Footsteps of WWII · Berlin & eastern Germany
House of the Wannsee Conference
Memorial · 20 Jan 1942
The story
On 20 January 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, met fifteen senior officials of ministries, the Nazi Party and the SS in this lakeside villa at Am Großen Wannsee 56–58. The meeting lasted about ninety minutes. The decision to murder Europe's Jews had already been taken; Heydrich's purpose was to secure the ministries' cooperation with deportations under SS control. Adolf Eichmann prepared the figures and the minutes, written in bureaucratic euphemism. Only one of thirty copies survived, found by US prosecutor Robert Kempner in Foreign Office files in 1947. The villa opened as a memorial and education centre on 20 January 1992.
What to look for
You walk through the rooms of the villa, including the dining room where the meeting is believed to have taken place. The exhibition explains the participants, the protocol and the course of the Holocaust. The garden runs down to the lake.
Plan your visit
Exhibition and garden open daily 10:00–18:00; free. Closed 1–4 Jan, 8 Mar, Good Friday, 1 May, Ascension Day, 3 Oct and 24–31 Dec. Groups of 10+ must book. S-Bahn to Wannsee, then bus 114.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Cecilienhof: the Potsdam Conference · 7 km
- German Resistance Memorial (Bendlerblock) · 16 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten · 17 km
- Topography of Terror, Berlin · 17 km
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe · 17 km
- Site of the Führerbunker · 17 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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