Newsletter VIII/2024 - What does Wannsee mean for...?

"What does Wannsee mean for...?"

For some people, the very name of this Berlin neighbourhood is synonymous with the murder of the European Jews. For others, the first thing they notice when they visit the memorial is the beauty of the park grounds. A new special exhibition in the building and garden reveals the various perspectives of this site.

© GHWK Berlin

Newsletter VII/2024 - Never again! Never again what?

Oct. 8-10: Witness Knowledge and Engaged Historiography

The Holocaust historian and documentarist Joseph Wulf (1912–1974). Register now for the international English-German conference on the occasion of the 50th commemoration of his death on October 10, 1974

© AdsD

Newsletter VI/2024 - Alexander von Falkenhausen

“Servant of the Third Reich” and “Bitter Opponent of Hitler”?

The former German military commander in Belgium and northern France is considered a “man of the resistance.” Yet, early on, attention was drawn to his involvement in the persecution and deportation of Belgium’s Jewish population. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the 20 July 1944 attempted coup, we wish to address this topic.

© Kazerne Dossin, J. Bourgeois

Newsletter V/2024 - Discrimination against Minorities

Newsletter IV/2024 - Visitor Research

Visitor Research as a Component of Design for All

Visitor research requires us to critically scrutinise our work and consider whose perspectives have been considered thus far in our exhibition and educational programs. Are they those of academia, educational professionals or our own, and whose perspective could we add? In summer 2023, researchers observed and conducted surveys with visitors of our permanent exhibition. The analysis of their findings demonstrates the potential of this research.

© GHWK

Newsletter III/2024 - The Wannsee Conference Participants – and a Secretary

The Wannsee Conference Participants – and a Secretary

We have just published the second, revised and expanded edition of our German anthology about the ‘Men of the Wannsee Conference’. In addition to chapters on the 15 participants, it now includes a biographical portrait of an additional attendee: Ingeburg Werlemann, Adolf Eichmann’s secretary in the Reich Security Main Office, who took notes during the meeting on 20 January 1942.

© Metropol-Verlag

Newsletter II/2024 - Podcast: Wannsee

Podcast: Wannsee. Looking at the International Dimensions of the Holocaust

The Memorial and Educational Centre is launching a new format in 2024. We are producing an English-language podcast aimed at introducing our work to an interested international audience and engaging in dialogue with experts. In our first episode, we spoke with the American historian Professor Michael A. Meyer about Leo Baeck.

Newsletter I/2024 - Choosing Dictatorship?

Choosing Dictatorship? Democratic Culture and Its Enemies

We were invited to the Jewish Community of Berlin on January 21, 2024 to hold our event on the occasion of the 82nd annual commemoration of the Wannsee Conference. The following lecture, held by our colleagues Aya Zarfati and Dr. Matthias Haß, introduced a two-part discussion on the parallels between the current political situation and the Weimar Republic and to consider what actions can be taken in the areas of justice, education, media, art and culture.

Newsletter II/2023 - Continuity and Persistence of Antisemitism

Dear Readers,

Having selected antisemitism as this year’s focus, we have sought to address it in multiple ways, both internally and externally. This newsletter, introduced by our director Deborah Hartmann, thus also touches on aspects of this topic, sometimes explicitly and other times indirectly...

© GHWK Berlin

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

It was 80 years ago, in spring 1943, that the SS and police in Warsaw eliminated the remnants of the once largest Jewish community in Europe – a community that put up great resistance in the process. The work of the perpetrators is uniquely documented in the final report of the commanding SS and police officer Jürgen Stroop. Martin Cüppers, scientific head of the Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg at the University of Stuttgart, has taken a closer look at this primary source...

Hey Chat GPT, can you tell me what the Wannsee Conference was?

On 10 May 2023, we held the symposium “Thinking with Algorithms?” with educators from different fields. It focused on the challenges and opportunities created by digitization as well as the problem of online antisemitism. Our research assistant Judith Alberth reported on the event...

"Antisemitism is socially unacceptable."

We invited representatives of various professional groups with whom we organize training seminars to join us in an exchange of ideas at the symposium “Thinking with Algorithms?” held on 10 May 2023. Winfrid Wenzel, Antisemitism Commissioner for the Berlin Police, also attended the event and we met him beforehand for an interview...

