An Israeli Holocaust scholar has debunked the Wannsee Conference, at which top Nazi officials are said to have gathered at a villa in a Berlin suburb in 1942 to draw the blueprints of the “Final Solution.”
According to Professor Yehuda Bauer of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Wannsee was a meeting but “hardly a conference,” and “little of what was said there was executed in detail.”
Bauer addressed the opening session of an international conference held here to mark the 50th anniversary of the decision to carry out the “Final Solution.” But it was not made at Wannsee, the Czech-born scholar said.
“The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at. Wannsee was but a stage in the unfolding of the process of mass murder,” he said.
Bauer also said fears that memories of the Holocaust are receding with time are unfounded.
“Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, with empathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture.
“Hardly a month passes without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, a number of new books of prose or poetry dealing with the subject,” the professor said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
