holocaust unit 3

Aktion (German)

Operation involving the mass assembly, deportation, and murder of Jews
by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Auschwitz

The largest Nazi concentration camp,
located 37 miles west of Cracow, Poland. Established in 1940, it became a
huge camp complex that included a killing center and slave labor camps.

Axis

These 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.

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 here 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.

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 here.

collaborator

In the context of war, one who cooperates with the enemy who is occupying their country and persecuting their people.

Concentration Camps

Nazi system for imprisoning those consider "enemies of the state." Many
different groups and individuals were imprisoned here: religious opponents, resisters, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), Poles, and Jews. These were further subdivided into labor camps and death camps. Before the end of World War II, several thousand of these were operating throughout Europe, in all countries conquered by the German army,
especially Poland, Austria and Germany.

Crematoria

Furnaces constructed to burn human remains in the killing centers and
concentration camps. The Germans had accepted bids for the construction
of these; many were built by German companies.

Death Camps

These were concentration camps
created for the sole purpose of killing people. Victims were murdered in
assembly-line fashion oftentimes in gas chambers, and their bodies burned
in open fields or crematoria, or buried in mass graves. The Nazis operated
six of these: Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, Chelmno, Auschwitz and Majdanek. Many concentration camps, such as Bergen-Belsen, Mathausen and Dachau, were also considered death camps because thousands were killed there by starvation, mistreatment, and disease.

deportation

The act of being forced to leave where one is living. The Nazis coerced, tricked, and forced prisoners to leave their homes or ghettos, and board cattle cars destined for concentration camps and death camps. Prisoners in the overcrowded, unsanitary, cattle cars were given no food or water
during the 2-4 day ride to the camps and many died.

Einsatzgruppen

German name for the SS mobile killing squads that followed the German army into Russia and eastern Poland. They rounded up Jews and other "inferior people" in the conquered territories, forced their victims to dig their own graves, into which they were shot. At least one million Jews were killed by these people.

Euthanasia

Usually refers to the inducement of a
painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however, this was a euphemistic term for a clandestine program which targeted for systematic killing institutionalized mentally and
physically disabled patients, without the consent of themselves or their families.

Final Solution

Euphemism adopted at Wannsee Conference (January 1942), This was the Nazi code for the murder of all European Jews.

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. He was tried at Nuremberg, convicted, and executed in 1946.

Genocide

The deliberate, systematic annihilation of a racial, religious, cultural, or political group of people. In genocide people are persecuted and murdered because of membership in the targeted victim group. In addition to the
Holocaust, this against targeted groups has also occurred in Cambodia (Asia), Bosnia (Eastern Europe), Rwanda (Africa), and now in Darfur (in Sudan, Africa).

Ghetto

The Nazis revived the medieval 16th -century term to describe compulsory "Jewish quarters" in the poorest sections of the cities and towns they had conquered. These were closed off by walls, or fences made
of wood and barbed wire. Entire families were imprisoned here, including young children and the elderly. These were extremely crowded and unsanitary. Lack of food, clothing, medicine, and other supplies, severe winter weather, and the absence of adequate municipal services led to repeated outbreaks of epidemics and to very high mortality rates. With the implementation of the Final Solution in late 1941, most were systematically destroyed. Residents were either shot in mass 3 graves located nearby or deported, usually by train, to death camps.

Goring, Hermann (1893-1946)

An early member of the Nazi party, He participated in Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich in 1923 (see HITLER, ADOLF). When Hitler came into power in 1933, he made this guy 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, he committed suicide by taking poison just two hours before his scheduled execution.

Roma (Gypsies)

A nomadic people, believed to have come originally from northwest India, from where they immigrated to Persia by the fourteenth century. They 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. They occupied a special place in Nazi racist theories. It is believed that approximately 500,000 perished during the Holocaust.

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 organized the Einsatzgruppen
which systematically murdered Jews in occupied Russia during 1941-1942. In 1941, he was asked by Goring to implement a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." In January 1942, he presided over the Wannsee Conference, a meeting to coordinate the "Final Solution." On May 29, 1942, he was assassinated by Czech partisans who parachuted in from England.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945)

Reichsführer-SS (Reich Leader of the SS) and Chief of German Police, a position which included supreme command over the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the Waffen-SS. After 1943, He was Minister of the Interior of Nazi Germany, principal planner for the aim of Nazi Germany to kill all European Jews.

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. This literally means "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.

Judenrat (PLURAL: JUDENRÄTE)

Council of Jewish representatives in communities and ghettos set up by the
Nazis to carry out their instructions.

Labor Camps

hese were camps established to exploit the slave labor of prisoners to benefit the Third Reich. Many concentration and death camps had a system of these attached. Prisoners were often worked to death in inhuman
conditions. One of the most notorious labor camps was located at Auschwitz III. The labor of millions of slaves in camps brought profits to many German businesses, as well as the German military and government.

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 this, which is now a national park and memorial.

Liquidation

A Nazi euphemism for eliminating a ghetto and its inhabitants by conducting massive deportations to concentration and death camps, or by the mass murder of Jews on the outskirts of towns.

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 this Ghetto. Those deported from here 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, This 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. This was liberated by the Red Army in July 1944, but not before 250,000 men, women, and children had lost their lives there.

Mengele, Josef (1911-1979)

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.

Resettlement

a Nazi euphemism for deportation and murder.

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

Sobibor

Extermination camp in the Lublin district in Eastern Poland. This 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.

Sonderkommandos (Special Detachments)

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

Treblinka

Extermination camp in northeast Poland .
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.

Wannsee Conference

A gathering of top Nazi officials held on January 20, 1942 at Lake Wannsee (vahn zey) in Berlin where "The Final Solution" and other steps were approved which would lead to the total annihilation of European Jews.

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