Holocaust - Glossary
AKTION (German)
Operation involving the mass assembly, deportation, and murder of Jews
by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
ALLIES
The nations fighting Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II;
primarily the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI (1919-1943)
Major leader of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto; killed May
8, 1943.
ANSCHLUSS (German)
Annexation of Austria by Germany on March 13, 1938.
ARYAN RACE
"Aryan" was originally applied to people who spoke any Indo-European
language. The Nazis, however, primarily applied the term to people of
Northern European racial background. Their aim was to avoid what they
considered the "bastardization of the German race" and to preserve the
purity of European blood. (See NUREMBERG LAWS.)
AUSCHWITZ
Concentration and extermination camp in upper Silesia, Poland, 37 miles
west of Krakow. Established in 1940 as a concentration camp, it became
an extermination camp in early 1942. Eventually, it consisted of three
sections: Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an
extermination camp; Auschwitz III (Monowitz), the I.G. Farben labor
camp, also known as Buna. In addition, Auschwitz had numerous sub-camps.
AXIS
The Axis powers originally included Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan who
signed a pact in Berlin on September 27, 1940. They were later joined by
Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia.
BAECK, LEO (1873-1956)
Rabbi, philosopher, and community leader in Berlin. In 1933, he became
president of the Reich Representation of German Jews, an organization
responsible to the Nazi regime concerning Jewish matters. Despite
opportunities to emmigrate, Baeck refused to leave Germany. In 1943, he
was deported to the ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), where he became
a member of the Council of Elders and spiritual leader of the Jews
imprisoned there. After the liberation of the ghetto he emigrated to
England.
BELZEC
One of the six extermination camps in Poland. Originally established in
1940 as a camp for Jewish forced labor, the Germans began construction
of an extermination camp at Belzec on November 1, 1941, as part of
Aktion Reinhard. By the time the camp ceased operations in January 1943,
more than 600,000 persons had been murdered there.
CHAMBERLAIN, NEVILLE (1869-1940)
British Prime Minister, 1937-1940. He concluded the Munich Agreement in
1938 with Adolf Hitler, which he mistakenly believed would bring "peace
in our time."
CHELMNO
An extermination camp established in late 1941 in the Warthegau region
of Western Poland, 47 miles west of Lodz. It was the first camp where
mass executions were carried out by means of gas. A total of 320,000
people were exterminated at Chelmno.
CHURCHILL, WINSTON (1875-1965)
British Prime Minister, 1940-1945. He succeeded Chamberlain on May 10,
1940, at the height of Hitler's conquest of Western Europe. Churchill
was one of the very few Western politicians who recognized the threat
that Hitler posed to Europe. He strongly opposed Chamberlain's
appeasement policies.
CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Immediately upon their assumption of power on January 30, 1933, the
Nazis established concentration camps for the imprisonment of all
"enemies" of their regime: actual and potential political opponents
(e.g. communists, socialists, monarchists), Jehovah's Witnesses,
gypsies, homosexuals, and other "asocials." Beginning in 1938, Jews were
targeted for internment solely because they were Jews. Before then, only
Jews who fit one of the earlier categories were interned in camps. The
first three concentration camps established were Dachau (near Munich),
Buchenwald (near Weimar) and Sachsenhausen (near Berlin).
EICHMANN, ADOLF (1906-1962)
SS Lieutenant-colonel and head of the "Jewish Section" of the Gestapo.
Eichmann participated in the Wannsee Conference (January 20, 1942). He
was instrumental in implementing the "Final Solution" by organizing the
transportation of Jews to death camps from all over Europe. He was
arrested at the end of World War II in the American zone, but escaped,
went underground, and disappeared. On May 11, 1960, members of the
Israeli Secret Service uncovered his whereabouts and smuggled him from
Argentina to Israel. Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem (April-December
1961), convicted, and sentenced to death. He was executed on May 31,
1962.
EINSATZGRUPPEN
(German)
Battalion-sized, mobile killing units of the Security Police and SS
Security Service that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union
in June 1941. These units were supported by units of the uniformed
German Order Police and auxiliaries of volunteers (Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, and Ukrainian). Their victims, primarily Jews, were executed
by shooting and were buried in mass graves from which they were later
exhumed and burned. At least a million Jews were killed in this manner.
There were four Einsatzgruppen (A,B,C,D) which were subdivided into
company-sized Einsatzkommandos.
