14 Facts About Wannsee Conference

1.

Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942.

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2.

Wannsee Conference participants included representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the justice, interior, and state ministries, and representatives from the SS.

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3.

At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the fate of the deportees would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS.

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4.

The Wannsee House, site of the conference, is a Holocaust memorial.

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5.

The minutes of the Wannsee Conference estimated the Jewish population of the Soviet Union to be five million, including nearly three million in Ukraine.

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6.

At the time of the Wannsee Conference, the killing of Jews in the Soviet Union had already been underway for some months.

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7.

Wannsee Conference instructed that any pogroms spontaneously initiated by the occupants of the conquered territories were to be quietly encouraged.

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8.

Wannsee Conference said that between 1933 and October 1941,537,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had emigrated.

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9.

Wannsee Conference explained that since further Jewish emigration had been prohibited by Himmler, a new solution would take its place: "evacuating" Jews to the east.

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10.

The wording of the Wannsee Conference Protocol—the distributed minutes of the meeting—made it clear to participants that evacuation east was a euphemism for death.

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11.

Wannsee Conference outlined categories of people who would not be killed.

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12.

Wannsee Conference had expected a lot of resistance, Eichmann recalled, but instead, he had found "an atmosphere not only of agreement on the part of the participants, but more than that, one could feel an agreement which had assumed a form which had not been expected".

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13.

Wannsee Conference said at his trial: "How shall I put it – certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me".

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14.

Wannsee Conference stated at his trial that it was personally edited by Heydrich, and thus reflected the message he intended the participants to take away from the meeting.

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