After the Holocaustbijeenkomst in this villa gold: Befehl ist Befehl – NOS

In the Wertheimpark in Amsterdam this morning during the annual National Holocaust Remembrance with kransleggingen and speeches dealt with the victims of the Holocaust.

an estimated six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma, gays, the disabled, and others in the Second world War murdered by the nazis. Of the 140,000 Dutch Jews have 102.000 not survive the war.

The logistic approach of the Holocaust was this month 75 years ago by the nazis discussed and recorded during the Wannsee conference in Berlin.

The NOS does today report of the National Holocaust Commemoration in two broadcasts. At 11.00 pm on NPO 2 a direct report of the commemoration in the Spiegelmonument 'Never again Auschwitz' in the Wertheimpark in Amsterdam. They include prime minister Mark Rutte and mayor Van der Laan delivered a speech. In the avonduitzending to 19.20 hours on NPO 2 looks Rob Trip from the Hollandsche Schouwburg with guests back at the commemoration, and there is special attention for the Wannsee conference.

In an imposing villa on the Wannsee in Berlin met on 20 January 1942, fifteen nazi leaders and officials meet for the 'final solution of the jewish question' to discuss.

In an hour and a half took care of the men under the leadership of the high nazileider Reinhard Heydrich, the logistic approach of Hitler’s desire to have all Jews in Europe to destroy. The arrangements are by Adolf Eichmann documented in a report, of which one copy has been preserved.

It is one of the few nazi documents stating the nature and extent of the Holocaust are described. A cold calculation shows that, according to the nazi’s in Europe’s 11 million Jews lived in all of which after had to be.

What happened during the Wannsee conference in Berlin?

During the Wannsee conference in Berlin in 1942, was the approach of the murder of the European Jews was discussed. According to calculations it went to 11 million Jews.

The murder of the Jews was at the time of the conference in the east already in full swing. Special units were after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 began the systematic shooting of Jews. There was also experimented with gassing in trucks.

During the Wannsee-conference, an agreement was reached about the deportation of the Jews from the west to the camps in the east. In a number of camps were at that time gas chambers are built. The mass deportations came in the summer of 1942, also from the Netherlands.

According to Hans-Christian Jasch, director of the Wannsee-memorial, the entire German state apparatus by the conference complicit in the Holocaust.

“Wannsee conference was necessary for the logistical approach of the Holocaust”

The Wannsee-conference was necessary for the logistical approach of the Holocaust

In the report was only in guarded terms written about the murder of the Jews. They assumed that many by heavy forced labour would collapse.

For the others would be 'an appropriate solution' to be found, in order to avoid that they are ” the seed of a new Jewish life'. The report ends with: ‘in Conclusion, possible solutions discussed.’

Jasch stresses that the participants in the conference well knew that they are with radical views in the so-called 'Jodenkwestie' career quickly could make the. According to Jasch is that a mechanism of which we in today’s society should know.

For the German Beate Niemann is the villa on the Wannsee a horrible place. She was already in his fifties when she found out that her father, Bruno Sattler, since 1942 head of the Gestapo in Belgrade. He was responsible for the death of thousands of Jews. The image of the 'good father' from her youth changed this radically.

"I freeze, when I have this place to come," she says about the villa at the Wannsee, which since 1992 to visit is as a memorial. "The crimes of my father with this conference is legitimate. Below, one could say: order is order, I have done what I have instructed."

“I feel that my father is really a perpetrator was”

Beate Niemann discovered only late in her life that her father was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews. His crimes are, according to her, by the Wannsee-conference, wrapped up.

"It is his shame, not my shame", says Beate about the past of her father in 1972, died in prison. "But I feel the responsibility for how we work with the victims to deal with. I will therefore not be silent."

She often speaks at schools and has various encounters with victims of the atrocities of her father, have survived.

“My father left shortly before my birth, thousands of Jews gassing”

Beate Niemann discovered only late in her life that her father was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews. His crimes are, according to her, by the Wannsee-conference, wrapped up.

Beate wants her story to continue to do that, how difficult it sometimes is. "I keep in mind what a Jewish friend once said, ” If you are history does not tell, then our history never took place'."

also Check out the online special with six stories of victims of the Holocaust, told by their grandchildren.