As the Final Solution progressed, it became clear that working people to death would not achieve the goal as quickly as desired. So, with culturally expected efficiency, the Nazis set out to create new methods of destruction -- more "wholesale" manners of killing and disposing of unwanted humans.

Almost simultaneously they decided that, if there was to be a speedy method of disposal, it would be most efficient to have all the garbage in a central location.

So while scientists were exploring new ideas of faster murder, Rudolf Höss (Hoess), the commandant of Auschwitz, was charged with increasing the size of the camp.

Brzeziński, the Polish village known by Germans as Birkenau, 3 kilometers from Auschwitz, was chosen as the site for the new "death camp". The existing Polish residents were evicted, and construction began on a camp that was to be 20 times the size of Auschwitz. Twenty times the size of Auschwitz.

German architects and engineers drew up amazing plans for the complex that was to be built there. The camp was divided into a section for women and a section for men, and the women's section was started first in brick. As construction continued, the Nazis realized that they were running out of materials to build brick barracks, so they modified wood horse barn plans and increased the size of the building for the number of prisoners they planned to house. German building codes required that every structure have a heat system -- in this case a brick furnace and chimney system -- which was duly built in each barrack. The furnaces were never lit.