Selected publications with the protocol of the Wannsee meeting, 1955 – 1992

Publications

Video Gebärdensprache

Audio Text

This display case shows some of the publications on the Wannsee meeting. For a long time, such documents were primarily published by those affected by Nazi crimes. They were translated, first and foremost, into the languages of the countries where Jewish men, women and children had fled, or which were home to large Jewish communities. Today just as much as then, for survivors and their relatives the Wannsee Conference – now the standard term for the meeting – remains crucially important. Many of them believe the meeting marks the day of the decision to start a systematic programme of industrial mass murder. Like many others, they too would like to tie the decision for such a monstrous and inhuman programme of murder to a fixed location and date. For many years, it was overlooked that the murders had already been approved and ordered some time before and the meeting itself set out to discuss better planning and organisation. Legally too, the Wannsee Conference was regarded as the place and time of the decision to launch a programme of mass murder. Only decades later were scholarly papers published which countered such misunderstandings by setting out the meeting’s objectives and content in precise detail – yet that research was and still is only known by a relatively limited audience.

It was rather different with the films presented in the media directly to the left. Although they contain many historical interpretations and inaccuracies, in some countries a few of them attracted a broad audience.