The Wannsee Protocol And a 1944 Report on Auschwitz by the Office of Strategic Services

Volume 11, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes. Introduction by Robert Wolfe, Chief, Modern Military Branch, U.S. National Archives. About six weeks after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering ordered Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police, to make preparations for a "total solution" of the Jewish question in Nazi-dominated Europe. One of the results of this order was the conference Am Grossen Wannsee in Berlin on January 20, 1942. Members of a number of German government agencies attended the meeting, at which the "Endloesung" or "Final Solution" was discussed and outlined, together with related topics, such as the treatment of part-Jews and a plan for shipping all Jews to Madagascar. Heydrich proposed that with the aid of the agencies represented, the Jews were to be collected and deported to the East. These discussions are summarized in the Wannsee Protocol and related documents reproduced in both English and German in this volume. Also included is a 1944 report by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, in which two escapees describe what happened to the deported Jews in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Contains 2 documents of source materials, carefully chosen from the thousands preserved at the U.S. National Archives. A detailed table of contents lists and provides the source for each document. he volumes in the series are organized topically: PLANNING AND PREPARATION 1. Legalizing the Holocaust: The Early Phase, 1933-1939 2. Legalizing the Holocaust: The Later Phase, 1939-1943 3. The Crystal Night Pogrom 4. Propaganda and Aryanization, 1938-1944 5. Jewish Emigration from 1933 to the Evian Conference of 1938 6. Jewish Emigration 1938-1940: Rublee Negotiations and the Intergovernmental Committee 7. Jewish Emigration: The S.S. St. Louis Affair and Other Cases THE KILLING OF THE JEWS 8. Deportation of the Jews to the East: Stettin, 1940, to Hungary, 1944 9. Medical Experiments on Jewish Inmates of Concentration Camps 10. The Einsatzgruppen or Murder Commandos 11. The Wannsee Protocol and a 1944 Report on Auschwitz by the Office of Strategic Services 12. The Final Solution in the Extermination Camps and the Aftermath 13. The Judicial System and the Jews in Nazi Germany RESCUE ATTEMPTS 14. Relief and Rescue of Jews from Nazi Oppression, 1943-1945 15. Relief in Hungary and the Failure of the Joel Brand Mission 16. Rescue to Switzerland: The Musy and Saly Mayer Affairs PUNISHMENT 17. Punishing the Perpetrators of the Holocaust: The Brandt, Pohl, and Ohlendorf Cases 18. Punishing the Perpetrators of the Holocaust: The Ohlendorf and von Weizsaecker Cases.