Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

I recently examined a set of old blueprints describing a renovation project in Poland. The building I focused on was just one of many in the complex. At first glance the overall site plan could be mistaken for that of a small campus of some sort, tree-lined roads running between low-rise generic brick buildings, all neatly organized on an orthogonal grid, the entrance facing a busy street of the city in which it was located. Many of the buildings in the complex looked like dormitories or apartment buildings; others perhaps light manufacturing facilities or garages. Interestingly, a few of the buildings had been bermed – earth packed against the walls -- on three sides, so only the roof was visible from most vantage points. The plans for all of the buildings were precisely drawn and the facades -- equally well rendered -- while unremarkable were not unpleasant in design. All were vaguely anonymous and indistinguishable from almost any of the generic business or administration buildings dating from the era.

It is clear that a great deal of work went into these drawings and that many people were involved in the execution of these documents including numerous architects, draftsman, all variety of engineers and site planners, not to mention the clients and inspectors. Some renovations to almost all of the original buildings are noted, but the building I am interested in was extensively renovated; it includes the addition of two large crematoria.

The building is, of course, the crematorium building at the Auschwitz I concentration camp.

The most shocking thing for me was the realization that many people, including architects, had been involved. The renovations necessary to the existing Polish army base to create the concentration camp at Auschwitz were extensive. As an architect I know how much work is involved in the design, documentation and construction of such a project. I have tried to imagine how those involved were able to proceed given the ‘space/use program’ and it is preposterous to think that architects and engineers could not have known the nature of their efforts. Yet without their efforts such horrific projects could not have been built. Justice Jackson’s opening address at the Nuremberg trials exonerated the German people while focusing on the defendants themselves. But between the leaders such as Hitler, Goering and even Speer (who, in his book Inside the Third Reich, admitted feeling , “responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal way”) and the majority of the German people there exist, in my opinion, another group whose responsibility can not be so easily denied: those professionals who helped design and document facilities such as the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Perhaps not the paper supplier, the junior draftsman or the bricklayer, but certainly some responsibility lies with the principals involved – the chief architect, the primary engineer and the contractor.

Few readers would argue with this conclusion. The crimes of Nazi Germany are beyond reasonable debate so assigning responsibility for these horrific actions do not make us feel uncomfortable. However, if you examine other buildings in other places and times, you can sometimes find yourself on more uncomfortable moral terrain, especially where we, as a nation, are involved. Moral clarity is far more difficult when clouded by our own politics and popular historical revisionism.

For instance, as a card-carrying member of the ‘National Trust for Historic Places, I recently received an invitation to join other members to, “Discover America on an authentic Paddleboat Steamboat”. The promotional brochure observes, by way of enticement, that, “there was a time when life in this great land moved a bit more slowly. Things were more simple, more gentle than today”. While the exact dates of this simpler, more gentle time are not noted, the buildings to be visited on the tour – mostly plantation houses now serving as bed and breakfast facilities – are all located in the southern states and most were built before the Civil War. These include the Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana, commissioned in 1849 by ‘sugarcane baron’ John Hampden Rudolph. Now, I do not have exact figures but I believe that this mansion was built with the indispensable help of many slaves, while countless others worked in the surrounding fields.

There is a great deal of information regarding Nottoway’s ‘grandeur’ and ‘elegance’ but there is no mention of the economic and political system that made such buildings possible. Yet the benefactors of this system, which, like Nazi Germany, was based on the utter exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few, are presented in a favorable if not admiring light in this brochure. Obviously we do not know all the principals – architects, engineers, builders – directly involved, but the product of their efforts – presented here as an enjoyable vacation destination -- is no less real than the camp at Auschwitz. And while Nottoway was constructed a century before the camp at Auschwitz, it cannot be dismissed as ancient history; ‘Jim Crow’ was still very much alive when I was a boy. In any event, if time alone is the mitigating factor, it is terrifying to think that the camp at Auschwitz might someday be presented in a slick brochure the way Nottoway plantation is today, not as physical representation of a perverse, pathological culture, but as a romantic remnant of a ‘simpler’ time.