Night Vocabulary and Holocaust Terms

Vocabulary terms related to the Holocaust, WWII history, and the book 'Night' by Elie Wiesel.

Adolf Hitler

The leader of the Nazi Party and chancellor of Germany (1933–45) whose worldview revolved around territorial expansion and racial supremacy.

Anti-Semitism

Hostility toward or hatred of Jews as a religious or ethnic group, often accompanied by social, economic, or political discrimination.

Appellplatz

German word for roll call square where prisoners were forced to assemble.

Auschwitz

The largest Nazi concentration camp complex, located in Krakow, Poland.

Birkenau

Nazi camp also known as Auschwitz II which contained systematic mass killing operations and housed thousands of concentration camp prisoners deployed at forced labor.

Buchenwald

A large concentration camp established in 1937 by the Nazis.

Buna

Industrial plant established by the I.G. Farben company on the site of Auschwitz III in German-occupied Poland.

I.G. Farben

A German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate that aimed to produce synthetic rubber and synthetic fuel (gasoline) using forced labor; thousands of prisoners died there.

Concentration camp

Camps to detain and, if necessary, kill so-called enemies of the state, including Jews, Gypsies, political and religious opponents, members of national resistance movements, homosexuals, and others.

Crematorium

A facility containing a furnace for reducing dead bodies to ashes by burning.

Gypsy

A traditional term, sometimes perceived as pejorative, for Roma, a nomadic people whose ancestors migrated to Europe from India.

Kripo (Criminal Police)

German police detective force responsible for investigating non-political crimes.

Euthanasia

Literally "good death"; usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual.

Fascism

A political movement that exalts the collective nation, and often race, above the individual and that advocates for a centralized totalitarian state.

“Final Solution”

The Nazi plan to annihilate the European Jews.

Gestapo

The German Secret State Police under SS control, responsible for investigating political crimes and opposition activities.

Ghetto

A confined area of a city in which members of a minority group are compelled to live.

Holocaust

The state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

Kapo

A concentration camp prisoner selected to oversee other prisoners on labor details.

Killing centers

Facilities established by the Nazis for efficient mass murder.

Kommando

German word for detachment, such as a detachment of concentration camp prisoners at forced labor.

Kristallnacht

Usually referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass."

Josef Mengele

SS physician assigned to Auschwitz notorious for conducting medical experiments on inmates, especially twins and dwarfs.

Ordnungspolizei (Order Police; Orpo)

Regular uniformed German police force.

Red Army

The army of the Soviet Union.

Preventive Arrest

Instrument of detention permitting criminal police to take suspects into custody without warrant or judicial review.

SS (Schutzstaffel)

A paramilitary formation of the Nazi party initially created to serve as bodyguards to Hitler and other Nazi leaders.

Sonderkommandos (special detachments)

In killing centers, these were prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers to facilitate the killing process, particularly the disposal of corpses.

Synagogue

In Judaism, a house of worship and learning.

Weimar Republic

The parliamentary democracy established in Germany following the collapse of Imperial Germany and preceding Nazi rule.

Yellow star

A badge featuring the Star of David used by the Nazi regime as a method of visibly identifying Jews.