On this date, January 20, 1942 in the leafy Berlin suburb of Wannsee senior members of the German government discussed how they would carry out the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish question’.
The men seated at the table were among the elite of Germany. More than half of them held doctorates from German universities. They were well informed about the policy towards Jews. Each understood that the cooperation of his agency was vital if such an ambitious, unprecedented policy was to succeed.
Among the agencies represented were the Gestapo, the SS, the Race and Resettlement Office, and the office in charge of distributing Jewish property.
Also at the meeting was a representative of the Polish occupation administration, whose territory included more than two million Jews. The head of Reinhard Heydrich’s office for Jewish affairs, Adolf Eichmann, prepared the conference notes and Heydrich introduced the agenda.
Hitler did not attend the meeting.
The men needed little explanation. They understood that “evacuation to the east” was a euphemism for concentration camps and that the “final solution” was to be the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews.
The final protocol of the Wannsee Conference never explicitly mentioned extermination, but, within a few months after the meeting, the German government installed the first poison-gas chambers in Poland.
Responsibility for the entire project was put in the hands of Heinrich Himmler.
The gas was supplied by IG Fraben, which was founded in 1925 by a merger of six chemical companies, BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron and Chemische Fabrik vorm. After the war it was taken over by the Allies and divided back into its constituent companies.
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