NARRATOR On January 20, 1942—in a pristine and beautiful spot on the Wannsee Lake outside Berlin—one of the most diabolical events of the Holocaust took place. Fifteen high-ranking business and community leaders met with Nazi officials to articulate the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish question.” The work of killing Jews had been going on for some time before the conference. Mobile killing squads had already shot tens of thousands in the Soviet Union and Serbia. The Nazi murder machine was in full operation. What the Nazis hoped to achieve at Wannsee was “buy-in” from highly educated leaders to move forward in their plan to rid all of Europe of 11 million Jews. They realized it would require a great deal of coordination and support to carry out their plan. There were no objections from any conference attendees. Nazi General Reinhard Heydrich declared: MALE VOICE “During the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the fruit of natural selection, that are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival.” NARRATOR What Heydrich meant by the words “dealt with appropriately” became clear in the months that followed in the gas chambers and killing centers in Poland.