How Nazi Germany’s Built Environment and Genocide Were Linked

This part of the camp, he explained, was expanded in 1943 and '44 as a new wing was added to accommodate more inmates-a clear indication of the Nazi regime's confidence that its genocidal practices would continue for years to come.

It also marked the deadliest and final phase of the Holocaust, during which a total of some six million Jews were murdered over the course of the Second World War.

"But what happens if we move our attention from the overall symbolic significance that the building has taken on and think about its individual forms?" added Jaskot, a professor of art history and German studies at Duke University. This was, after all, a major construction project, he added.

"Bricks and mortar had to be brought to the site, along with cement; foundations were dug; pipes were laid," said Jaskot. This was a clear example of the extent to which Nazi Germany's architectural policy was inextricably linked with the regime's genocidal plans.

Jaskot came to Bowdoin on November 4, 2024, to deliver an address as part of the College's Holocaust Education Lecture Series (sponsored by the Gabry Family Fund). The lecture was titled "Architecture and the Holocaust."

"The intersection of architecture and oppression is not unique to Auschwitz but haunts the entire Holocaust," he said. The role of the wartime German construction industry generally is much more central to the oppression of the Jews than has previously been suggested by scholars, argued Jaskot.

His lecture explored the many different ways that architecture played a part in promoting, planning, and enacting the genocide. From propaganda to antisemitic housing policy and into the occupation of Eastern Europe during the war, architects and their buildings influenced specific changes to Nazi policies and were surprisingly prominent in the administrative process.

Hitler had a special interest in architecture, which became increasingly important to him through the 1930s, said Jaskot. "Tellingly, Hitler linked architectural quality with the question of political strength."

As Nazi Germany's construction industry started to boom in the prewar years, he explained, huge architectural projects-whether the building of factories, stadiums, motorways, government buildings, or death camps-were central to Nazi policy, said Jaskot. This also led to a brutal expansion of forced labor operations and the deaths of tens of thousands of workers, most of them Jewish-another aspect the Holocaust explored by Jaskot.