EUTHANASIA
The original meaning of this term was an easy and painless death for the
terminally ill. However, the Nazi euthanasia program took on quite a
different meaning: the taking of eugenic measures to improve the quality
of the German "race." This program culminated in enforced "mercy" deaths
for the incurably insane, permanently disabled, deformed and
"superfluous." Three major classifications were developed: 1) euthanasia
for incurables; 2) direct extermination by "special treatment"; and 3)
experiments in mass sterilization.
EVIAN CONFERENCE (July 6, 1938)
Conference convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to
discuss the problem of refugees. Thirty-two countries met at Evian-les-Bains,
France. However, not much was accomplished, since most western countries
were reluctant to accept Jewish refugees.
EXTERMINATION CAMPS
Nazi camps for the mass killing of Jews and others (e.g. Gypsies,
Russian prisoners-of-war, ill prisoners). Known as "death camps," these
included: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and
Treblinka. All were located in occupied Poland.
FINAL SOLUTION
The cover name for the plan to destroy the Jews of Europe - the "Final
Solution of the Jewish Question." Beginning 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."
FRANK, HANS (1900-1946)
Governor-General of occupied Poland from 1939 to 1945. A member of the
Nazi Party from its earliest days and Hitler's personal lawyer, he
announced, "Poland will be treated like a colony; the Poles will become
slaves of the Greater German Reich." By 1942, more than 85% of the Jews
in Poland had been transported to extermination camps. Frank was tried
at Nuremberg, convicted, and executed in 1946.
FRICK, WILHELM (1877-1946
A dedicated Nazi bureaucrat who was appointed Minister of the Interior
in 1933 where he was responsible for enacting Nazi racial laws. In 1946,
he was tried at Nuremberg, convicted, and executed.
GENOCIDE
The deliberate and systematic destruction of a religious, racial,
national, or cultural group.
GERSTEIN, KURT (1905-1945)
Head of the Waffen SS Institute of Hygiene in Berlin. While maintaining
ties with the resistance, Gerstein purchased the gas needed in
Auschwitz, officially for fumigation purposes, but actually used for the
killing of Jews. He passed on information about the killings to Swedish
representatives and Vatican papal nuncios. Overwhelmed with remorse he
hanged himself in a French jail after the war. He is the author of a
widely quoted description of a gassing procedure in Belzec, protagonist
of Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy, and the subject of Saul Friedlander's
biography, The Ambiguity of Good.
GHETTO
The Nazis revived the medieval ghetto in creating their compulsory
"Jewish Quarter" (Wohnbezirk). 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. Established mostly in Eastern Europe
(e.g. Lodz, Warsaw, Vilna, Riga, Minsk), the ghettos were characterized
by overcrowding, starvation and forced labor. All were eventually
destroyed as the Jews were deported to death camps.
GÖRING, HERMANN (1893-1946)
An early member of the Nazi party, G"ring participated in Hitler's "Beer
Hall Putsch" in Munich in 1923 (see HITLER, ADOLF). After its failure,
he went to Sweden, where he lived (for a time in a mental institution)
until 1927. In 1928, he was elected to the Reichstag and became its
president in 1932. When Hitler came into power in 1933, he made G"ring
Air Minister of Germany and Prime Minister of Prussia. He was
responsible for the rearmament program and especially for the creation
of the German Air Force. In 1939, Hitler designated him his successor.
During World War II, he was virtual dictator of the German economy and
was responsible for the total air war waged by Germany. Convicted at
Nuremberg in 1946, G"ring committed suicide by taking poison just two
hours before his scheduled execution.
GREATER GERMAN REICH
Designation of an expanded Germany that was intended to include all
German speaking peoples. It was one of Hitler's most important aims.
After the conquest of most of Western Europe during World War II, it
became a reality for a short time.
GRYNSZPAN, HERSCHEL (1921-1943)
A Polish Jewish youth who had emigrated to Paris. He agonized over the
fate of his parents who, in the course of a pre-war roundup of Polish
Jews living in Germany, were deported to the Polish frontier. On
November 7, 1938, he went to the German Embassy where he shot and
mortally wounded Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. The Nazis used this
incident as an excuse for the KRISTALLNACHT (Night of the Broken Glass)
pogrom.
GYPSIES
A nomadic people, believed to have come originally from northwest India,
from where they immigrated to Persia by the fourteenth century. Gypsies
first appeared in Western Europe in the 15th century. By the 16th
century, they had spread throughout Europe, where they were persecuted
almost as relentlessly as the Jews. The gypsies occupied a special place
in Nazi racist theories. It is believed that approximately 500,000
perished during the Holocaust.
