On January 20, 1942, 15 Nazi officials met in a villa on Lake Wannsee on the western edge of Berlin. They nibbled snacks and drank cognac. According to minutes taken by Adolf Eichmann, the agenda contained one item: “The organizational, logistical and material steps for a final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” Planning the Holocaust took them only 90 minutes. All told, they planned to kill eleven million Jews, not only in Europe, but also the Soviet Union, England, Ireland, and Switzerland. Learn more in my forthcoming novel, One Person’s Loss (Vine Leaves Press, September 2022), about a young Jewish couple who flee from Germany to the U.S. just before the Holocaust, but during the war, the husband returns to Berlin as a spy for the OSS and hides a transmitter inside the handle of a water pitcher used to eavesdrop at Wannsee. Read more about One Person’s Loss and my other historical fiction in NOVELS.
