Holocaust Study Guide: Key Terms and Phases

SA

Storm Troopers ("Brownshirts"), disbanded by Hitler in 1934.

SS

Led by Heinrich Himmler; controlled concentration, labor, and death camps.

Gestapo

Secret State Police; expelled Jews.

Einsatzgruppen

SS mobile killing units targeting Jews, communists, and others.

First Solution

Isolate Jews—Nuremberg Laws (1935), ghettos.

Second Solution

Expel Jews—mass deportations using cattle cars.

Final Solution

Mass extermination starting with WWII (1939)—6 million Jews, 12 million total murdered.

Inefficient Methods of Execution

Mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen; Gas vans; Problem: too slow; some Jews escaped.

Efficient Methods

Registration and deportation through quotas and railroads; Selection: Doctors decided life or death; "Work" or "showers" (gas chambers); Cremation of bodies.

Life at Auschwitz

4 AM roll call; Striped uniforms, wooden shoes, freezing winters; Minimal food: coffee (dirty water), bread, margarine, tiny meals; Grueling work schedules.

Partisans

Guerrilla fighters.

Denmark

Saved most of their Jewish population.

Greece

Small resistance; majority of Jews killed.

Foreign Diplomats

Issued visas for Jews.

Adolf Eichmann

Organized deportations; caught in Argentina, executed in 1962.

Heinrich Himmler

Oversaw Holocaust; committed suicide.

Reinhard Heydrich

Helped create Final Solution; assassinated.

Rudolf Hoess

Auschwitz commandant; hanged in 1947.

Josef Mengele

"Angel of Death," escaped to South America, drowned in 1979.

Nuremberg Trials

International tribunal: France, GB, SU, US; Leaders tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity; Some sentenced to death; others received light punishments.

Creation of Israel

Jewish homeland post-WWII.

Oscar Schindler

"I am the conscience of all those who knew something but did nothing."

Pastor Niemoeller

"Then they came for me...and there was no one left to speak for me."