The Wannsee conference: A beautiful scenery with a disgusting background (warning: disturbing images inside)

One of the things that is always good to do when you are in a different city is visit some historical places. I am in Berlin (Germany) at this moment and I have a week transportation card. This means I can travel around all I want with the train, bus, subway for just $30. It lowers the boundary to actually go to a place. The weather was nice, I wanted to go outside so I went to Wannsee, a beautiful lake in my area here.

'Wannsee, dont I know that from something?'

Yes, you might know this from your history classes and that is exactly where the nastyness comes in. So its time for a warning now, last chance!!!!

Terrible Images coming up, click away if you dont want to see the bad part of humanity

So the building that I visited to seen above here is actually a musuem now. With no entrance fee and easy access by public transportation it is very easy to visit.

Why is the building so famous then?

Because in the meeting on 20 January 1942 in this same building here, the whole SS-nazi toplevel decided here that the Germany 3rd Reich should go over to mass destruction of Jews. In two hours in the diningroom a group of 20 guys decided that it would be better to start exterming Jews on mass scale. Just over dinner. Like it was nothing. Again, in this building.

Here you can see pages of the original notes that were created that day. What it is written about is how they are trying to minimalize the spreading of Jewish blood in Europe. 'Mischlinge' is how they call them, a child of a mixture of Jew and German parents or grandparents. Per percentage of Jewblood there is a different discription of what should happen to them. 1/8th Jews blood, consider them German, yet only sterilize them so they can not reproduce. 1/2 Jew blood, consider them as Jew and send them to 'the East'.

I dont know how your World War 2 history is, but sending people to 'the east' meant that you were sent to a mass extermination camp. Yes, just like an insect. Deported and gassed. With thousands at a time
And all of that was decided was over dinner here in this building.

Here you can see Jews in the mass destruction camps dig their own grave while the nazi soldiers are observing them. After digging their own grave they most likely would get sent to the gaschamber and then back to their freshly digged grave. These kind of situations were created at the Wannsee conference, because the nazis found that the extermination of Jews was not going fast enough by just shooting them.

This is after the digging... This can only make you silent, right? I was really disgusted from it, even though I have seen these types of images already so often in our history classes. It was so strange if you think about it a bit deeper. I was in a building where this type of decision was made, unbelievable!

Wannsee Area

Actually the surroundings of the Wannsee are super beautiful and that makes the contrast of this horrifying piece of history even more awkward.

In the back on the museum is directly the Wannsee itself. I sat on a little bench outside here to reflect a bit and look around. Also in the direct area of the Wannsee had a lot of wealthy Jews living there before the conference. You can also imagine what happened to them. I got visions of people being chased out of their very big houses in this beautiful area and then being lined up as animals to be deported.

You can see it on this type of picture. Very wealthy, neated trimmed, highly educated people being forced all to leave. Most likely they didnt look this anymore quite fast.

Art in the camps

What would happen most of the time in the camps is that the sick, the elderly and the children would be separated from the men and fit women and immediately would go to the gaschambers. This because they were unsuited to work in the camps as temporary slaves. Some of these workers would stay longer in the camps. Expression your opinion was highly forbidden and making art even more.

Luckily some pieces of art were made and recovered. Even though the image is gruwesome, actually the art is very beautiful quite often.

The Museum

As I said earlier this museum is free of entry charge which I find is really good. This type of history deserves to be told (unfortunately), and nobody should be making money out of that. All the information was in German and in English everywhere (very convenient when you are in German language school), and also they had audio tours in all kinds of different languages.

Easy to read right? Yeah but again the story told by this image is just as horrifying as all the others that are inside this building.

So if you are looking for a piece of history to leave with a good vibe-> Absolutely do NOT go here, because this place makes you feel so humble that you can live in freedom now, that it is almost scary.

The place is certainly worth a visit, this story deserves to be told and never to be forgotten.

If you want to visit the Wannsee conference, take the S1 or S7 trains to Wannsee and then bus 114. Opening hours from 10.00-18.00

All photos were taken by me from the images that are exposed in this museum

This post was made on masdacs which allows you to crosspost on Steemit, the Whaleshares page and Golos. With only one button click posting on three pages at the same time. Cool right??