History Media

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

These film reels had vanished for decades and no one knew about the secret passion of Hitler's second man Hermann Goering. This footage from his private collection shows for the first time how he preferred to see himself: at the height of his power, acclaimed by the masses - as in the annexation of Austria in 1938, as Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe.

He was said to be the "First European", our mystic brother out of the ice age. Nobody knows exactly, why he disappeared 30. 000 years ago. It was in 1856 when the first bones of this prehistoric man where discovered in Germany. Since that time the Neanderthal is surrounded by mystery. How much of him does still exist inside us?