Religious leaders and officials addressed the rise of antisemitism in Germany at a conference on the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where senior Nazi officials gathered in 1942 to formulate a plan for the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”
Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean and Global Social Action Director Rabbi Abraham Cooper pointed out that conference participants were educated Christians who were fully aware of the genocide they were planning.
“In a mere 90 minutes, 15 Nazis – not thugs, but elites – sealed the fate of millions of Jews,” said Cooper. “Wannsee provides proof that the Shoah may have been the vision of one man, but it was embraced and carried out by all who marched in lockstep with the fuehrer, including bureaucrats who never fired a gun in anger.”
Cooper referred to a statement by Simon Wiesenthal in 1980 in response to the question if the Holocaust could happen again. “‘When you have organized hate by a government, a crisis and technology, anything is possible,’ I heard Mr. Wiesenthal reply,” Cooper said. “‘If the technology of the Nazis had been available during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, no Jew would have survived in Spain, no Catholic in England, no Protestant in France.’”
Cooper said that modern technology, especially social media, has provided “unprecedented access for today’s haters and tomorrow’s potential genociders across global platforms.”
“Never Again! For Jewish people – there was no State of Israel in the 1930s and 1940s,” he said. “We will support a strong Jewish state, without apologies – strong enough to defend itself from genocide seekers, wise enough to build a future based on the Jewish people’s values.”
“Never Again! For Germans – first and foremost – do no harm to Jewish people,” Cooper said. “Domestically, there must be accountability for all perpetrators of antisemitism. Compiling incidents alone will not stop the hate or the Jew-haters.”
Cooper called on the German government to confront Iran and protest its denial of the Holocaust.
“Hold the Ayatollah Khamenei accountable when he endorses another ‘Final Solution,’ when he and his thugs threaten a nuclear Holocaust to wipe out another six million Jews, citizens of a democratic Jewish state,” said Cooper.
Reverend Johnnie Moore, a former commissioner in the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, referenced the Colleyville synagogue attack, saying that “while the US has plenty of antisemitism itself... our country was touched this week by an Islamist antisemite who came from Britain all the way to the US in order to take a synagogue hostage. We have a crisis on our hands. As faith leaders still grappling with the lessons of the Holocaust, it is up to us to lead, not to wait for the politicians or the opinion polls or, God-forbid, for another attack – another deadly attack on Jews.”
Moore noted that all the attendees of the Wannsee Conference were Christian. “You also couldn’t dismiss them as uneducated or underprivileged – it was the cultured German name that gave us the Wannsee 15. Eight of the 15 had doctorates, most of them had studied law. While we like to highlight the courage of those Christians who stood against the Nazis... it is also important for us to first remember that the vast majority of the Nazis were Christians, and this great horror took place in a Christian country in Christian Europe.”
Chief Rabbi of Moscow Pinchas Goldschmidt said at the conference that “when evil is being perpetrated, it is being perpetrated not only by evil people – it is being perpetrated because good people do nothing, because good people keep quiet. This is the banality of evil.”
Goldschmidt added that the purpose of interfaith dialogue is to prevent a situation when good people stand by as evil happens. He said that “technocrats” need to be held responsible to fight antisemitism, such as on social media.
On January 20, 1942, 15 officials and representatives of the Third Reich met at a villa in Wannsee to plan and coordinate genocide plans among various ministries and authorities. The conference set out how Jews would be separated from the rest of society and murdered. The Nazis planned to kill at least 11 million Jews spread over 35 countries and territories.
The Reich officials discussed how to transport Jews eastward, gather them in ghettos and use them for slave labor. The protocol of the conference pointed out that officials expressed concern that the “remnant” of Jews who would remain would be the most resistant and could “become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival.”
The protocol also noted that the officials expected “no great difficulties” in rounding up Jews in France and southeastern and western Europe. The only countries stated as possibly resisting the roundup were the Nordic states.
