Last month, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem hosted a high-ranking
delegation of German and Austrian Christian leaders representing some 30
Protestant denominations and Evangelical ministries for a series of events
marking the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the infamous meeting of
Nazi officials that decided upon the “Final Solution of the Jewish
Question.”
The two-day gathering in Jerusalem was highlighted by a
wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance to honor the Jewish
victims and survivors of the Holocaust. The delegation of 70 prominent
pastors and ministry leaders also paid a visit to the Knesset, held a special
prayer service at the Western Wall and attended a memorial concert at Mishkenot
Sha’ananim featuring performances by the noted German Christian Music
Academy.
The Wannsee Conference was held on January 20, 1942 at a
lakeside villa outside Berlin and was attended by 15 high-ranking Nazi
bureaucrats who set in motion the implementation of a plan to eradicate European
Jewry. The meeting was convened by Reinhard Heydrich, assistant to deputy Nazi
leader Heinrich Himmler, who led a discussion on methods to be used for the
systematic, industrial murder of all Jews within Germany’s reach. A chart
compiled by Adolf Eichmann for the Wannsee Conference listed all of the
estimated 11 million Jews of Europe and northwest Africa as potential
targets.
“The Nazi officials who deliberated at Villa Wannsee over their
ghastly plans for exterminating the Jews of Europe were all well-educated, with
at least half of them holding doctorate degrees. Some were also the sons of
Protestant ministers,” noted Dr. Jürgen Bühler, executive director of the
International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. “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 for our deafening silence in those dark
days.”
Members of the high-level delegation from Germany and Austria came
representing millions of Germans and Austrians from the Protestant, Evangelical,
Charismatic and Pentecostal streams of Christianity.
The dignitaries
included Rev. Ingolf Ellßel, chairman of the Pentecostal European Fellowship;
Rev. Siegfried Tomazsewski, European director of Christ for all Nations;
Hannelore Illgen, representative of the Federation of Pentecostal Churches in
Germany; Rev. Gerry Klein, director of the Bible College at Bad
Gandersheim; Karl Klanner, national director of ICEJ-Austria; and Gottfried
Bühler, national director of ICEJ-Germany.
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