Wannsee

We then left the residential area and went through the forest of Grunewald. This area was a popular recreational destination for West Berliners during the period of the wall. It was a protected area (from development) and goes about 10K all the way to Wannsee.

To get there we got on one of the first highways anywhere. It was built in the 1920's. The highway cuts through the forest.

The Wannsee Conference took place on January 20, 1942 for the purpose mentioned previously. I believe we saw a film about it many years ago. Note that the conference doesn't mark the beginning of the Holocaust but after it already was underway. The attendees reviewed the experience to date and discussed how to make it work better. Attendees included many civil servants and not just political Nazis. Full cooperation and participation by all agencies was necessary. Nut it was a small conference over breakfast. We only know about it because its agenda wasn't destroyed as the war wound down. In other cases the Nazis did destroy records and other evidence.

On the way in we passed the Wannsee lake with lots of boats. It is the junction of two rivers. It is one of the most expensive areas of Berlin due to the lake, the available highway and commuter train options. There were many yacht clubs but not all remain open.

Signs mark the location of Max Liebermann's villa. (The architect is the same as of the conference site.) There is a small museum which displays his art. There are extensive gardens which go down to the lake.

We passed many other opulent villas including Villa Herz where the lady of the house was really the first to host intellectual salons. We then arrived at the House of the Wannsee Conference which is a memorial and educational site.

Once again, an incredible contrast-on the one hand the site is beautiful with well maintained and planned gardens and a lake, yet on the other hand the site is of a conference that is the main preserved evidence of an overall master plan of extermination.

Alex explained that many industrialist families supported the Nazis including some that remain prominent today without having explained their support. Some of this support pre-dated Hitler's ascent to power.

While we know about Wannsee we don't know anything equivalent regarding the decision as a matter of policy to effect the Final Solution altogether. Was it an order of Hitler? Was there a like conference? The protocol from Wannsee was discovered in 1946:

"...emigration has now been replaced by evacuation to the East...in view of the imminent final solution of the Jewish question...around eleven million Jews will be taken into consideration in the course of the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe..."

It also says that those who survive "will have to be treated accordingly because they unquestionably represent the most resistant segments and therefore constitute a natural elite that, if allowed to let go free, would turn into germ cells of renewed Jewish revival (witness the experience of history)."

I wonder what the Holocaust deniers and "revisionists" make of this protocol.

We could spend the day here as there is an extensive exhibition but it is time to go to the castle of Potsdam.