European leaders to mark 70th anniversary of Nazi Wannsee Conference
Parliamentarians will commemorate seventy years since a group of Nazi officials gathered at a lakeside villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to deliberate on the “Final Solution.”
By Danna Harman Tags: Holocaust NazisOver 70 parliamentarians from across Europe will gather in Brussels on Friday to mark the anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, a pivotal moment in Holocaust history.
Seventy years after a group of Nazi officials gathered at a lakeside villa on the Wannsee near Berlin to deliberate on the “final solution,” the statesmen will issue a special declaration to commemorate the event at which various other “final solutions” --such as exile to Madagascar and deportation eastward -- were taken off the table in favor of the plan to exterminate European Jewry.
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Entrance gate to former Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen. |
| Photo by: Getty images |
In addition to commemorating Wannsee’s Final Solution plan with “humility and sadness”, the declaration also explicitly rejects the notion of “double genocide” a direction advocated by some East European states, particularly the Baltics, which argues that Europe experienced two equal genocides – a Nazi and a Soviet one.
The concept of such a “Double Genocide” was formalized in the 2008 Prague Declaration and resulted, among other things, in a 2009 European Parliament vote in favor of an all-European unitary day of commemoration for the victims of Nazi and Soviet crimes, of different kinds.
British parliamentarian Lord Janner of Braunstone, one of those behind the declaration explained the reason for the additional emphasis of the Friday initiative. “Seventy years on from the decision that more than any other defined the Holocaust, the memory of the Holocaust is under unprecedented attack from member states of the European Union, particularly Lithuania. This initiative is about preserving the historical truth for the benefit of all Europeans. If we lose the true meaning of one genocide we lose the meaning of all genocides. If everything is genocide then nothing is genocide,” he said in a statement.
The signatories to the declaration are from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
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It is pure rubbish to name the conference at Wansee as some kind of Final Solution Conference.
I recommend seeing bbc movie "conspiracy",2001; with kenneth branaugh,colin firth and stanley tucci, et al. It is searing!
A sad day to remember. When I was growing up and learned about the Holocaust and the violent deaths of my father and other family members, I took naive consolation in "never again" I was wrong. Human beings have perpetrated several genocides since... I also found out since that there is a dissociation between Jewish victims and the others Nazi victims: Romas/gypsies, gays, people of color, Seventh Day Adventists (yes, their religion too was "racialized") and the disabled. Total: 6 millions Jews plus 5 millions others = 11 millions individuals ( "life unworthy of life" as the Nazis put it) murdered in this particular Holocaust. Stalin who was indeed Hitler's soul brother also perpetrated genocides and they too must be remembered. Instead of this sort of tragic competition, how about solidarity for all survivors of these mass atrocities and of all atrocities since? Of course I have strong emotions about the murders that so impacted the future of my then two year old self (thank you Raoul Wallenberg and my mother, Isabelle Vital, for saving my life). I still mourn my father. He was much younger than my own children are at present when he died... This has led me to be frightened by all manifestations of racism against any human being. Didn't the Holocaust taught us that all racism can lead to murder? Anti-Semitism is a species of racism and is defined the same way: "the attribution of intellectual and moral qualities or defects based on the real or IMAGINED physiological characteristics of a real or imagined group of human beings". The project of murdering European Jews was not based on religious intolerance. It was a eugenics project. You were defined as a Jew if one of your grand parents had been perceived as such. Petain in France went one step further: one great grand parent being Jewish made you subject for deportation/murder. (is this the "modernity" that some Israelis so aspire to?)
Belgian Justice Minister, Mr. Stefaan De Clerck, actively and enthusiastically supports an initiative to give full amnesty to Belgium’s collaborators and denouncers of Jews to the Nazis. It would probably be too much to expect Mr. De Clerck to feel any guilt over the roundup of Jews in Belgium by Belgian volunteers. He obviously cannot perceive the impact that the Belgian-assisted roundup of Jews during WWII still has on people today. To me and many others, these events are indelible memories, together with the vicious version of Belgian colonialism, morally equivalent with the Belgian-German collaboration during WWII.
One should not call Soviet killings a "genocide" since it wasn't. The day could be called "Fascist victims commemoration day", or the like. A good date for it would be August 23rd. This is when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939, enabling Hitler to start WW2. If inconvenient because it falls during the summer vacation, perhaps June 22nd could also serve. On this day in 1941, Hitler invaded the USSR. In any case, it is important for the date to link these two foul regimes.