While the history of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II, and Auschwitz III is well-known, authors point to a significant gap in our understanding of “what happened between the finalization of plans for the spaces of genocide and the ultimate use of those spaces, as exemplified by the SS urban schemes, on the one hand, and the photographs of Hungarian Jews, on the other4.”
To enrich our understanding of the physical development of the camp, they engage with spatial modeling and analysis on the level of particular barracks and camp buildings:
“A digital model of the whole built environment, including both the concentration camp and the spaces used and inhabited by the perpetrators, gives rise to a new conception of Auschwitz as a city, all of whose complex functions were part of the Nazis’ imperial, genocidal mission. Adding time to the camp model through map animation of a buildings database suggests that the construction of Birkenau and the SS environs as a whole may have created chaotic periods that enabled prisoner escapes. Seeing which structures were built according to plan or in response to the exigencies of genocide further complicates our understanding of the built environment.” (Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole, Alberto Giordano, eds. Geographies of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 12.)
Number of buildings under construction at Auschwitz-Birkenau, April 1943-May 1944. Graph by Benjamin Perry Blackshear.
Source: Anne Kelly Knowles, Tim Cole, Alberto Giordano, eds. Geographies of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).