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The Florida Holocaust Museum: History, Heritage and Hope Permanent Exhibition

The Wannsee Conference

I have been authorized by Reich Marshal Herman Goring to make all the necessary preparations … for the final solution of the Jewish Question in Europe … I therefore invite you to the conference, immediately followed by breakfast … Heil Hitler!
   – Reinhard Heydrich
Primarily called to gain the support of the German bureaucracy for the Endlosung der Judenfrage (Solution to the Jewish Question), the Wannsee conference was held on January 20, 1942 at a villa on Lake Wannsee near Berlin.  Seen as a natural result of the success of the Einsatzgruppen campaigns in the Soviet Union and Poland, the Final Solution would accomplish:
a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of the German people,
b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.
Nazi officials casually sat around a large conference table and in less than 90 minutes, approved previously drafted plans for the systematic annihilation of the European Jews that would begin with the Polish Jews and move westward.Minutes of the Wannsee Conference

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This page references:

  1. Wannsee Protocol data table
  2. Wannsee Conference letter
  3. Audio File 122 - The Wannsee Conference
  4. View of the Wannsee villa