How Were Nazi Germany’s Built Environment and the Holocaust Linked?

He explained that this part of the camp was expanded in 1943 and 1944 with the addition of a new wing to house more prisoners; This is a clear indication of the Nazi regime’s confidence that its genocidal practices would continue for years to come.

This also marked the deadliest and final phase of the Holocaust, in which a total of six million Jews were killed throughout World War II.

“So what happens if we turn our attention away from the overall symbolic importance the building assumes and think about its individual forms?” added Jaskot, professor of art history and German studies at Duke University. He added that this was, after all, a major construction project.

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

Jaskot arrived at Bowdoin on November 4, 2024, to deliver an address as part of the College. Holocaust Education Lecture Series (sponsored by the Garry Family Fund). The title of the conference was “Architecture and the Holocaust”.

“The intersection of architecture and oppression is not unique to Auschwitz but haunts the entire Holocaust,” he said. Jaskot argued that the role of the wartime German construction industry in the oppression of Jews in general was much more central than scholars had previously suggested.

His lecture explored the many different ways architecture played in encouraging, planning, and enacting genocide. From propaganda to anti-Semitic housing policy to the occupation of Eastern Europe during the war, architects and their buildings influenced certain changes in Nazi policies and became surprisingly prominent in the administrative process.

Hitler had a particular interest in architecture, which became increasingly important to him in the 1930s, Jaskot said. “It is significant that Hitler linked architectural quality with the question of political power.”

As Nazi Germany’s construction industry began to boom in the pre-war years, large architectural projects (construction of factories, stadiums, highways, government buildings or death camps) became central to Nazi policy, Jaskot said. This also led to the brutal expansion of forced labor operations and the deaths of tens of thousands of workers, most of them Jews; This was another aspect of Jaskot’s exploration of the Holocaust.