Wannsee House, where Final Solution architects plotted, gets revamp

The Berlin villa where senior Nazis hatched their plan to exterminate Jews is launching a new permanent exhibition to attract a wider audience.

The house in the suburb of Wannsee was where Holocaust architects such as Gestapo chief Adolf Eichmann and SS chief Reinhard Heydrich met in 1942 to plan and agree what they called “the final solution” – the industrial slaughter of Jews.

The House of the Wannsee Conference opened as a memorial in 1992, and organisers hope the revamp will broaden its visitor range, increase an understanding of what went on there and make people want to stay
and learn.

“Until now, the average duration of a visit has been around 30 minutes,” said museum director Hans-Christian Jasch. “We want visitors to stay for between 60 and 90 minutes.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Hungarian Holocaust survivor Eva Fahidi will attend the unveiling ceremony at the lavish villa on the shores of Wannsee Lake, south-west of Berlin, where 15 senior Nazis met on 20 January. An agenda of the meeting was later found in German papers and used in the
Nuremburg Trials.

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.