Webinar Series: Anniversaries in 2023

The year 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the Rosenstrasse protests in Berlin and the first deportations of Sinti and Roma from Germany to Auschwitz; it is also the 90th anniversary of the boycott of Jewish-owned stores. In the first half of the year, the Education and Research Department organized a series of webinars…

#Antisemitism: Workshop Exhibition “Scandal or Normality?”

In January 2023, we launched an exhibition on antisemitism since 1945 in our 1st-floor hallway. Each month we create a new poster to commemorate an antisemitic attack that occurred in the past seven decades. The exhibition illustrates how hatred towards Jews has been a continuous phenomenon in Germany and provides examples of the many different manifestations of this antisemitism...

© GHWK Berlin

Stopping Antisemitism Together

The GHWK is one of the supporters of the “Education and Weeks of Action against Antisemitism,” a campaign that has taken place annually for twenty years. Nikolas Lelle from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation considered the past and future of this campaign...

Kujau’s Hitler and the Wannsee Conference

In 1983, Stern magazine announced that it had acquired Hitler’s diaries. The editor-in-chief wrote about it in an editorial: “Some of the history of the Third Reich will now have to be rewritten.” The northern German broadcasting company NDR discovered what he meant by this and put the entire fake version online for everyone to read. The Wannsee Conference also plays a curious role in these forged diaries...

© GHWK Berlin

Training "Who writes history and why?"

In February, multipliers from various Israeli memorial sites were hosted by us for a week-long training course under the motto "Who writes history and why? Historikerstreit 2.0, 'competing' memories and the discourse about the Holocaust in contemporary Germany". We asked them to tell us here about their impressions...

© GHWK Berlin, Aya Zarfati

Newsletter 1/2023 – Annual Theme of 2023: Antisemitism before, during, and after the Shoah

Editorial

Our director Deborah Hartmann is looking ahead: For the first time, we have chosen a theme to accompany 2023. On the 90th anniversary of the Nazi’s rise to power, we will be focusing on Antisemitism...

© GHWK Berlin, Franziska Thole

Annual commemoration of the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 19, 2023

"...and to alarm the whole world". Jewish Resistance and Self-Assertion in Response to the Shoah - program and registration for our event on the annual commemoration of the meeting at Wannsee, Jan. 19, 2023, 6-9 pm, on site and online, find all information here!

Chotzen – Images after Memory

The exhibition by the Israeli artist Inbar Chotzen is on display at the “Villa Oppenheim” in Charlottenburg until 26 March. We contributed a small historical segment from the Chotzen family estate...

© Inbar Chotzen

The “Antisemitism and Youth” project

Our new colleague Lucas Frings presents his project “Antisemitism and Youth”, which the Memorial and Educational Site is conducting in cooperation with the University of Duisburg-Essen until 2024...

© GHWK Berlin, Till Gathmann

Reading on the burning of books

2023 marks the 90th anniversary of the National Socialist burning of books. To commemorate the occasion, we will be holding our 6th annual reading on the burning of books, but this year there will be some changes...

© GHWK Berlin, Christine Kitta

Dates

What are we planning for the commemorative year of 2023? Event information and other dates for the first half of the year in and with our villa can be found here...

© GHWK Berlin, Jennifer Heidtke

Newsletter I/2021 - The Making of our 3rd Permanent Exhibition

Introduction

Dear Sir or Madam, dear friends, the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site is revamping its Newsletter. In the first issue in the new format, we look back on the creation and conception of our permanent exhibition, which opened in January 2020.

© GHWK Berlin, Franziska Thole

Educational standards and curatorial rules

Dr. Elke Gryglewski, former acting director of our museum and member of the New Permanent Exhibition management team, on the synthesis of fundamental parameters of the new permanent exhibition.

© GHWK Berlin

Curatorial challenges

Our curators Babette Quinkert and Katharina Zeiher on their work on the exhibition "The Meeting at the Wannsee and the Murder of the European Jews"

© GHWK Berlin, Thomas Bruns

The focus group in conversation

"It was like seeing something that others cannot see." Our focus group, ten people representing the fields of seeing, hearing, moving, understanding and feeling from associations of people with disabilities, reports on their participation - from the very beginning.

© GHWK Berlin

Upcoming event

September 13-14, 2021: From Dictatorship to Democracy. Symposium by Invitation of the Research Project »The Berlin Administration of Justice after 1945« - with scholars and lawyers from Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, and Germany. Program and registration here!

© GHWK Berlin, Christine Kitta