JERUSALEM, Israel -- A delegation of high-ranking
German and Austrian Christian leaders are in Jerusalem this week for
events marking the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leaders decided on the "Final Solution" for the extermination of European Jewry.
Seventy prominent pastors and ministry leaders --
representing some 30 Protestant evangelical, charismatic, and
Pentecostal ministry leaders -- are attending the two-day gathering
hosted by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.
"The Nazi officials who deliberated Villa Wannsee
over their ghastly plan for exterminating European Jewry were all
well-educated, with at least half of them holding doctorate degrees,"
ICEJ Executive Director Dr. Jurgen Buhler said in a statement.
"Some were also the sons of Protestant ministers,
yet not one of them raised any moral objections to this heinous plot,"
the statement read.
"We are here to continue the repentance of our
nation for this enormous crime by those who committed mass murder in the
name of a wicked ideology. The Church in Germany still has so much more
to do to amend our deafening silence in those dark days," Buhler said.
Participants in this week's events will lay a wreath at Yad VaShem's
Hall of Remembrance to honor Jewish victims and survivors of the
Holocaust. They will also visit the Knesset, meet with the Chief
Rabbinate, and attend a special prayer service at the Western Wall.
On January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich convened a
meeting of 15 senior Nazi officials at a plush villa on Lake Wannsee
outside of Berlin. There he informed them he had been appointed chief
executor of the "Final solution to the Jewish question."
In short, the leaders formulated their plans to eliminate the 11 million Jews of Europe and northwest Africa.
Heydrich was quoted as saying that in the course of
the "practical execution of the final solution," Europe would be "combed
through from west to east."
Though killing is not mentioned in the Wannsee
meeting minutes, Adolph Eichman, Heydrich's right-hand man, explained at
his trial in 1962 that following the meeting, participants had "minced
no words about it at all…they spoke about the methods of killing, about
liquidation, about extermination."
cbn.com
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