Holocaust Glossary

Allies: Twenty-six nations led by Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union that joined in the war against Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies, known as the Axis.
Anti-semitism: Word coined in the 19th century for Prejudices toward Jews and discrimination against them.
Arvan: Originally a term for peoples speaking the languages of Europe and India. Corrupted by the Nazis, who viewed those of Germanic background as the best and purist examples of "superior Aryan race."
Auschwitz-Birkenau: Largest Nazi death camp, located 37 miles west of Cracow, Poland. Established in 1940 as a concentration camp, it extended its activities to a killing center at Birkenau in 1942. Also part of the huge camp complex was the I. G. Farben slave labor camp, known as Buna-Monowitz.
Belzec: Nazi death camp in eastern Poland where an estimated 550,000 Jews were killed between March, 1942 and December, 1942. Earlier Belzec functioned as a slave labor camp.
Bergen-Belsen: Located in nor-them Germany, transformed from a prisoner exchange camp into a concentration camp in March, 1944. Poor sanitary conditions, epidemics, no medical assistance, slave labor, and starvation led to tens of thousand of deaths, including Anne and Margot Frank in March 1945.
Buchenwald: Concentration camp In central Germany, established in July , 1937. One of the largest concentration camps on German soil with more than 130 satellite slave labor camps. It held many political prisoners. More than 65,000 prisoners perished here.
Bystanders: Those who stand by while a crime or wrongful deed is being committed, those who do not actively participate in the deed but who do nothing to stop it, who do not protest, who look the other way.
Chancellor: Chief (prime) minister of Germany. Head of Government.
Chelmno: Nazi death camp in western Poland where more than 150,000 documented Jews, about 5,000 Gypsies, and several hundred Poles and Soviet prisoners of war were killed between December 1941 and March 1943 and between April and August of 1944.
Concentration Camps: In German, Konzentrationslager. Prison camps constructed to hold Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, resisters, homosexuals, and others whom the Germans considered 'enemies of the state." More than 100 concentration camps were created across German-occupied Europe.
Dachau: First concentration camp, established in March, 1933 near Munich, Germany. At first Dachau held only political prisoners, but over time, more and more groups were imprisoned there. Deaths at Dachau occurred through torture, starvation, disease, and overwork on a minimal diet.
Death Camps: Term used to describe those camps that came to be used solely for the purposes of extermination: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Maidanek -- where people were murdered in assembly Iine style by gassing, though many also died there from medical experiments, deliberate maltreatment, hangings, bumburninging, starvation, etc.
Discrimination: A distinction made in the treatment of others based upon prejudice -- or prejudging. An act against others or a policy directed against others because of their differences, or because of the differences the discriminators are prejudiced against.
Drancy: Located near Parts, Drancy became the largest transit camp for deportation of Jews from France. Between July, 1942, and August, 1944, more than 61,000 were sent from Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination.
Eichmann, Adolph (1906-1962): SS Lieutenant Colonel and head of the Gestapo department dealing with Jewish affairs. He organized transports of Jews from all over Europe. to Nazi death and concentration camps. After the war, he escaped into South America. Captured by the Israeli Secret Service in Argentina, he was brought to Israel for trial He was tried in Jerusalem in 196 1, convicted, and executed.
Einsatzgruppen: Mobile killing units of SS and SD (Security Service), which followed German units into the Soviet Union in June, 1941, with orders to murder all Jews, as well as Communist leaders and Gypsies.
Extermination Camps: Another term for Death Camps. More than 2,700,000 Jews were exterminated at these camps, along with thousand of Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and others.
Final Solution: Term used by the Germans and coined at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, and refers to the 'Final solution of the Jewish question in Europe." It was the German code for the physical and total destruction of Jews in Europe.
Frank, Anne (1929-1945): Born in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1933, she moved with her family to Amsterdam, Holland. On July 6, 1942, they went into hiding and, helped by Miep Gies, remained in hiding until their arrest by Gestapo on August 4, 1944. They were held at the Westerbrook transit camp from August 8, 1944, until September 3, 1944, when they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anne's mother, Edith Frank, perished there on January 6, 1945. Anne and her sister Margot were transferred to Bergen-Belsen in late October, 1944, and they both died there of typhus in March, 1945. Anne's father, Otto, survived and oversaw the publication of Anne's diary.
Genocide: Deliberate, systematic destruction of a racial, cultural, ethnic, or political group.
Gestapo: In German, Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police.
Goebbels, Paul Josef (1897-1945): Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who was close to Hitler. At the end of the war, Goebbels and his wife took their own lives and those of their children in the same bunker in which Hitler took his life.