HESS, RUDOLF (1894-1987)
Deputy and close associate of Hitler from the earliest days of the Nazi
movement. On May 10, 1941, he flew alone from Augsburg and parachuted,
landing in Scotland where he was promptly arrested. The purpose of his
flight has never become clear. He probably wanted to persuade the
British to make peace with Hitler as soon as he attacked the Soviet
Union. Hitler promptly declared him insane. Hess was tried at Nuremberg,
found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was the only
prisoner in Spandau Prison until he apparently committed suicide in
1987.
HEYDRICH, REINHARD (1904-1942)
Former naval officer who joined the SS in 1932, after his dismissal from
the Navy. He headed the SS Security Service (SD), a Nazi party
intelligence agency. In 1933-1934, he became head of the political
police (Gestapo) and later of the criminal police (Kripo). He combined
Gestapo and Kripo into the Security Police (SIPO). In 1939, Heydrich
combined the SD and SIPO into the Reich Security Main Office. He
organized the Einsatzgruppen which systematically murdered Jews in
occupied Russia during 1941-1942. In 1941, he was asked by G"ring to
implement a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." During the same
year he was appointed protector of Bohemia and Moravia. In January 1942,
he presided over the WannseeConference, an meeting to coordinate the
"Final Solution." On May 29, 1942, he was assassinated by Czech
partisans who parachuted in from England. (For consequences of this
assassination, see LIDICE).
HITLER, ADOLF (1889-1945)
Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Although born in
Austria, he settled in Germany in 1913. At the outbreak of World War I,
Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army, became a corporal and received the
Iron Cross First Class for bravery. Returning to Munich after the war,
he joined the newly formed German Workers Party which was soon
reorganized, under his leadership, as the National Socialist German
Workers Party (NSDAP). In November 1923, he unsuccessfully attempted to
forcibly bring Germany under nationalist control. When his coup, known
as the "Beer-Hall Putsch," failed, Hitler was arrested and sentenced to
5 years in prison. It was during this time that he wrote Mein Kampf.
Serving only 9 months of his sentence, Hitler quickly reentered German
politics and soon outpolled his political rivals in national elections.
In January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of a coalition
cabinet. Hitler, who took office on January 30, 1933, immediately set up
a dictatorship. In 1934, the chancellorship and presidency were united
in the person of the Führer. Soon, all other parties were outlawed and
opposition was brutally suppressed. By 1938, Hitler implemented his
dream of a "Greater Germany," first annexing Austria; then, (with the
acquiescence of the western democracies), the Sudetenland (Czech
province with ethnic German concentration); and, finally, Czechoslovakia
itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler's armies invaded Poland. By this
time the western democracies realized that no agreement with Hitler
could be honored and World War II had begun. Although initially
victorious on all fronts, Hitler's armies began suffering setbacks
shortly after the United States joined the war in December 1941.
Although the war was obviously lost by early 1945, Hitler insisted that
Germany fight to the death. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide
rather than be captured alive.
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 annihilation. The term "Holocaust" -
literally meaning "a completely burned sacrifice" - tends to suggest a
sacrificial connotation to what occurred. The word Shoah, originally a
Biblical term meaning widespread disaster, is the modern Hebrew
equivalent.
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
A religious sect, originating in the United States, organized by Charles
Taze Russell. The Witnesses base their beliefs on the Bible and have no
official ministers. Recognizing only the kingdom of God, the Witnesses
refuse to salute the flag, to bear arms in war, and to participate in
the affairs of government. This doctrine brought them into conflict with
National Socialism. They were considered enemies of the state and were
relentlessly persecuted.
JEWISH BADGE
A distinctive sign which Jews were compelled to wear in Nazi Germany and
in Nazi-occupied countries. It often took the form of a yellow star of
David.
JUDENRAT (PLURAL: JUDENRÄTE)
Council of Jewish representatives in communities and ghettos set up by
the Nazis to carry out their instructions.
JUDENREIN
"Cleansed of Jews," denoting areas where all Jews had been either
murdered or deported.
KAPO
Prisoner in charge of a group of inmates in Nazi concentration camps.
KRISTALLNACHT (German)
Night of the Broken Glass: pogrom unleashed by the Nazis on November
9-10, 1938. Throughout Germany and Austria, synagogues and other Jewish
institutions were burned, Jewish stores were destroyed, and their
contents looted. At the same time, approximately 35,000 Jewish men were
sent to concentration camps. The "excuse" for this action was the
assassination of Ernst vom Rath in Paris by a Jewish teenager whose
parents had been rounded up by the Nazis. (see GRYNSZPAN, HERSCHEL).
