Eighty years ago, on January 20, 1942, fifteen men assembled in an idyllic lakeside estate near Berlin. The men were highly educated—seven held advanced degrees, including in philosophy, law, and medicine. They were also all Nazis. They had assembled at the villa to come up with a solution to the “Jewish Question.” The lessons from that day should—must—still haunt us.
The Wannsee Conference, as it would later be known, is infamous. Books, essays, plays, and a 2001 HBO film starring Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh have depicted a meeting in which educated men plotted industrialized mass murder.
(Read the rest of CAMERA’s Jan. 17, 2022 Op-Ed in the National Interest here)