Germany somberly marked the 70th anniversary of the infamous Wannsee Conference on Friday, with the country's president saying the meeting that laid out plans for the Holocaust still caused "anger and shame."
At the same villa on the shore of Berlin's Wannsee lake where the original meeting took place, now a museum, President Christian Wulff told an audience that even though many years have passed, Germany should never be allowed to forget its responsibility for the genocide of some 6 million European Jews. "Therefore it is important and a national task to keep the memory alive," he said.
On Jan. 20, 1942, high-level members of the Nazi party and other bureaucrats met at the villa to orchestrate large-scale plans for the extermination of Jews. At the time, hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered, but many historians believe that the conference was the point at which Adolf Hitler's plans for their industrialized killing were laid out explicitly for his top officials.
These men included Nazi party members and members of the SS, the party's military force, which was to oversee the plans.
"This place and the name 'Wannsee' has become a symbol for the bureaucratically organized decision between life worth living and life not worth living, for state-organized extermination, for the planned and official systematic killing of Europe's Jews," Wulff said.
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Because he was considered a Russia expert, Dr. Georg Leibbrandt became the head of the Eastern Europe department for the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs when he joined the party in 1933, and was one of the APA's most important masterminds. He took part in a number of meetings about the destruction of the Jews, and went on to hold a leading position at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, which he represented at the Wannsee conference.
Dr. Gerhard Klopfer joined the NSDAP, the SA and the SS in 1935. The bureaucrat worked his way up to become a top official in the Nazi Party, in charge of "race and nationality questions," among other things.
Wine dealer and World War I veteran Otto Hofmann joined the Nazi party in 1931, later also joining the SS. In December 1939 he began leading the SS Race and Settlement Office, which was responsible for resettling occupied areas with Germans and conducting racial purity tests.
Adolf Eichmann joined the NSDAP in 1932 and went on to facilitate and organize the large scale deportation and extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe. During the Wannsee conference he acted as recorder. At the end of WWII Eichmann fled to Argentina, where he was arrested in 1960. He was sentenced to death and hanged in 1962.
Leader of the Wannsee conference Reinhard Heydrich joined the Nazi party and the SS in 1931. He headed a number of Nazi institutions and was responsible for the ghettoization and systematic mass murder of Jews in German-occupied territories. He died in 1942 in Prague after an attack by a Czech resistance fighter.
Dr. Josef Bühler attended the Wannsee conference as State Secretary for the Office of the Government of the Governor General-German-occupied Poland. He was among those responsible for the murder of Polish Jews. He was arrested in May 1945 and later taken to Poland, where he was sentenced to death and executed in 1948.
Wilhelm Kritzinger, a leading figure in the Reich Chancellery, was extensively involved with "Jewish problems" there. When later questioned in court in 1945, he admitted to taking part in the Wannsee Conference, acknowledging its criminal nature.
Commander of the Security Police and Security Service (KdS) Dr. Rudolf Lange acted as an "experienced practioner" of mass executions at the Wannsee Conference, having worked to rid the Baltic region of Jews in a special unit that moved behind the German army there.
Head of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) Heinrich Müller had a hand in most of the crimes masterminded in the Reich Security Main Office, including the Holocaust, and was one of the most powerful people within the regime.
Martin Luther was undersecretary of state at the German Foreign Ministry and was in charge of Department D (Deutschland) and Section D III, which he made into one of the administrative agencies involved in the Final Solution. The German Foreign Ministry contributed to the genocide through the diplomatic preparation of deportations from occupied and friendly countries.
Roland Freisler was a state secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, which was the ministry mainly involved in the judicial persecution of the Jews.
Alfred Meyer was a state secretary in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was invited to the Wannsee Conference because the genocide of the Jews was already underway in the occupied Soviet territories which his ministry administered. At Wannsee, Meyer suggested that "certain preparatory measures" be carried out locally to avoid causing unrest among the civilian population.
State Secretary Erich Neumann represented the Ministries of Economic Affairs, Labour, Finances, Food, Transportation, and Armaments and Ammunition. He argued for the deportation of Jewish workers employed in firms essential to the war effort to be deferred.
SS Colonel Eberhard Schöngarth participated in his role as commander of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) field office for the Government General in Krakow, Poland.
Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart was a state secretary in the Reich Interior Ministry who helped to formulate anti-Semitic laws. At the Wannsee Conference, he called for the forced sterilization of people of "mixed blood."