LIDICE
Czech mining village (pop. 700). In reprisal for the assassination of
Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis "liquidated" the village in 1942. They shot
the men, deported the women and children to concentration camps, razed
the village to the ground, and struck its name from the maps. After
World War II, a new village was built near the site of the old Lidice,
which is now a national park and memorial. (see HEYDRICH, REINHARD).
LODZ
City in western Poland (renamed Litzmannstadt by the Nazis), where the
first major ghetto was created in April 1940. By September 1941, the
population of the ghetto was 144,000 in an area of 1.6 square miles
(statistically, 5.8 people per room). In October 1941, 20,000 Jews from
Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were sent
to the Lodz Ghetto. Those deported from Lodz during 1942 and June-July
1944 were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp. In August-September
1944, the ghetto was liquidated and the remaining 60,000 Jews were sent
to Auschwitz.
MAUTHAUSEN
A camp for men, opened in August 1938, near Linz in northern Austria,
Mauthausen was classified by the SS as a camp of utmost severity.
Conditions there were brutal, even by concentration camp standards.
Nearly 125,000 prisoners of various nationalities were either worked or
tortured to death at the camp before liberating American troops arrived
in May 1945.
MAJDANEK
Mass murder camp in eastern Poland. At first a labor camp for Poles and
a POW camp for Russians, it was turned into a gassing center for Jews.
Majdanek was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944, but not before
250,000 men, women, and children had lost their lives there.
MEIN KAMPF (German)
This autobiographical book (My Struggle) by Hitler was written while he
was imprisoned in the Landsberg fortress after the "Beer-Hall Putsch" 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
"superior" Aryan race, have a right to "living space" (Lebensraum) in
the East, which is inhabited by the "inferior" Slavs. Throughout, he
accuses Jews of being the source of all evil, equating them with
Bolshevism and, at the same time, with international capitalism.
Unfortunately, those people who read the book (except for his admirers)
did not take it seriously but considered it the ravings of a maniac.
(see HITLER, ADOLF).
MENGELE, JOSEF (1911-1978?)
SS physician at Auschwitz, notorious for pseudo-medical experiments,
especially on twins and Gypsies. He "selected" new arrivals by simply
pointing to the right or the left, thus separating those considered able
to work from those who were not. Those too weak or too old to work were
sent straight to the gas chambers, after all their possessions,
including their clothes, were taken for resale in Germany. After the
war, he spent some time in a British internment hospital but
disappeared, went underground, escaped to Argentina, and later to
Paraguay, where he became a citizen in 1959. He was hunted by Interpol,
Israeli agents, and Simon Wiesenthal. In 1986, his body was found in
Embu, Brazil.
MUSSELMANN (German)
Concentration camp slang word for a prisoner who had given up fighting
for life.
NIGHT AND FOG DECREE
Secret order issued by Hitler on December 7, 1941, to seize "persons
endangering German security" who were to vanish without a trace into
night and fog.
NUREMBERG LAWS
Two anti-Jewish statutes enacted September 1935 during the Nazi party's
national convention in Nuremberg. The first, the Reich Citizenship Law,
deprived German Jews of their citizenship and all pertinent, related
rights. The second, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and
Honor, outlawed marriages of Jews and non-Jews, forbade Jews from
employing German females of childbearing age, and prohibited Jews from
displaying the German flag. Many additional regulations were attached to
the two main statutes, which provided the basis for removing Jews from
all spheres of German political, social, and economic life. The
Nuremberg Laws carefully established definitions of Jewishness based on
bloodlines. Thus, many Germans of mixed ancestry, called "Mischlinge,"
faced antisemitic discrimination if they had a Jewish grandparent.
PARTISANS
Irregular troops engaged in guerrilla warfare, often behind enemy lines.
During World War II, this term was applied to resistance fighters in
Nazi-occupied countries.
PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION
A major piece of antisemitic propaganda, compiled at the turn of the
century by members of the Russian Secret Police. Essentially adapted
from a nineteenth century French polemical satire directed against
Emperor Napoleon III, substituting Jewish leaders, the Protocols
maintained that Jews were plotting world dominion by setting Christian
against Christian, corrupting Christian morals and attempting to destroy
the economic and political viability of the West. It gained great
popularity after World War I and was translated into many languages,
encouraging antisemitism in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the
United States. Long repudiated as an absurd and hateful lie, the book
currently has been reprinted and is widely distributed by Neo-Nazis and
others who are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel.
