes, and menorahs are being dutifully stored away for another year, shining light toward the darkest corners of humanity has rarely seen a time of more importance than the present. Just before the start of a holiday season that became marred by a terrorist attack on a sunny beach in Australia, canceled celebrations in Europe and fears of future tragedies reaching the shores of United States, one Boca Raton couple made it their mission to preserve a disturbing-but-powerful document that shows the literal pencil-to-paper plotting of evil, drawn up as a group of men gathered to discuss a macabre final solution.

Elliott Broidy, 68, has experienced a celebrated career straddling the worlds of defense, diplomacy and philanthropy. A pioneer in leveraging open source intelligence to improve safety and security, he and his wife, Robin, have acquired a rare, real, tangible object that would have made world leaders of the 1940s shudder at the thought of what was being planned. The landscape-style document, a few feet long, set forth a way to manage the horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp: a physical whiteprint of Crematoria II and III, where the bodies of those whose lives were stolen in the Holocaust would be disposed.

The Broidys acquired the document in exchange for a $1.5 million commitment to efforts that will go toward developing anti-hate and anti-extremism curricula for children. The figure represents the 1.5 million children who were killed in the Holocaust.

The historic document was produced by SS architect Walter Dejaco on Oct. 24, 1941, in preparation for days of meetings in which the logistics of killing at an industrial scale were to be discussed in bureaucratic fashion. Under the leadership of camp commandant Rudolf Höss, two whiteprints were drawn up – one which is locked away in an archive in Moscow, having been seized by Soviet soldiers after the fall of the Nazi regime, and the other which resurfaced in the mid-2010s. The authenticity of the document was in question until it was examined by Dutch professor and Auschwitz historian Robert Jan van Pelt, who linked together the timeline of the meetings of Nazi officials, the location of the document’s origin, and the date of its physical creation, which directly corresponded to the conference led by Höss.

“This is about education,” Robin Broidy said. “Especially for young people. If you understand how this happened once, you’re less likely to accept it happening again.”

One of only two known surviving copies of the original whiteprint of the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Elliott Broidy)

One of only two known surviving copies of the original whiteprint of the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Elliott Broidy)

In a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell if photos and stories are real or the machinations of artificial intelligence platforms, human-authenticated documents such as the crematorium plans provide concrete – rather than theoretical – examples of what extremism can lead to.

“There are still Holocaust deniers in the world,” said Elliott Broidy. “We consulted experts to authenticate the document and learned that only two copies exist — one in Moscow that hasn’t been seen since 1991, and this one. We felt it was important for the public to see it. When the Nazis retreated, they destroyed much of Birkenau and burned many documents. But they forgot the architectural office. That’s why we still have proof of what these buildings were designed for.”

Based on the date of its creation, the planning document was drawn up for what has become known as the Wannsee Conference, the physical meeting of Nazi political and military leadership that produced plans to deport European Jews to facilities in occupied Poland where they would be killed. The result of the conference, named for the Berlin suburb where it was held, is clear. But documents such as the whiteprint help drive home the personal reality of its intent – real people, real plans and real decisions on how to perpetrate a genocide at scale. The plans represented an expansion of a camp that held Soviet POWs to what became the most infamous venue of the Holocaust.

“It shows the earliest planning stages of industrialized mass murder,” said Broidy. “That’s why it’s historically priceless.”

The Broidy family, who relocated to Boca Raton from California to be closer to family and enjoy a more peaceful daily life, have become more active in causes that battle antisemitism and extremism in recent years. With colleagues, they purchased the residential “house next door” to Auschwitz where Höss lived with his family. Photos in the Broidy’s personal collection show parties, children’s birthday celebrations, and joyous gatherings occurring with the death camp’s guard towers and exterior walls in the background. The house – which was the subject of the award-winning 2023 film The Zone of Interest – was acquired as a guarantee not only that history would be preserved, but so it would never become a deranged shrine to what happened mere yards away. The whiteprint added to the context of the prior purchase.

“History may not repeat itself exactly, but hatred persists,” said Robin Broidy. “This document shows how ordinary people were manipulated into participating in evil. It forces people to ask: ‘Am I being manipulated the same way?’”

“If it gives people pause — if it reminds them that this was planned, intentional, and real — then it serves a purpose,” she added.

The physical document has been shipped to a secured location in California where the facilities exist to preserve a sketch that is more than eight decades old, printed on what resembles yellowed newsprint. Its ultimate destination is to be determined – it may find a home at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., on the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum in Poland, or another facility with preservation infrastructure. There is a chance, if feasible, that it could be transported to remote locations, giving a larger number of people an opportunity to experience the chilling sight with their own eyes.

“Our rabbi [in California] wanted the proceeds from the project to go toward education, but asked that the document be released,” Broidy said. “He, and we, felt it was important for the public to see it, though ultimately it should rest somewhere that can preserve it properly. While I didn’t have direct relatives affected in the Holocaust, I met many survivors and children of survivors.”

“Over the past few years, antisemitism became a very urgent issue for us,” Elliott Broidy said. “This was the best symbol, the best way to actively combat antisemitism, we could find.”

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