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Berlin villa where Holocaust was planned launches new permanent exhibit

The Berlin villa which hosted the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which top Nazi officials finalised plans for the Holocaust, will on Sunday launch a new permanent exhibition aimed at attracting more visitors.

Published: 16 January 2020 20:07 CET

Berlin villa where Holocaust was planned launches new permanent exhibit

The new exhibition. Photo: DPA

The House of the Wannsee Conference has been open as a memorial since 1992, but organizers hope the revamped exhibition will increase awareness of how Adolf Eichmann and fellow Nazis planned the extermination of Europe's Jews.

At a press conference on Thursday, museum director Hans-Christian Jasch said the new exhibition aimed “to attract a wider audience”, in particular among pupils at Berlin schools.

“Until now, the average duration of a visit has been 30 minutes… We are aiming for visitors to stay between 60 and 90 minutes,” he added.

The previous exhibition, which was largely text-based, has been reworked entirely to become more didactic and interactive, Jasch said.

READ ALSO: Grave of Nazi who helped plan the Holocaust dug up in Berlin

Museum directors also underlined the importance of efforts to increase Holocaust awareness against a backdrop of recent “discussions over anti-Semitism and racism” in Germany, he said.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Hungarian Holocaust survivor Eva Fahidi will attend Sunday's unveiling ceremony.

Located on the shores of the Wannsee lake just southwest of the German capital, the lavish villa was the site of a notorious meeting of 15 high-ranking Nazi officials on January 20, 1942.

Led by security chief Reinhard Heydrich and recorded by fellow SS officer Eichmann, the meeting formalised the technical, administrative and economic details of what was dubbed “the final solution to the Jewish question”.

At his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Eichmann told the court that the participants had been served “by butlers with cognac and other drinks” as they plotted the genocide.

The Nazis killed six million Jews in the Holocaust – more than a third of the world's Jewish population at the time.

Jews from all over Europe were systematically deported from mid-1942 to six death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

The opening of the new exhibition at Wannsee has been timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps

READ ALSO: Remembering Nazi crimes inseparable from German identity, says Merkel

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'We will fight for our Germany': Holocaust survivor issues warning to far right

Knobloch addressing the Bundestag on Wednesday. Photo: DPA

In an emotional speech to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Knobloch told the Bundestag lower house of parliament that extremists and conspiracy theorists were exploiting fears around the pandemic and a diversifying society.

“We must not forget for a single day how fragile the precious achievements of the last 76 years are” since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on January 27th, 1945.

“Anti-Semitic thought and words draw votes again, are socially acceptable again — from schools to corona protests and of course the internet, that catalyst for hatred and incitement of all kinds.”

Knobloch, 88, a former leader of Germany's 200,000-strong Jewish community who survived the Holocaust in hiding as a child in Bavaria, warned that the enemies of democracy are stronger than many think”.

“I call on you: take care of our country,” she said, describing right-wing extremism as “the greatest danger for all” in Germany.

'You lost your fight'

Addressing deputies of the hard-right Alternative for Germany, the largest opposition group in parliament with nearly 100 seats, Knobloch accused many of its followers of “picking up the tradition” of the Nazis.

“I tell you: you lost your fight 76 years ago,” Knobloch said. “You will continue to fight for your Germany and we will keep fighting for our Germany.”

Knobloch fought back tears as she recounted the terror of the Nazis' rise and the deportation of her grandmother, Albertine Neuland, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she starved to death in 1944.

READ ALSO: 'Fight against forgetting': Germany marks Holocaust anniversary in shadow of coronavirus

“I stand before you as a proud German, against all odds and although much still makes it unlikely. Sadness, pain, desperation and loneliness accompany me.”

The window of a new synagogue which opened in Konstanz in November 2019. Photo: DPA

But she said Germany's enduring commitment to reckon with its history made her hopeful.

“I am proud of the young people in our country. They are free of guilt for the past but they assume responsibility for today and tomorrow: interested,
passionate and courageous.”

However Bundestag speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble, a respected elder statesman,
warned that the German consensus around atonement for the Nazis' crimes, long
seen as part of the bedrock of the post-war order, was showing signs of vulnerability.

He told the chamber it was “devastating” to admit that “our remembrance culture does not protect us from a brazen reinterpretation or even a denial of history”.

“And it doesn't protect us from new forms of racism and anti-Semitism,” said Schaeuble, 78.

Jewish journalist and activist Marina Weisband, 33, also urged continued vigilance.

“To be Jewish in Germany is to know it happened and can happen again,” she said.

“Anti-Semitism doesn't begin when shots are fired at a synagogue,” she said, referring to an extremist attack in the eastern city of Halle in October 2019.

READ ALSO: 'It doesn't change my feeling about Germany': Jewish community fearful but defiant after Halle attack

“The Shoah did not begin with gas chambers… It is not extinct, this conviction that there are people whose dignity is worth more than others'.”

Germany has officially marked Holocaust Remembrance Day every January 27th
since 1996 with a solemn ceremony at the Bundestag featuring a speech by a survivor and commemorations across the country.

Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, more than one million were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, most in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including homosexuals, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

This year's anniversary is marked by growing concerns about extremist violence and incitement in Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has spoken of her “shame” over rising anti-Semitism, as the Jewish community has warned that coronavirus conspiracy theories are being used to stir hatred.

In a speech recorded for Remembrance Day, Merkel thanked the elderly survivors “who muster the strength to tell the story of their lives”.

“Their first-hand accounts show us just how vulnerable human dignity is and
how easily the values that underpin peaceful coexistence can be violated,” she
said.

Anti-Jewish crimes have risen steadily, with 2,032 offences recorded in 2019, up 13 percent on the previous year, according to the latest official figures.

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