Gypsies: Popular term for Roma and Sinti, nomadic people believed to have come from northwest India. Traveling mostly in small caravans, Gypsies first appeared in western Europe in the 1400s and eventually spread to every country of Europe. Prejudices toward Gypsies were and continue to be widespread. Approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Gypsies are believed to have perished in the Nazi concentration camps, killing centers, and in Einsatzgruppen and other shootings. As with the Jews, many were also killed by local, native populations of many eastern European countries.
Heydrich, Reinhard (1904-1942): SS Lieutenant General, head of the Reich Security, which included the Gestapo. Organized the Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads, and led the Wannsee Conference of 1942, where the coordination of the "final solution" was discussed. He was shot by members of the Czech resistance on May 27, 1942, near Prague, and died several days later. To honor Heydrich, Germans gave the code name "Operation Heydrich" to the destruction of Jews in occupied Poland at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka extermination camps.
Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945): Reich leader of the SS from 1929 to 1945, during World War II, he was head of the vast empire of all SS formations, police forces, concentration, labor, and death camps, and, after Hitler, was the major architect of the "final solution" to exterminate Europe's Jews. He was responsible for carrying out the "final solution." He committed suicide before he could be brought to trial.
Hitler, Adolph: Leader of Germany's Third Reich from 1933 to 1945.
Holocaust: Literal definition: a "burning whole," in other words, by fire. Coined by the Jewish community and Jewish writers and historians and refers to a specific event in the 20th century: the systematic, deliberate, bureaucratic destruction of more than 6 million Jews in Europe by the German Nazi regime and their collaborators as a central act of state, an act of government policy, before and during World War II.
Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious sect that originated in the United States and had about 20,000 members in Germany in 1933. Witnesses, whose religious beliefs did not allow them to swear allegiance to any worldly power, were persecuted as "enemies of the state." About 10,000 Witnesses from Germany and other countries were imprisoned in concentration camps. Of these about 2,500 died.
Jewish Council: In German, Judenrat. Council of Jewish leaders established on Nazi orders in German-occupied towns and cities.
Juden: German word for Jews."
Killing Centers: Death camps equipped with facilities to kill with poisonous gas. Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanck, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Lodz: Before WW II, a major industrial city in western Poland with a large Jewish population, second only to Warsaw's. In April, 1940, the first major ghetto created by the Germans was at Lodz. Some 43,000 persons died in that ghetto from starvation, disease, and exposure to the cold. Thousands more were taken from the ghetto to be gassed at Chelmno. In August-September, 1944, the 60,000 remaining Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination.
Maidanek: Located near Lublin in Poland, at first a labor camp for Poles and Soviet prisoners-of-war, it existed as a concentration camp from April 1943 to July 1944. Tens of thousands perished there from starvation, maltreatment, and shootings. It was also a killing center where 50,000 Jews were gassed.
Mauthausen: Concentration camp for men near Linz in upper Austria, opened in August, 1938. Many political prisoners were held at Mauthausen and its numerous sub camps. Classified by the SS as one of the two harshest concentration camps, many prisoners were killed there by being pushed from 300 foot cliffs into stone quarries.
Mengele, Josef (1911-1979): Senior SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau who carried out "selections" of prisoners upon arrival at the camp, separating those assigned to forced labor and those to be killed in the gas chambers. He also carried out cruel research on twins deported to the camp and other so-called medical research experiments, such as separating nursing newborns from mothers to see how long it would take them to starve to death. After the war, he disappeared. In 1985, a corpse of a man who had died in a swimming accident in Brazil was identified as Mengele.
Nazi: Short term for National Socialist German Workers Party, a right-wing nationalistic and anti-semitic political party formed in 1919 and headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921 to 1945.
Occupation: Control of a country taken over by a foreign military power.
Palestine: British Mandate of Territory assigned to British control in 1920 by terms of a postwar treaty with defeated Turkey, the British mandate was ended on May 15, 1948, when, by the terms of the United Nations, the territory was divided into the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.
Partisan: Member of a resistance group operating secretly within enemy lines, using hit-and-run guerrilla tactics against occupying forces.
Perpetrators: In the Holocaust, those who actively and willingly performed the crimes against humanity.
Persecution: Act of causing others to suffer, especially those who differ in background or lifestyle or hold different political or religious beliefs.
