WANNSEE CONFERENCE AND THE "FINAL
SOLUTION"
• On January 20, 1942, 15
high-ranking Nazi Party and
German government officials
gathered at a villa in the
Berlin suburb of Wannsee to
discuss and coordinate the
implementation of what they
called the "Final Solution of
the Jewish Question."

THE FINAL SOLUTION
• The Wannsee Conference was a high-level meeting of German
officials to discuss and implement the so-called “Final Solution of the
Jewish Question” (mass killing).
• The SS envisioned that some 11 million Jews, some of them not living
on German-controlled territory, would be eradicated as part of the
Nazi program.

REPRESENTING THE SS AT THE WANNSEE
CONFERENCE WERE:
• SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main
Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA) and one of Reichsführer-SS (SS chief)
Heinrich Himmler's top deputies
• SS Major General Heinrich Müller, chief of RSHA Department IV (Gestapo)
• SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, chief of the RSHA Department IV B 4
(Jewish Affairs)
• SS Colonel Eberhard Schöngarth, commander of the RSHA field office for the
Government General in Krakow, Poland
• SS Major Rudolf Lange, commander of RSHA Einsatzkommando 2, deployed in
Latvia in the autumn of 1941
• SS Major General Otto Hofmann, the chief of SS Race and Settlement Main Office.
• Representing the agencies of the State were:
• State Secretary Roland Freisler (Ministry of Justice)
• Ministerial Director Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reich Cabinet)
• State Secretary Alfred Meyer (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories-

GOALS OF THE CONFERENCE
THE "FINAL SOLUTION" WAS THE CODE NAME
FOR THE SYSTEMATIC, DELIBERATE,
PHYSICAL ANNIHILATION OF THE EUROPEAN
JEWS. AT SOME STILL UNDETERMINED TIME IN
1941, ADOLF 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”
TO DISCLOSE TO THE PARTICIPANTS THAT
HITLER HIMSELF HAD TASKED HEYDRICH AND
THE RSHA WITH COORDINATING THE
OPERATION

COORDINATING THE "FINAL SOLUTION"
At the time of the Wannsee Conference, most
participants were already aware that the Nazi
regime had engaged in mass murder of Jews and
other civilians in the German-occupied areas of the
Soviet Union and in Serbia.
Some had learned of the actions of
the Einsatzgruppen and other police and military
units, which were already slaughtering tens of
thousands of Jews in the German-occupied Soviet
Union.
Others were aware that units of the German Army
and the SS and police were killing Jews in Serbia.
None of the officials present at the meeting
objected to the "Final Solution" policy that Heydrich

THE GOAL OF THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
• The participants discussed a number of other issues raised by the
new policy, including the establishment of the Theresienstadt camp-
ghetto as a destination for elderly Jews as well Jews who were
disabled or decorated in World War I, the deferment until after the war
of “Final Solution” measures against Jews married to non-Jews or
persons of mixed descent as defined by the Nuremberg laws,
prospects for inducing Germany's Axis partners to give up their Jewish
populations, and preparatory measures for the “evacuations.”
• Despite the euphemisms which appeared in the protocols of the
meeting, the aim of the Wannsee Conference was clear to its
participants: to further the coordination of a policy aimed at the
physical annihilation of the European Jews.

THE “FINAL SOLUTION”: “FINAL SOLUTION”
EUPHEMISMS
• The term “Final Solution” (Die Endlösung) was a euphemism. Himmler was fully prepared
to talk about killing to his immediate subordinates, but much of the Nazi killing machine
was shrouded in bureaucratic euphemism.
• The doctors and administrators charged with murdering ‘incurables’ were the ‘Public
Ambulance Service Ltd’ (Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH);
• the motorized death squads which first went into action in Poland in 1939 were ‘task
forces’ (Einsatzgruppen)
• the massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews in the ravine of Babi-Yar after the capture of Kiev in
September 1941 was a ‘major operation’ (Gross-Aktiori).
• People identified for extermination in official Nazi documents were listed as those to be
given ‘special treatment’ (Sonderbehandlung), sometimes abbreviated to ‘SB’, and from
roughly mid-1943 the term ‘special lodging’ (Sonderunterbringung) was also used.

