Karl Bischoff Signed Document - Auschwitz

Karl Bischoff Signed Document - Auschwitz
Document from the Der Leiter der Zentralbauleitung derWaffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz ( Central building management of theWaffen-SS and the police of Auschwitz ). It is signed by the head of DerLeiter der Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei AuschwitzSS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Bischoff. The central building management under itstemporary head Karl Bischoff was also responsible for the constructionplanning and construction of the extermination and concentration campAuschwitz-Birkenau including the gas chambers and crematoria.This SS internal planning office and construction management drew up thecorresponding blueprints and ensured their implementation up to ongoingrepair measures during the mass murders. The document reads :The head of the central construction management of the Waffen-SS and PoliceAuschwitzBetr: Construction project identification number IX p 7Cover: withoutTo: SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.For all construction projects, the documents are to be prepared forinspection and with drawings.SS-Ustuf Kastner should be consulted about the form of the necessarydocuments.Signed Bischoff SS-HaupsturmfuhrerKarl Bischoff (9 August 1897 – 2 October 1950) was a German architect, engineer and SS-Sturmbannführer. He served at Auschwitz as chief of theCentral Construction Office of the Waffen-SS. While there he was chief ofconstruction of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.Born in Neuhemsbach near Kaiserslautern, Germany. At the age of twenty, hejoined the Luftwaffe. In 1935 he obtained a job at the LuftwaffeConstruction Bureau. During the early years of the Second World War, he wasinvolved in the building of air bases in France. In this position he metSS-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler, who was responsible for the SS-Amt II(Building), which later became Amtsgruppe C of the WVHA. Kammler offeredBischoff a leading post at Auschwitz.In October 1941 Bischoff arrived in Auschwitz, where he became chief of theCentral Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and the Police Auschwitz inUpper Silesia (for i. Zentralbauleitung der Waffen SS und Polizei, AuschwitzO/S). He implement the planned enlargement of the concentration camp by thecreation of a POW camp, which itself later became part of the AuschwitzII-Birkenau camp. He showed his ambition shortly after his arrival byclaiming the enormous budget of 20 million Reichsmarks. Unlike hispredecessor, Bischoff was an extremely competent and dynamic bureaucrat.Despite all of the difficulties caused by the war, the building activitiesdeemed necessary during the next years were all carried out by Bischoff andhis staff. The giant Birkenau camp, the four big crematoria, the technicallycomplicated central sauna, the new reception building in the Stammlager andhundreds of other buildings, were planned and realized. For instance, Bischoff laid out the construction plans for the building of AuschwitzII-Birkenau with an original tally of 550 prisoners in each barrack (thismeant that each prisoner had one-third the amount of space that he or shewas allotted in other Nazi German concentration camps). He changed thistally to 744 prisoners per barrack. The SS designed the barracks not so muchto house people as to destroy them.In 1943 the chief builder of the crematoria was able to inform his superiorsin Berlin about the success of the operation: when the old crematorium inthe Stammlager was included, 4,756 persons could be burned within 24 hoursin five crematoria. In 1944, Bischoff was awarded the War Merit Cross, 1stclass, but shortly afterward he was informed that further plans forAuschwitz had to be reduced to those facilities considered absolutelynecessary. The faltering German position at the Eastern Front did not favourfurther development in the area.In April 1944 he left Auschwitz and became chief of the building bureau ofthe Waffen-SS in Silesia and Bohemia at Katowice. He remained there untilthe end of the war. Although almost all of the archives of the Auschwitzbuilding office fell into the hands of the Soviets after the camp wasliberated by the Red Army in January 1945, Bischoff remained in the shadowsafter the war ended. His involvement at Auschwitz went unrecognized untilhis death in Bremen in 1950.This Typed document from Auschwitz measures 145mm x 215mm