The neat lines and red rectangular sketches look like any typical architectural design. But the handwritten initials H.H. — belonging to the infamous Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler — indicate what the drawings represent: wooden barracks, gas chambers and crematoria.

Just ahead of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem is displaying the blueprints of the notorious Polish camp that has become a symbol of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry. It is the first time the plans will be on display for a wide audience.