HOW MANY JEWS WERE KILLED IN 1942?
• 15,000 murders a day: August-October 1942 were the Holocaust's
deadliest months
• The killing only stopped when there was no one left to murder.
• From August to October 1942, 1.32 million Jews were either slain in Nazi
death camps or shot in close by regions, an almost inconceivable 15,000
people per day, a new study suggests.
• This is more than previously calculated, and is a rate that surpasses recent
genocides such as the one that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.
• In fact, roughly 25 percent of all Holocaust victims were murdered from
August to October 1942, which was quite likely the deadliest three months in
human history as the German killing machine was at its most lethal.

TREBLINKA MURDERS

DEPORTATION OF HUNGARIAN JEWS
• From May 15 to July 9, 1944,
Hungarian gendarmerie officials,
under the guidance of German SS
officials, deported around 440,000
Jews from Hungary. Most
were deported to Auschwitz-
Birkenau, where, upon arrival and
after selection, SS functionaries
killed the majority of them in gas
chambers.
• Thousands were also sent to the
border with Austria to be deployed
at digging fortification trenches. By
the end of July 1944, the only
Jewish community left in Hungary
was that of Budapest, the capital.

WHAT HAPPENED TO
THE JEWISH
POPULATION AFTER
WWII
LUCY BEAM HOFFMAN

REMAINING JEWISH
POPULATION OF
EUROPE IN 1945
Before the Nazi takeover
of power in 1933,
Europe had a vibrant,
established, and diverse
Jewish culture. By 1945,
most European Jews—
two out of every three—
had been killed.

IMMIGRATION
Six million Jews died in
the Holocaust. Jewish
communities across
Europe were shattered.
Many of those who
survived were
determined to leave
Europe and start new
lives in Israel or the
United States. The
population shifts
brought on by the
Holocaust and by Jewish

• America Denied Refugees After the End of World War II
• 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most egregious acts of exclusion, one that has
been almost stricken from historical memory: the decision to prevent Jewish Holocaust
survivors and non-Jewish victims of World War II from immigrating to the United States.
• At war’s end in 1945 Europe, millions of ill-clothed, malnourished, diseased, and disoriented
concentration, death, and labor camp survivors, forced laborers and slave laborers, POWs
and political prisoners were left to wander the roadways and haunt the town squares and
marketplaces in search of food and shelter.
• American military forces took the lead in rounding them up, transporting them to assembly
centers, and then repatriating millions to their former homes in western Europe, Italy, and the
Soviet Union.
REMAINING JEWISH POPULATION
OF EUROPE IN 1945

DP CAMPS
At the conclusion of World War II,
there were millions of refugees in
Europe, including many Holocaust
survivors who refused to go home
or had no homes to return to.
These survivors experienced
struggles and successes as they
sought to rebuild their lives in the
shadow of the Holocaust, often in
Displaced Persons (DP) camps.
Tens of thousands emigrated to
the United States between 1947
and 1953 and many more found
their way to Israel.

DPS
• By summer’s end, however, there
remained left behind in Germany a
million displaced persons (DPs),
who were unable or unwilling to
return home or, like the Jewish
survivors, had no homes to return
to.
• The United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Agency, largely
funded by the United States, was
organized to shelter, feed, and
provide these last million victims of
war with medical care in newly
established DP camps.
• They would remain there for the
next three to five years while the

MOST JEWISH DPS PREFERRED TO EMIGRATE
TO PALESTINE BUT MANY ALSO SOUGHT ENTRY
INTO THE UNITED STATES.
• Following World War II, several hundred thousand Jewish survivors
remained in camps for displaced persons.
• The Allies established such camps in Allied-occupied Germany, Austria, and
Italy for refugees waiting to leave Europe.
• They decided to remain in the DP camps until they could leave Europe. At
the end of 1946 the number of Jewish DPs was estimated at 250,000, of
whom 185,000 were in Germany, 45,000 in Austria, and 20,000 in Italy.
• Most of the Jewish DPs were refugees from Poland, many of whom had fled
the Germans into the interior of the Soviet Union during the war. Other
Jewish DPs came from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

CREATION OF ISRAEL, 1948
• On May 14, 1948, David Ben-
Gurion, the head of the
Jewish Agency, proclaimed
the establishment of the State
of Israel. U.S. President Harry
S. Truman recognized the
new nation on the same day.

