The Wannsee Conference [VHS]
The horror of the holocaust began on January 20, 1942, when key representatives of the SS, the Nazi Party, and the government bureaucracy met secretly at a house in Wannsee. A quiet Berlin suburb, to discuss "The Final Solution." While they enjoyed a buffet lunch, brandy, and cigarettes, they discussed how they could systematically exterminate eleven million Jewish people. Director Heinz Schirk and writer Paul Mommertz use actual notes from the Wannsee Conference, along with letters written by Hermann Goering and Adolf Eichmann, and testimony by Eichmann at his 1961 trial in Israel, to re-create the shocking events of the fateful 85-minute meeting. Viewers become stunned witnesses to the cold-blooded, matter-of-fact manner in which the most hideous crime in history was set in motion.