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On January
20, a meeting took place in a villa in Wannsee, on the outskirts of
Berlin, to discuss the measures and inter-ministerial coordination
needed to implement the "Final Solution" of the Jewish
problem. The meeting was held at the initiative of Reinhard Heydrich,
who, as Himmler’s deputy and the head of the RSHA, had been
authorized by Hermann Goering to elaborate a program that would
solve the Jewish problem totally. Heydrich summoned the directors of
the main government agencies that would have to cooperate for the
plan to succeed. The goal of the meeting was not to discuss a
decision to solve the Jewish problem by murdering all the Jews, but
only to consider ways of implementing a decision already made.
The meeting
was originally scheduled for December 9, 1941, but did not take
place until January 20, 1942. It was attended by the State
Secretaries of the most important German government ministries.
Including the highest-ranking representatives of the Interior
Ministry of the Generalgouvernement, the Foreign Office, the Reich
Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, the Ministry of
Justice, the Reich Chancellery, the Four-Year-Plan Office, several
leading officials in the SS Race and Resettlement Main Office, the
commander of Einsatzgruppe A, the director of the Party chancellery
office, Heydrich, and his Jewish affairs expert, Adolf Eichmann.
Heydrich
began the meeting with a lengthy speech. Because most of the
participants were directly or indirectly involved in the mass
murders that were already underway, he did not need to relate to a
matter that was unfamiliar to the participants. Heydrich’s plan
targeted all 11 million Jews in Europe as by Nazi definition and
statistics. He would exploit the Jewish masses for road-building and
subject those who survived this grueling labor to "special
treatment"-murder.
In the last
portion of his speech, Heydrich addressed himself to several special
problems, foremost the fate of Jews who had married Aryans, and
their offspring. The conference participants did not resolve these
questions.
The
directors of the government offices presented no obstacles; the
meeting lasted only 60-90 minutes. |
