Now and Then
Today Steph and I took the S7 train to the end of the line out to the Wannsee Lakes to see if manage to say "I bet this must be beautiful in Summer" during our stay in Berlin. And really, it must be. Since it was raining we weren't keen on staying out in the cold for too long so we jumped on a bus and soon found ourselves outside of the front gate to the House of the Wannsee Conference. On January 20th, 1942, fourteen select German civil servants and SS-officers met here to discuss the implementation of "The Final Solution," the extermination of European Jews. It's basically considered to be the site of the turning point from the regime murdering Jews en masse to the regime planning their extermination in a cohered way. All in all, a pretty eerie place.After WW2 it was used by the American occupation force for a few years, and then strangely enough, it was used as a Youth Hostel until the early 1990's when it was converted to this memorial and opened for the 50th Anniversary of the Conference. Wannsee remains a really affluent area to this day, and as we left I couldn't be sure whether it the memories of the exhibit or the oh so obscene wealth around me that was creeping me out more.
No comments:
Post a Comment