20 January 1941 A.D. Wannsee Conference Meets: Nazi-Fascists Discuss “Final Solution” to the
“Jewish Question”
Editors. “The Wannsee Conference.” History.com.
N.d. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wannsee-conference.
Accessed 19 Jan 2014.
The Wannsee Conference
On this day, Nazi officials
meet to discuss the details of the "Final Solution" of the
"Jewish question."
In July 1941, Herman
Goering, writing under instructions from Hitler, had ordered Reinhard Heydrich,
SS general and Heinrich Himmler's number-two man, to submit "as soon as
possible a general plan of the administrative, material, and financial measures
necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish
question."
Heydrich met with Adolf
Eichmann, chief of the Central Office of Jewish Emigration, and 15 other
officials from various Nazi ministries and organizations at Wannsee, a suburb
of Berlin. The agenda was simple and focused: to devise a plan that would
render a "final solution to the Jewish question" in Europe. Various
gruesome proposals were discussed, including mass sterilization and deportation
to the island of Madagascar. Heydrich proposed simply transporting Jews from
every corner Europe to concentration camps in Poland and working them to death.
Objections to this plan included the belief that this was simply too
time-consuming. What about the strong ones who took longer to die? What about
the millions of Jews who were already in Poland? Although the word
"extermination" was never uttered during the meeting, the implication
was clear: anyone who survived the egregious conditions of a work camp would be
"treated accordingly."
Months later, the "gas
vans" in Chelmno, Poland, which were killing 1,000 people a day, proved to
be the "solution" they were looking for--the most efficient means of
killing large groups of people at one time.
The minutes of this
conference were kept with meticulous care, which later provided key evidence
during the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
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