The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

HITLER’S DECISION TO EXTERMINATE JEWS
place on January 20, 1942. It had originally been scheduled to occur on December
9, 1941. Initial invitations to participate had gone out on November 29.
These dates are clearly later than the turning point that apparently occurred
in the extermination policy in the early fall of 1941. Hence, according to the
prevailing view, the purpose of the meeting could not have been a decision
about whether to proceed with exterminations. Rather, its purpose must have
involved secondary issues such as the division of authority, coordination, and
organization. According to the minutes, 20 a variety of topics were discussed,
and scholars differ as to which were the most important. Heydrich described the
European-wide extermination program to the ministerial representatives in
attendance. 21 He furnished them with information and tried to persuade them to
accept his ultimate authority in the matter. 22 Heydrich also wanted to clear up
any problems or differences of opinion arising from the inclusion of western,
northern, and southeast European Jews, German “part-Jews,” and Jews working
in the armaments industry. His aim was a unified, coordinated effort. 23
Certainly none of these topics was insignificant. But there was one particular
issue that made the meeting seem of utmost urgency in the eyes of the men who
were responsible for shaping the extermination policy. This comes as something
of a surprise, given the prevailing view that the decision had been made much
earlier. Postwar testimony by some of the participants gives us an indication of
the importance they attached to the resolution of this issue at the time of the
conference. Georg Heuser, then head of the Gestapo offices in Minsk, testified
that in the period before the Wannsee Conference “only eastern Jews” were to
be executed. “Initially, German Jews were supposed to be resettled in the east.
After the Wannsee Conference, we were told that all Jews were to be liquidated.” 24
Furthermore, in his initial testimony, Adolf Eichmann also declared that “the
Wannsee Conference was indeed the beginning of the real extermination story.” 25
Eichmann’s interrogator, and after him many historians, countered that the murder
to Jews in the Soviet Union had already begun; 26 but of course Eichmann’s
statement could have referred only to the executions that he himself had to
organize.
These statements by Heuser and Eichmann reveal that the authorities
evidently still had to face another “problem” at the close of 1941, despite the
prevailing notion that a decision on this matter had already been made earlier:
should—or, more precisely, could—German Jews be executed, too
II The original theme of the Wannsee Conference:
the definition and treatment of German Jews
On the afternoon of November 30, 1941, Himmler held a telephone conversation
with Heydrich. After the call, he jotted down the notation: “Jewish transport
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