Berlin: Germany's President is marking the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, at which senior Nazis and bureaucrats coordinated plans for the genocide of Europe's Jews, with a message that the country must never forget its responsibility for the Holocaust.
President Christian Wulff said on Friday that so much time has passed since the January 20 meeting in 1942 that the "state-organised extermination" and "cold cruelty" becomes increasingly hard to believe.
He says: "Therefore it is important and a national task to keep the memory alive. We cannot be allowed to forget that this — the unbelievable and unimaginable — actually happened."
He made his speech at the villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake where the conference was held. It is now a museum and memorial.
Bureau Report
First Published: Friday, January 20, 2012, 16:51