Wannsee House and the Holocaust

Although Hitler’s extermination of the Jews was well underway by the end of 1941, it was at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 that Reinhard Heydrich officially announced the Nazi’s infamous “final solution.” This conference was held at a luxurious villa, and both house and conference have a fascinating history.
This book traces that history from 1914—the year that saw the foundations laid for both the house and the Holocaust—to the present. Appendices provide a wealth of historical documents.

Steven Lehrer is an associate professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He lives in New York City.

Steven Lehrer
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: 24 photos, appendices, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2009 [2000]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4092-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9144-5
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      ix

List of Illustrations      xi

Introduction      1

I. The Wannsee Villa and Fritz Haber      3

II. Friedrich Minoux Buys the Wannsee Villa and Enters Politics      17

III. Aryanization, Friedrich Minoux, and the Plundering of the German Jews      36

IV. Friedrich Minoux Defrauds the Berlin Gas Company      48

V. Reinhard Heydrich and the Nordhav Foundation      53

VI. Planning to Murder the Jews of Europe      64

VII. Ordinary Germans, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust      109

VIII. The Wannsee Villa After the Wannsee Conference      131

Appendix A: A Jew Defined      137

Appendix B: Letters      140

Appendix C: The Wannsee Protocol      146

Appendix D: Biographies of Wannsee Conference Participants      154

Appendix E: Eichmann’s Testimony in Jerusalem About the Conference      174

Appendix F: Notes on the Film “The Wannsee Conference”       180

Chapter Notes      181

Bibliography      187

Index      191

“good information…uses a variety of sources…a good addition”—Stone & Stone Second World War Books; “numerous photographs”—Reference & Research Book News; “organized as a series of tightly written vignettes…ensures that Wannsee will not be forgotten”—Hadassah Magazine.