Pogrom: Russian word for "devastation." Organized violence against the Jews in many European countries, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Prejudice: A prejudgment made before all the facts are known. An opinion held in disregard of the facts that contradict the judgment. A suspicion, intolerance, or irrational hatred of other races, creeds, religions, ethnic groups, homosexuals, the poor, immigrants, etc.
Ravensbruck: Concentration camp for women opened in May of 1939, 56 miles north of Berlin. An estimated 120,000 prisoners were inmates there, including political prisoners, Jews, Gypsies, and Jehovah's Witnesses.
Reich: German word for "Empire."
Reichstag: Germany's lawmaking body, its parliament.
Rhineland: Demilitarized zone that Allies established after WW I as a buffer between Germany and western Europe.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945): Thirty-second president of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1945. In relation to the Holocaust of the Jews, and from papers and correspondence uncovered since the war, he is now considered to be one of those Allied leaders responsible for refusing to credit reliable reports of the Nazi treatment of the Jews and for withholding orders to assist them with military activity, which might have saved many thousands of lives in the death camps and on death marches as the Russians approached the camps in eastern Europe.
SA: In German, Sturmabteilung, Storm Troopers. Also called "Brownshirts." Members of a special armed branch of the Nazi party.
Scapegoat: Person or group of persons unfairly blamed for wrongs done by others, as the Jews historically have been used as scapegoats by Christians and Arabs over many hundreds of years.
Shteti: Yiddish word for a small Jewish towm or village in Eastern Europe. Over 6,000 such communities were systematically wiped out by the Germans and the culture of those Shtetls lost for all time.
Sobibor: Nazi Germany extermination camp in Eastern Poland where more than 200,000 Jews were exterminated between May of 1942 and November of 1944. It was the site of one of the largest and most heroic camp revolts in WW II.
Sonderkommando: German word for "special squad." In the context of extermination camps, it refers to units of Jewish prisoners forced to take away bodies of gassed inmates, often members of their own families, to be cremated and to remove gold fillings and hair. They were always destined to be killed themselves when their bodies wore out from their labors.
SS: In German, Schutzstaffel. Protection Squad Units formed in 1925 as Hitler's personal body guard. The SS later was built into a giant organization by Heinrich Himmler. It provided staff for police, camp guards, and military units (Waffen SS) serving with the German army.
Star of David: Star with six points, symbol of the Jewish religion, historically used by Christians and Arabs as a badge of shame to be worn by Jews.
Sudetenland: Mainly German-speaking region that was part of Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. Annexed by Germany in October of 1938.
Theresienstadt (Terezin): Town located about 40 miles from Prague and used by the Germans as a major ghetto. It was established in 1941 as a "model Jewish settlement" to show Red Cross investigators how well Jews were being treated. In reality, behind its false fronts and showcase stores and residences, many thousands died there of starvation and disease, and thousands more were deported and killed in extermination camps, including thousands of children under the age of 16.
Treblinka: Extermination camp about 50 miles northeast of Warsaw. More than 750,000 Jews and at least 2,000 Gypsies were murdered there between July of 1942 and November of 1943.
Underground: Organized resistance groups.
Warsaw: The capital of Poland, where about 350,000 Jews lived on the eve of WW II. In October-November of 1940, the Germans established the Warsaw Ghetto, into which some 500,000 Jews were crowded to live and die in cramped, cold, unsanitary conditions and restricted to approximately 135 calories of food a day. An average of 5,000 to 6,000 died each month from starvation, disease, exposure to cold, and shootings. Tens of thousands were transported from there to Treblinka in 1942, having to walk the distance from the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (gathering place or disposition center), where they were loaded into cattle cars for the trip to the death camp. After an uprising in the ghetto, organized by resistance fighters, with headquarters at Mila 18, who held off the might of the German army for twenty days, which ended on May 16, 1943 (and is now annually commemorated by Jews and their friends throughout the western world), the surviving Jews were deported to death camps.
Weimar Republic: German Republic of 1919-1933, a parliamentary democracy established after WW I, with its capital in the city of Weimar. It was overthrown by the Nazis in 1933, after which Hitler came to power.
Westerbork: Transit camp in northeastern Holland for almost 100,000 Jews who were deported between 1942 and 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Theresienstadt, and. Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank and her family were held there between August 8, 1944, and September 3, 1944, when they were put on the very last transport to leave there for Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Yiddish: A language that combines elements of German and Hebrew, usually written in Hebrew characters and spoken by Jews chiefly in eastern Europe and areas to which eastern Europeans have migrated, including parts of the United States. It is now increasingly used by Jews who wish to preserve a remnant of the culture of the shtetl and eastern European Jewish life.