Wannsee Conference

1942-01-20

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and SS leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The conference was called by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government departments in implementing the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Heydrich outlined how European Jews would be rounded up and sent to extermination camps in occupied Poland, where they would be murdered. One copy of the meeting's protocol survived the war and was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. The Wannsee House is now a Holocaust memorial.