ISRAEL
Although the United States supported the Balfour
Declaration of 1917, which favored the
establishment of a Jewish national home in
Palestine, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had
assured the Arabs in 1945 that the United States
would not intervene without consulting both the
Jews and the Arabs in that region.
The British, who held a colonial mandate for
Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the
creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in
Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of
Jewish refugees to the region.
Great Britain wanted to preserve good relations

DAILY LIFE OF DPS
• Among the concerns facing these
Jewish DPs in the years following the
Holocaust were the problems of daily
life in the displaced persons camps,
Zionism, and emigration.
• Soon after liberation, survivors began
searching for their families. UNRRA
established the Central Tracing Bureau
to help survivors locate relatives who
had survived the concentration camps.
• Public radio broadcasts and newspapers
contained lists of survivors and their
whereabouts.
• The attempt to reunite families went
hand-in-hand with the creation of new

DP CAMPS – FORMER CONCENTRATION CAMPS
• Schools were soon established and
teachers came from Israel and the
United States to teach the children in
the DP camps.
• Orthodox Judaism also began its
rebirth as yeshivot (religious schools)
were founded in several camps,
including Bergen-Belsen, Foehrenwald,
and Feldafing.
• Religious holidays became major
occasions for gatherings and
celebrations.
• Jewish volunteer agencies supplied

SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
• The DPs also transformed the
camps into active cultural and
social centers. Despite the often
bleak conditions—many of the
camps were former concentration
camps and German army camps—
social and occupational
organizations soon abounded.
• Journalism sprang to life with more
than 170 publications.
• Numerous theater and musical
troupes toured the camps.
• Athletic clubs from various DP
centers challenged each other.

ZIONISM
Zionism (the movement to
return to the Jewish
homeland in what was then
British-controlled Palestine)
was perhaps the most
incendiary question of the
Jewish DP era.
In increasing numbers from
1945–48, Jewish survivors,
their nationalism heightened
by lack of autonomy in the
camps and having few
destinations available, chose
British-controlled Palestine
as their most desired
destination.
The DPs became an

• While there has been a continuous
Jewish presence in the land of Israel
over the millennia, the yearning to
return to Zion, the biblical term for
both the land of Israel and
Jerusalem, has been a cornerstone
of Jewish communal life since the
Romans violently colonized the
land, sending Jews into exile two
thousand years ago.
• An earlier exile by the Babylonians
produced perhaps the most well-
known lamentation “By the rivers of
Babylon, there we wept as we
remembered Zion.”
• That connection between Jews and
the land, and the hope for
repatriation, is deeply embedded in

TRUMAN RECOGNIZES THE STATE OF
ISRAEL
• Despite growing conflict
between Palestinian Arabs
and Palestinian Jews and
despite the Department of
State’s endorsement of a
trusteeship, Truman
ultimately decided to
recognize the state Israel.

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING BEFORE EMIGRATION
TO PALESTINE
• Buchenwald" building, where
Jews received agricultural
training in preparation for life in
Palestine. Buchenwald displaced
persons camp, Germany, ca.
August 1946.

