December 12th 1941

Reich Chancellory meeting

Adolf Hitler had provided clues to his ambition to commit mass genocide as early as 1922, telling journalist Josef Hell, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”

But how he would enact such a plan wasn’t always clear. For a brief period, the Führer and other Nazi leaders toyed with the idea of mass deportation as a method of creating a Europe without Jews (Madagascar and the Arctic Circle were two suggested relocation sites). Deportation still would’ve resulted in thousands of deaths, though perhaps in less direct ways.

According to scholars Christian Gerlach and Peter Monteath, among others, the pivotal moment for Hitler’s decision came on December 12, 1941, at a secret meeting with some 50 Nazi officials, including Joseph Goebbels (Nazi minister of propaganda) and Hans Frank (governor of occupied Poland). Though no written documents of the meeting survive, Goebbels described the meeting in his journal on December 13, 1941:

“With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would live to see their annihilation in it. That wasn’t just a catchword… If the German people have now again sacrificed 160,000 dead on the eastern front, then those responsible for this bloody conflict will have to pay with their lives.”

JANUARY 20, 1942

Wannsee Conference

Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), convenes the Wannsee Conference in a villa outside Berlin. At this conference, he presents plans to coordinate a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to key officials from the German State and the Nazi Party.

The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference

• to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the “Final Solution,” and

• to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation.

The attendees did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime.

Following the Wannsee Conference, five additional extermination camps were adapted or established with the primary purpose of efficiently murdering the Jewish population of Europe.

This brought the total number of Nazi extermination camps to six. These extermination camps were:

• Chełmno (in operation December 1941-January 1945)

• Bełżec  (in operation March-December 1942)

• Sobibór (in operation May-July 1942 and October 1942-October 1943)

• Treblinka  (in operation July 1942-August 1943)

• Majdanek  (in operation September 1942-July 1944)

• Auschwitz-Birkenau  (in operation March 1942-January 1945)

Transportation

The European rail network played a crucial role in the implementation of the "Final Solution." Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to the killing centers in German-occupied Poland. The Germans attempted to disguise their deadly intentions, referring to these deportations as "resettlement View This Term in the Glossary to the east." The victims were told they were being taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942, deportation for most Jews meant transit to killing centers.

Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries and state organizations, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states about handing over their Jews.

The Germans used both freight and passenger cars for the deportations. They did not provide the deportees with food or water, even when the transports had to wait days on railroad spurs for other trains to pass. The people deported in sealed freight cars suffered from intense heat in summer, freezing temperatures in winter, and the stench of urine and excrement. Aside from a bucket, there were no provisions for sanitary requirements. Without food or water, many deportees died before the trains reached their destinations. Armed guards shot anyone trying to escape. Between the fall of 1941 and the fall of 1944, millions of people were transported by rail to the killing centers and other killing sites in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union.

European rail system, 1939

The European rail network played a crucial role in the implementation of the Final Solution. Jews from Germany and German-occupied Europe were deported by rail to killing centers in occupied Poland, where they were killed. The Germans attempted to disguise their intentions, referring to deportations as "resettlement to the east." The victims were told they were to be taken to labor camps, but in reality, from 1942 onward, deportation meant transit to killing centers for most Jews. Deportations on this scale required the coordination of numerous German government ministries, including the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Transport Ministry, and the Foreign Office. The RSHA coordinated and directed the deportations; the Transport Ministry organized train schedules; and the Foreign Office negotiated with German-allied states to hand over their Jews.

Fifty thousand German Jews were deported from Berlin to their deaths in Poland. Boarding trains on Platform 17 of Berlin’s Grunewald station, they were subjected to the indignity of having to pay for their tickets.

The first transport pulled out of Grunewald on October 18, 1941, bound for Lodz, Poland, 300 miles away. The deportees disembarked at the Radegast station and were immediately marched to the congested Lodz ghetto, which was liquidated in August 1944 when its 68,000 survivors were taken by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Several months earlier, a special line had been built to bring Jews directly to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

Platform 17, Grunewald Station memorial today.

GHETTOS

During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews. Jews were forced to move into the ghettos, where living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. #

In many places, ghettoization lasted a short time. Some ghettos existed for only a few days. Others lasted for months or years. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population.

With the implementation of the "Final Solution" (the plan to murder all European Jews) beginning in late 1941, the Germans systematically destroyed the ghettos. The Germans and their auxiliaries either shot ghetto residents in mass graves located nearby or deported them. Jews were deported to killing centers. German SS and police authorities also deported a small minority of Jews from ghettos to forced-labor camps and concentration camps.

Map of the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, 1939-1945. This map shows all German Nazi extermination camps (or death camps), most major concentration camps, labor camps, prison camps, ghettos, major deportation routes and major massacre sites. Notes: 1. Extermination camps were dedicated death camps, but all camps and ghettos took a toll of many, many lives. 2. Concentration camps include labor camps, prison camps & transit camps. 3. Not all camps & ghettos are shown. 4. Borders are at the height of Axis domination (1942). 5. Some regions have German designations (e.g. "Ostland"), with the present country name denoted in uppercase letters in parenthesis below the German designation (e.g. "(AUSTRIA)"). 6. Present (2007) borders are dotted.

Preparing for the Holocaust video