Information: Witness Knowledge and Engaged Historiography

The Holocaust historian and documentarist Joseph Wulf (1912–1974). An international conference on the occasion of the 50th commemoration of his death.
October 8-10, 2024

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Joseph Wulf

Joseph Wulf (1912-1974) was a Jewish resistance fighter and Auschwitz survivor. After the war he lived in Poland, then Paris, and finally, as of 1952, in Berlin. He published the first extensive studies in Germany on Nazi rule and the murder of European Jews. 

In 1965 Wulf called for the establishment of an “International Documentation Centre for Research on National Socialism and its Consequences” in the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held on 20 January 1942. In pursuit of this aim he founded an association the following year and won the support of prominent people around the world. The West Berlin Senate, however, was unwilling to make the building available. Following years of unsuccessful negotiations, the association disbanded in March 1973.

Wulf, who took his own life in 1974, did not live to see the revived interest in his idea in the 1980s. In January, 1992, on the 50thanniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the building was opened as a memorial and education site. 

The library of the House of the Wannsee Conference was named after Joseph Wulf on the 20thanniversary of his death.