‘Those 15 pages became the basis of the Holocaust’
Eighty years ago today, senior members of the Nazi Party came together in Wannsee to draw up their plans for the 'Final Solution' - the annihilation of the Jews of Europe.
An elegant, opulent villa in a leafy suburb, shaded by tree-lined avenues and offering a magnificent view of a large lake. On a snowy morning, 15 men, eight with doctorates from their country’s finest universities, attend an invitation-only conference.
Relaxing and occasionally cracking jokes, they sit around a big oak table, sipping cognac and brandy.
The atmosphere is relaxed, the smoke from the fine cigars drifting through the luxurious home which includes a music room, a sports facility and a conservatory.
You could be mistaken for thinking these individuals, who speak in hushed, polite tones, are business people, ready to close a massive deal that would yield them millions.
Dinner, to be served by white-jacketed waiters, is to follow the discussion.
The address is 56-58 Am Grossen Wannsee, South-West Berlin.
The date: 80 years ago today.
The meeting was chaired by 37-year-old Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SD, the Nazi Secret Service, and Hitler’s heir apparent. The agenda was clear. History’s most efficient managers of genocide listened calmly as Heydrich conveyed the directions given by Hitler to his deputy, Reich Marshal Hermann Goering: “Make all necessary preparations for a total solution of the Jewish question” and then submit a “comprehensive draft” for the “final solution of the Jewish question”.
It was at that residence that the state crime of extermination, on an inconceivable scale, was endorsed.
For the first time, the resources of an entire nation – bureaucratic, industrial, transportation – would be marshalled for a single purpose.
Within 90 minutes, the participants endorsed the Wannsee Protocol, the calculated plan to leave no Jewish person alive by retrieving and shipping them to the death camps, regardless of how far they were from Auschwitz or Treblinka.
Those 15 pages became the basis of the Holocaust.
Out of the 30 copies, only one has survived, its authenticity verified by Adolf Eichmann during his trial in Israel.
Each attendee represented Nazi institutions such as the Office of the Four-Year Plan, the Reich Chancellery, the Propaganda Ministry and the Ministry for the Occupied Territories.
Hitler had told his closest circle about his decision to annihilate the Jews prior to Wannsee, and Heydrich now told those gathered around the table what Hitler had wanted done.
And so, the high-ranking officials began discussing ways to implement their master’s wishes, to actualise the genocide that had been taken at the very highest level and establish SS oversight of the process.
The participants were informed of extermination methods that had already been tried – by the time these hideous creatures had met, hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been butchered and just over a month before, the first Jews had been killed in gas vans based at Chelmno.
Some ventured their own proposals.
Martin Luther, Undersecretary at the Federal Foreign Office, brought a list with him with the words “wishes and ideas” on it.
The continent was to be “combed from west to east”, and in total, approximately 11 million Jews from European nations with Jewish populations as small as 200, including the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Turkey were to be destroyed.
Heydrich insisted on widening the circle of the victims, so the civil servants present rewrote the laws to include half-Jews, quarter Jews, even those who embraced Christianity and anyone of mixed blood who had a “racially, especially undesirable appearance that marks him outwardly as a Jew”.
Even those with non-Jewish parents who “thought” like a Jew were condemned, “a person of mixed blood (with) a particularly bad police record and political record that shows he feels and behaves like a Jew”.
These sickening legal configurations, deciding between a life worth living and a life not worth living, resulted in the slaughter of those who had never considered or thought of themselves as Jews.
The language employed was aimed at obscuring the bureaucratic horror, so the word “extermination” or any other term that explicitly spelled the fate of the Jews was replaced with “deportation to the East”.
Dr Josef Buhler, State Secretary of the General Government, informed the attendees that the 2.5 million Jews in Poland could be murdered on the spot if they were declared “unfit for work”.
Another official proposed that Jewish children of mixed marriage be compulsorily sterilised.
Sitting in front of a fireplace with Gestapo Chief Muller and Eichmann, Heydrich leaned back in his leather chair, looking excessively cheerful since the Jewish people were to vanish from the face of the earth and only the ashes of their corpses would survive.
These men were not mad, nor thugs. The Wannsee Conference demonstrates that the poison of antisemitism can infiltrate the bloodstream of even the most educated, cultured and sophisticated societies, and shows what such civilised people are capable of.
Today, slanders and the defamation of Israel and Jews filter into too many areas of influence and are being embraced.
The Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum.
It began with one-sided propaganda that reawakened dormant antisemitic beliefs, and indoctrinated millions with hatred against the Jews.
The Nazis also launched a boycott targeting Jewish shops and businesses, with slogans such as “Don’t buy Jewish goods”.
This irrational, obsessive animosity continues in 2022 in Australia with a resurgent BDS campaign.
Wannsee also teaches us not to be indifferent in the face of an implacable threat, to take seriously those nations who are willing to devote their assets and resources for the purpose of obliterating another people.
Had they been invited today to a similar conference, the Iranian regime, which not only calls for literally wiping Israel off the map but is striving to construct nuclear weapons, would have enthusiastically accepted.
Hitler made no secret of his plans.
The antisemites of today are not shy about their intentions for Israel and anyone who supports it.
Dr Dvir Abramovich is chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission and the author of seven books. His latest book is The War Against the Jews: Writing from the Trenches.
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