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    January 20, 2012

Germany Marks 70th Anniversary of Plan to Exterminate Jews

   VOA News
   German President Christian Wulff, right, listens to the house director
   Norbert Kampe, left, during a 70 years 'Wannsee Conference' remembrance
   day at the house of the Wannsee conference in Berlin, Jan. 20, 2012.
   Photo: AP
   German President Christian Wulff, right, listens to the house director
   Norbert Kampe, left, during a 70 years 'Wannsee Conference' remembrance
   day at the house of the Wannsee conference in Berlin, Jan. 20, 2012.

   German President Christian Wulff has marked the 70th anniversary of a
   conference where a plan was unveiled to exterminate the Jewish people.
   Wulff addressed an event to mark the Wannsee Conference near Berlin
   where Nazi officials adopted the "final solution" in January 1942.
   The president said it is important to never forget the "unbelievable
   and unimaginable" mass killing of Jews. He said the site where the
   conference was held and the name "Wannsee" have become a symbol for the
   "bureaucratically organized decision" between life worth living and
   that which is not.
   Wulff also referred to a group of neo-Nazis believed behind the murder
   of 10 people, mostly ethnic minorities, between 2000 and 2007.
   He said that killing spree fills Germany with "shame and rage," calling
   for those who carried it out to be brought to justice.
   Fifteen senior Nazis under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich, a top
   SS official, took part in the Wannsee Conference. They called the
   meeting to see that Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews would
   be carried out.
   The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews during World War II.