In Wannsee, “officials” at the table decided the fates of millions of people
Updates: 20/01/2022 18:40
Released: 20.01.2022, 18:40
Prague – Academics and former politicians need to write about the Holocaust and the development of critical thinking in Prague today. The meeting at the mayor’s residence took place on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee conference, a meeting at which members of the SS and representatives of the Reich-German authorities coordinated the process of exterminating European Jews. The meeting was organized today by the Memorial of Silence and the Prague City Hall.
“It wasn’t really a conference. It was a standard working meeting where ordinary officials met to decide the fate of 11 million,” said Tomáš Kraus of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the introduction. Eight speakers then spoke at today’s meeting in Prague.
Fedor, a political scientist and sociologist who was born in the Terezín ghetto in March 1945, was the first to enter. Gál spoke of the tragic fates of his relatives, the effort to reconstruct their stories and deal with history. He noted that most of the participants in the Wannsee conference had a university degree and cultivated interests, yet they behaved monstrously. “Education is not enough to settle the characters of a deviant person,” Gál remarked. Gál also warned against the pernicious nationalism, which he called cancer, and many emphasized that it was also used by current politicians.
Journalist Jakub Szantó of wars and writers about the roots of anti-Judaism also recalled the genocide committed against the Armenians of the former Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Szantó emphasized the need not to commemorate the Holocaust and other genocides only once in a while. He noted that they needed to think about them, look for them and realize what had happened to keep the memory of the victims alive.
Historian Petr Koura spoke about lawyer Wilhelm Stuckart, one of the conference participants. Koura said Stuckart had worked to formulate racist Nuremberg laws, among other things. He called him a murderer who murdered from the table with the ideas and laws he created, to be given only a few years after the war. Koura then described the Wannsee conference as executive officers who carried out orders and stopped using their brains. “I see this as a message for today – let’s not lead any leaders, let’s keep our own reason, our own judgment,” Koura adds.
The philosopher Petr Fischer then called the bureaucracy of the process and the intention to build a system of murder, which was supposed to evoke the appearance of legitimacy. Among other things, the writer Pavel Kosatík pointed out that the conference participants were satisfied that they were only responsible for their part and not for the whole. Chief Rabbi Karol Sidon urged vigilance against those who still speak of the “Jewish question.” Other speakers were former Prime Minister and dissident Petr Pithart and historian Jakub Rákosník. Visual artist Daniel Pešta ended the series of contributions with a video art called The Chain.
The conference of 15 senior SS leaders, civil servants and party officials was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Reich’s Central Security Office (RSHA) and the commissioner for the Jewish question. Ten participants were academics, nine out of 15 had a law degree and eight had a doctorate. They drank cognac during debates about the organization of the genocide.