January 20, 1942
Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, convenes a conference at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee at which plans are drawn up for the “Final Solution” of European Jewry. The minutes of the meeting disclose the Nazi shift from a policy of Jewish emigration to one of deportation and resettlement in conquered land to the east, where Jews will be imprisoned and put to work in labor camps. Heydrich says this solution will “doubtlessly lead to the natural diminution of numbers at a considerable rate” — that is, rapidly kill many Jews.
The Wannsee Conference leads to the construction of death and labor camps.
Among the participants at the conference is Adolf Eichmann, who is captured, tried and convicted by Israel in 1961 for his role in the Nazi effort to exterminate European Jewry and is executed in 1962.
The Wannsee Conference is held at the height of British restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine, based on the 1939 White Paper. As a result of British policy and the refusal of other nations to accept Jewish refugees, the Final Solution leads to the murder of 6 million Jews from across Europe.
In 2012, a special commemoration is held at the European Parliament in Brussels to mark the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference as part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Addressing 500 attendees, EU President Martin Schulz says: “If you will allow me, it is normally not admissible that a representative of an institution speaks in such a moment about himself, but I ask for your understanding if I speak about me and my feelings. I am a German member of the European Parliament. I am born after the Second World War. But as a German representative, I feel that I have a very specific responsibility because what happened and what was decided at the so-called Wannsee Conference was decided in the name of the German people, and I am a representative of the German people. The German people of today are not guilty but responsible. Responsible to keep the memory and to never forget that what happened happened in the name of our nation. … Whatever is happening in the world today — antisemitism, action against the existence of the Jewish community, of the State of Israel or whatever — we are the first ones who have to defend our Jewish friends.”
