80 years ago, on January 20, 1942, an event took place in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee that marked the history of the Holocaust and revealed the irreversibility of Nazi policy towards the Jews of Europe. The two-hour meetings with central Reich officials discussed the division of functions between ministries for the extermination of European Jews.

The Wannsee Conference was convened by the head of the Imperial Security Directorate, Reinhard Heydrich, according to Hermann Goering's list of July 31, 1941. In this letter, Heydrich was tasked with preparing a "final solution to the Jewish question." Details of the Wannsee Conference were reports from a protocol drawn up by SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, as well as post-war interrogations of Nazi criminals.

Political decisions regarding the physical extermination of Europe's Jews were made before January 1942, so the Van meeting did not discuss the purpose of Nazi Jewish policy. The conference should be a concretization of the scale, stages and interactions of the various pieces of information that go "to remain in the solution of the Jewish question."

The Nazi program was to begin with the "evacuation of Jews to the east" (a veiled term indicating the deportation of Jews to extermination camps). This stage includes 11 million Jews in Europe - including those living in countries not occupied by Nazi Germany. Ultimately, it was to lead to the complete annihilation of European Jewry.

The Wannsee Conference was a key event in the extermination of Europe's Jews: it was from 1942 that the actions of the Nazi authorities became coordinated and organized.

Today, the house in Wannsee, where was a meeting, is a memorial center for Holocaust history.