The Final Solution

The Wannsee Conference.

This was a meeting held on the 20th January 1942 at a villa in a Berlin suburb which decided on the way in which Jews were to be dealt with across the Nazi occupied countries. The text refers to the Final Solution. How does this mark a change in the proposed treatment of Jews?

Until 1941 Jews had been used for forced labour in camps or taken from the ghettos in forced labour details. The camps from this time onwards, however, developed a more sinister character – they became death camps, converted for the ultimate destruction of the Jewish population of Europe.

Before 1942 up to one million Jews had been murdered. After the Wannsee Conference and until the end of the war another five million were exterminated. The words “the Final Solution” were carefully chosen in order to carefully cover the fact that what was actually being talked about was murder.

Text from the Minutes of The Wannsee Conference.

“In view of the dangers of emigration in war-time, and the possibilities in the East, the Reichsführer 55 and Chief of the German Police (Himmler) has forbidden the emigration of Jews.

Emigration has now been replaced by evacuation of the Jews to the East, as a further possible solution, with the appropriate prior authorization of the Führer. However, this operation should be regarded only as a provisional option; but it is already supplying practical experience of great significance in view of the coming final solution of the Jewish question.

The Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labour) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into those areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction. The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most (physically) resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival (witness the experience of history).

Europe is to be combed through from West to East in the course of the practical implementation of the final solution. … The evacuated Jews will first be taken, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, in order to be transported to the east.”