A leading historian has poured scorn on the publication of Auschwitz death-camp blueprints in German tabloid Bild over the weekend.

The blueprints were purported to show the crematorium and gas chamber at the death-camp. One of the blueprints apparently was initialled by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

But Professor Robert van Pelt of the University of Waterloo in Canada, the leading expert on the building of Auschwitz, said that none of the blueprints were actually new. All were well-known to researchers and could be found in archives in Poland and Russia. Professor van Pelt also said that they showed an earlier plan to build a complex of forced labour camps and that it was highly unlikely that Himmler himself would have signed any plans. He raised the possibility "that the drawings are forgeries, generated for the large grey market of Nazi memorabilia".