RATH, ERNST VOM (1909-1938)
Third secretary at the German Embassy in Paris who was assassinated on
November 7, 1938 by Herschel Grynszpan (see GRYNSZPAN, HERSCHEL).
RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS
Term applied to those non-Jews who, at the risk of their own lives,
saved Jews from their Nazi persecutors.
SA (abbreviation: Stürmabteilung)
The storm troops of the early Nazi party; organized in 1921.
SELECTION
Euphemism for the process of choosing victims for the gas chambers in
the Nazi camps by separating them from those considered fit to work (see
MENGELE, JOSEF).
SOBIBOR
Extermination camp in the Lublin district in Eastern Poland (see BELZEC;
EXTERMINATION CAMP). Sobibor opened in May 1942 and closed one day after
a rebellion of the Jewish prisoners on October 14, 1943. At least
250,000 Jews were killed there.
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.
ST. LOUIS
The steamship St. Louis was a refugee ship that left Hamburg in the
spring of 1939, bound for Cuba. When the ship arrived, only 22 of the
1128 refugees were allowed to disembark. Initially no country, including
the United States, was willing to accept the others. The ship finally
returned to Europe where most of the refugees were finally granted entry
into England, Holland, France and Belgium.
STRUMA
Name of a boat carrying 769 Jewish refugees which left Romania late in
1941. It was refused entry to Palestine or Turkey, and was tugged out to
the Black Sea where it sank in February 1942, with the loss of all on
board except one.
DER STÜRMER (The Attacker)
An antisemitic German weekly, founded and edited by Julius Streicher,
which was published in Nuremberg between 1923 and 1945.
TEREZIN (Czech), THERESIENSTADT (German)
Established in early 1942 outside Prague as a "model" ghetto, Terezin
was not a sealed section of town, but rather an eighteenth-century
Austrian garrison. It became a Jewish town, governed and guarded by the
SS. When the deportations from central Europe to the extermination camps
began in the spring of 1942, certain groups were initially excluded:
invalids; partners in a mixed marriage, and their children; and
prominent Jews with special connections. These were sent to the ghetto
in Terezin. They were joined by old and young Jews from the
Protectorate, and, later, by small numbers of prominent Jews from
Denmark and Holland. Its large barracks served as dormitories for
communal living; they also contained offices, workshops, infirmaries,
and communal kitchens. The Nazis used Terezin to deceive public opinion.
They tolerated a lively cultural life of theatre, music, lectures, and
art. Thus, it could be shown to officials of the International Red
Cross. Terezin, however, was only a station on the road to the
extermination camps; about 88,000 were deported to their deaths in the
East. In April 1945, only 17,000 Jews remained in Terezin, where they
were joined by 14,000 Jewish concentration camp prisoners, evacuated
from camps threatened by the Allied armies. On May 8, 1945, Terezin was
liberated by the Red Army. (see BAECK, LEO).
TREBLINKA
Extermination camp in northeast Poland (see Extermination Camp ).
Established in May 1942 along with the Warsaw- Bialystok railway line,
870,000 people were murdered there. The camp operated until the fall of
1943 when the Nazis destroyed the entire camp in an attempt to conceal
all traces of their crimes.
UMSCHLAGPLATZ (German)
Collection point. It was a square in the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were
rounded up for deportation to Treblinka.
WANNSEE CONFERENCE (January 20, 1942)
Lake near Berlin where the Wannsee Conference was held to discuss and
coordinate the "Final Solution." It was attended by many high-ranking
Nazis, including Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann.
WALLENBERG, RAOUL (1912-19??)
Swedish diplomat who, in 1944, went to Hungary on a mission to save as
many Jews as possible by handing out Swedish papers, passports and
visas. He is credited with saving the lives of at least 30,000 people.
After the liberation of Budapest, he was mysteriously taken into custody
by the Russians and his fate remains unknown.
WARSAW GHETTO
Established in November 1940, the ghetto, surrounded by a wall, confined
nearly 500,000 Jews. Almost 45,000 Jews died there in 1941 alone, due to
overcrowding, forced labor, lack of sanitation, starvation, and disease.
From April 19 to May 16, 1943, a revolt took place in the ghetto when
the Germans, commanded by General Jürgen Stroop, attempted to raze the
ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to Treblinka . The uprising,
led by Mordecai Anielewicz, was the first instance in occupied Europe of
an uprising by an urban population. (See ANIELEWICZ, MORDECAI).
WIESENTHAL, SIMON (1908- )
Famed Holocaust survivor who has dedicated his life since the war to
gathering evidence for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
Source:
Simon
Wiesenthal Center
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