Seventy-six years ago to the day, 20 January 1942, the Wannsee Conference, a meeting of Nazi governmental & party officials chaired by S.S.-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was held to ensure inter-agency cooperation in the execution of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," the Nazis' euphemistic name for the attempted genocide of all the Jews in Europe—the Shoah, or the Holocaust. The Wannseekonferenz was not the kickoff of the Shoah, that had been underway since the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 & had accelerated with the conquest of Poland in 1939. But Wannsee did initiate a new phase in the "Final Solution," involving the deliberate allocation of significant resources to the mass transportation of populations from the conquered Eastern European territories to purpose-built extermination camps, expressly for the purpose of killing all the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. What records we do have of the conference—the Nazis attempted to destroy all transcripts of the discussions, not in the panicked days before final defeat in 1945, but from the very moment the conference adjourned—indicate that it was not a fiery series of speeches meant to whip the assembled bureaucrats into a frothy killing frenzy, but a cold, dispassionate analysis of the logistical & administrative means necessary to slaughter human being on an industrial scale. We dare never forget! The Wannsee Conference was held to plan the Shoah, the extermination all the Jews in Europe, on 20 January 1942, seventy-six years ago today.
I've marked the occasion by re-watching the 2001 television movie Conspiracy: Wikipedia-link & I.M.D.B.-link.
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