| A | B |
|---|
| anschluss | "Joining together" annexation. On March 12, 1938, Hitler annexed Austria to Germany |
| antisemitism | Systematic prejudice against Jews. |
| Aryan race | The Nazis applied the term to people of Northern European racial background. They wanted to preserve the purity of Euroean blood. |
| Auschwitz | Concentration and extermination camp in upper Silesia, Poland. Established in 1940 as a concentration camp, it became an extermination camp in 1942. Consisted of 3 sections, Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), and extermination camp, Auschwitz III(Monowitz), the I.G. Farben labor camp. |
| Babi Yar | deep ravine outside the Ukrainian city of Kiev where the Einsatzgruppen where the Einsatzgruppen killed and buried 34,000 Jews in a two-day period. |
| blitzkrieg | "lightning war." used to describe the speed, efficiency and intensity of Gerany's military attacks. |
| Buchenwald | concentration camp between Frankfurt and Leipzig in Germany |
| capos | Jews who worked inside the death camps. Their tasks included tranportating gassed victims to the crematorium |
| Aktion | any non-military campaign conducted to further Nazi ideals of race, but most often referred to the assembly and deportation of Jews to concentration or death camps. |
| Axis | the Axis powers originally included Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan who signed a pact in Berlin on 9/27/1940. They were later joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia |
| Death Marches | At the end of WWII, when it became cleart the German army was trapped between the Soviets to the east and the advancing Allied troops from the west, the Nazis, to thwart the liberation of camp inmates, forced them to march westward, resulting in the deaths of thousands. |
| Einsatzgruppen | mobile killing units ("task groups") under the command of Reinhard Heydrich which accompanied German Troops when theyinvaded Russia. Their task was to dispose of, liquidate, undesirables who posed a threat to the Reich. |
| Euthanasia | Nazi euphemism for the deliberate killings of institutionalized physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped people. The euthanasia program began in 1939, with German non-Jews as the first victims. The program was later extended to Jews. |
| Final Solution | The code name for the plan to destroy all of Europe’s Jews - the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Starting in December 1941, Jews were rounded up and sent to extermination camps in the East. The program was deceptively disguised as "resettlement in the East." |
| genocide | The deliberate and systematic destruction of a religious, racial, national or cultural group. |
| Gestapo | Acronym for Geheime Staatspolizei, meaning Secret State Police. Prior to the outbreak of war, the Gestapo used brutal methods to investigate and suppress resistance to Nazi rule within Germany. |
| ghetto | The ghetto was a section of a city where all Jews from the surrounding areas were forced to reside. Surrounded by barbed wire or walls, the ghettos were often sealed so that people were prevented from leaving or entering. |
| Holocaust | The destruction of some 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their followers in Europe between the years 1933-1945. Other individuals and groups were persecuted and suffered grievously during this period, but only the Jews were marked for complete and utter extinction. The term "Holocaust" – from the Hebrew meaning "a completely burned sacrifice" - tends to suggest a sacrificial connotation. |
| Judenrat | Jewish community authority, appointed by the Nazis for administration within the ghetto. |
| Kristallnacht | (Crystal Night) - A German word for "Night of the Broken Glass. A night of rioting in Germany, November 9, 1938, when Jewish property was destroyed – 8,000 Jewisih-oowned shops were ransacked -- and many Jews were killed. This was the beginning of the Nazi campaign to annihilate the Jews. |
| Mein Kampf | (My Struggle) - Autobiographical book written by Hitler when he was in prison in 1923. In this book, Hitler propounds his ideas, beliefs, and plans for the future of Germany. Everything, including his foreign policy, is permeated by his "racial ideology." The Germans, belonging to the supposedly "superior" Aryan race, have a right to "living space" (Lebensraum) in the East, inhabited by the "inferior" Slavs. Throughout, he accuses Jews of being the source of all evil. Unfortunately, those people who read the book (except for his admirers) did not take it seriously but considered it the ravings of a maniac. |
| Mengele | Doctor at Auschwitz who conducted experiments, especially on twins. He was obsessed with the nature vs. nurture debate, believing that heredity was everything.. Mengele also "selected" new arrivals by simply pointing to the right or the left, thus separating those considered able to work from those who were not. In fact, he was known for his arbitrary and brutal decisions. |
| Musselman | term for a concentration camp prisoner who has given up fighting for his/her life. |
| Nazis | Members of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party, which started in Germany and was based on hate, prejudice and rule by threat of violence. From the German Nazionalsozialist. |
| Nuremberg Laws | Two anti-Jewish statutes enacted in September 1935, during the Nazi party's national convention in Nuremberg, removed civil rights of Jews. The first, the Reich Citizenship Law, deprived German Jews of their citizenship and all related rights. The second, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, outlawed marriages between Jews and non-Jews, forbade Jews from employing German females of childbearing age, and prohibited Jews from displaying the German flag. |
| Partisans | this term applied to resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied countries. |
| reich | German word for "empire." The Nazis hoped to establish a Greater German Reich that was “judenfrei” (“free of Jews”). |
| righteous gentiles | non-Jews who, at the risk of their own lives, saved Jews from their Nazi persecutors |
| SS | Abbreviation usually written with two lightning symbols for Schutzstaffel (Defense Protective Units). Originally organized as Hitler's personal bodyguard, the SS was transformed into a giant organization by Heinrich Himmler. Although various SS units fought on the battlefield, the organization is best known for carrying out the destruction of European Jewry. |
| Umschlagplatz | location in Warsaw where freight trains were loaded and unloaded. During the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto, it was used as an assembly point where Jews were loaded onto cattle cars to be taken to Treblinka. It literally means "transfer point." |
| Warsaw ghetto | established in November 1940, it was surrounded by walls and contained nearly 500,000 Jews. About 45,000 Jews died there in 1941 alone, as a result of overcrowding, hard labor, lack of sanitation, insufficient food, disease and starvation. During 1942, most of the ghetto residents were deported to Treblinka, leaving about 60,000 Jews in the ghetto. A revolt took place in April 1943 when the Germans tried to raze the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to Treblinka. |
| Zyklon B | hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous gas originally developed as a fumigation agent to remove pesticides. In October, 1941, it was used experimentally on Soviet prisoners of war. The success of these experiments had devastating consequences for millions of Jews who were gassed in the Nazi death camps. |
