At that meeting, Reinhard Heydrich announced the plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory.

A prosperous drug manufacturer, Ernst Marlier, built the Wannsee Villa in 1914, but was forced to sell in 1921 because of business and legal problems.

The buyer was Friedrich Minoux, a wealthy German industrialist and partner of Hugo Stinnes.

Minoux was later convicted of swindling the Berlin Gasworks, the largest fraud of the Nazi era.

"The German decision to make the Wannsee House a shrine to victims is another part of the society's effort to remember its past.