EMIGRATION
• After liberation, the Allies were
prepared to repatriate Jewish
displaced persons to their homes,
but many DPs refused or felt unable
to return.
• The Allies deliberated and
procrastinated for years before
resolving the emigration crisis,
although some Allied officials had
proposed solutions just months
after liberation.
• Earl Harrison, in his August
1945 report to President Truman,
recommended mass population
transfer from Europe and

DPS IMMIGRATING
• https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/displ
• Harrison traveled to thirty DP camps in Germany
and Austria in July 1945.
• His report on August 3 revealed that many of the
rumors of poor treatment were indeed true and that
“we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis
treated them, except that we do not exterminate
them.”
• The camps under the auspices of General George
S. Patton in Southern Germany were especially
poorly run.
• The report urged the immediate evacuation of the
DPs and specifically called for opening the gates of
Palestine to Jewish immigration: “The evacuation of
the Jews of Germany and Austria to Palestine will
solve the problem of the individuals involved and will
also remove a problem from the military authorities
who have had to deal with it.”

MODERN
ZIONISM
• What is known as modern Zionism
emerged in the mid-19th century in
tandem with the rise of the nation-state
and widespread national liberation
movements across Europe.
• In the case of the Jews, it was also in
response to a long history of intense anti-
Jewish hatred, persecution, and
discrimination in countries and societies
across the world where Jews lived,
including in Europe, the Middle East, and
North Africa.
• Its advocates believed that a modern
Jewish state would provide Jews with a
safe haven from the bigotry and
endangerment they suffered perennially
as a minority culture among non-Jewish
majority cultures and ensure that Jews
have the same right to nationhood and

EARLY ZIONISM
• In the late 1800s, the “father” of
modern Zionism, Austrian
journalist Theodor Herzl,
consolidated various strands of
Zionist thought into an
organized political movement,
advocating for international
recognition of an independent
and sovereign Jewish state in the
land of Israel.

TODAY’S JEWISH SOVEREIGN STATE
• Today, with a Jewish
sovereign state a reality,
Zionists believe in and
support the right of the
democratic State of Israel to
exist as a Jewish
homeland. Israel is the only
Jewish state in the world.
• Being a Zionist is distinct
from supporting the policies
of the government of Israel.

NEW BEGINNINGS: JEWISH REFUGEES AFTER
THE HOLOCAUST
• Truman conceded to loosen immigration laws in the United States and
brought thousands of DPs into America.
• The priority immigrants were orphaned children.
• Over the course of 1946 to 1950, over 100,000 Jews migrated to the
United States.

BRITISH BLOCKADES TO
PALESTINE
Britain complicated process for regulation of
displaced Jewish immigration to Palestinian
was plagued with problems.
Jews were moved to Italy, a trip which they
often did on foot
From Italy, ships and crew were rented for
the passage across the Mediterranean to
Palestine.
Some of the ships made it past a British naval
blockade of Palestine, but most did not.
The passengers of captured ships were forced
to disembark in Cyprus, where the British
operated DP camps.

IMMIGRATION TO ISRAEL AFTER 5/15/1948
• Immigration to Israel
increased rapidly despite war
against hostile Arab
neighbors
• . On May 15, 1948, the first
day of Israeli statehood,
1,700 immigrants arrived.
• There was an average of
13,500 immigrants each
month from May through
December of 1948, far
exceeding the prior legal
migration approved by the

MORE ON ZIONISM
• Zionism is a big tent movement
that includes those across the
spectrum from progressives,
moderates and conservatives and
those who are apolitical.
• There are Zionists who are critical
of Israeli policies, just as there are
Zionists who rarely voice
disagreement with the Israeli
government.
• There are diverse views among
Zionists about the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, about how to
promote peace, whether to support
a two-state solution, and about
approaches to Israeli settlements.

THE WAR REFUGEE BOARD
• Ultimately, the survivors of the Holocaust
were able to emigrate to Israel, the
United States, or a host of other
countries.
• The State of Israel accepted as many that
were willing to come, and Israel worked
with the arriving DPs to teach them job
skills, provide employment, and to help
the immigrants help build the wealthy
and technologically advanced country
that it is today.
• Finally, after Treasury Department
officials presented Roosevelt with a
report—which had originally bore the
title “Report to the Secretary on the
Acquiescence of This Government in
the Murder of the Jews”— the president
agreed to create the War Refugee
Board, signing an Executive Order on
January 22, 1944.
• Saving the Jews became official US
policy, although the War Refugee
Board could not do anything that might
delay Allied victory.