Reflections on the Wannsee Conference Dr Simon Holloway
T
he Holocaust, for all of its sprawling chaos, clearly operated in accordance with a series of plans. We know the identities of many of the individuals responsible for those plans, and we know of the existence of innumerable others. It stands to reason that in every one of its particulars, those plans owed their genesis to specific points in time. A moment, beyond recollection, at which fateful decisions were made. For a short while, historians believed that they had uncovered one such moment: the precise date on which the decision to murder the Jews of Europe received administrative approval. Known popularly as the Wannsee Conference, this was a meeting that took place on the shores of Lake Wannsee, in Berlin. There, on January 20, 1942, fifteen senior representatives of the SS and Nazi Party met at a magnificently appointed villa. With occasional breaks for refreshments, they discussed in some detail the evacuation of Jews from their homes across the continent, and their deportation ‘to the east’. According to the minutes, one of the issues to have most vexed the participants concerned whether to include in those deportations Jews in mixed marriages, or those labelled mischlinge: people with one or two Jewish grandparents, and thus a certain quantity of ‘Jewish blood’. As to the precise fate of those who were deported, the minutes seem to indicate that nobody was in the dark.
The villa overlooking Lake Wannsee, at which the delegates met in January, 1942.
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JHC Centre News
The minutes state, for example, that the evacuated Jews will immediately be put to work at building roads. Since most will perish ‘by natural causes’, the surviving remnant must be considered the most resistant, and the most capable of forming the nucleus of a new Jewish civilisation. The experience of history, they go on to relate, is sufficient to demonstrate that such hardened individuals ‘will have to be dealt with appropriately’. There is much within these minutes – brief though they may be – to arouse a sense of horror. On one page, countries are listed together with their estimated Jewish populations. Separated into those already under German control and those yet to be occupied by Germany, they provide the overall figure of 11 million. Only Estonia is already marked as Judenfrei (free of Jews), but it is evident that this was the plan for the others as well. What kind of monster is capable of deliberating on such issues? Who are the men who could so calmly discuss the commission of genocide? Of the fifteen men present, there were seven representatives of the SS and security apparatus and eight senior bureaucrats: five who represented ministries with especial interest in the Jewish Question, and three who represented the civilian administration in the occupied East. Over half of the men present held doctorates – mostly in law.
Photo: A. Savin, WikiCommons
