Abwehr: The German military intelligence and counter-espionage service.
Afrika Korps: The German army corps in North Africa commanded by General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox."
Ahnenerbe (Stiftung Ahnenerbe): The Research Foundation of the SS. The name "Foundation of Ancestral Heritage" emphasized its initial interest (from 1936) in Germanic archaeology and paleontology. These interests were soon expanded to encompass many other branches of science, the humanities, Nordic runes and occultism.
Aktion: A German military or police operation; often directed against Jews in a ghetto in order to gather individuals designated for deportation and killing.
Aktion Emtefest: See Operation Harvest Festival.
Aktion Reinhard: See Operation Reinhard.
Aliya: Immigration to Palestine (Israel).
Alldeutscher Verband: See Pan-German League.
Altkampfers (Old Fighters): Men who took part in Hitler's failed putsch in Munich on November 9, 1923.
American Jewish Congress: An affiliate of the World Jewish Congress. Under the leadership of American Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, it attempted to alert the Allied governments and the general public about the atrocities committed against European Jews. Its primary goals were to stimulate action that would force the Germans into abandoning the Final Solution and secure aid and asylum for those Jews fortunate enough to escape.
Antisemitism (often written as "anti-Semitism"): Refers to the hatred of Jews based on racial and ethnic characteristics rather than religious differences. The term was first used by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in the 1870s. The term 'Semitic' originally described the peoples (and their languages) supposedly descended from Shem, one of Noah's three sons. Included in this group were Jews, Arabs, Assyrians, and others. The term was never used to refer to Jews until Marr first used it as such. Therefore, 'anti-Semitism' is very much a misnomer in terms of contemporary usage in that it does not actually refer to a dislike of all Semites, but only of Jews. For this reason, a growing number of scholars are moving away from the term 'anti-Semitism' in favor of "antisemitism."
Anschluss: The incorporation of Austria into Germany on 13 March 1938.
"Arbeit macht frei" (work makes one free): Slogan above the entrance gate to Auschwitz, Dachau, and several other concentration camps.
Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Part): An anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi, Hungarian political party.
Aryan: Originally, peoples speaking Indo-European languages. The Nazis, perverted the term, proclaimed the "Aryan race" superior to all others, and considered those of Germanic background to be prime examples of "Aryan" stock. For the Nazis, the typical "Aryan" was tall, blond and blue-eyed.
Aryanization: The expropriation of Jewish businesses and property by the German authorities as well as similar measures by other Axis nations, including Romania and Slovakia.
Asozial: When used as a noun, this word is translated to mean an "asocial individual." It was a term often applied to Gypsies and other individuals who were not part of "normal German society." This quality of being outside society often led, among other things, to constant friction with the police because of petty crime.
Auschwitz: A huge complex, consisting of concentration, extermination, and labor camps in Upper Silesia. It was established in 1940 as a concentration camp and was expanded in 1942 to included a killing center.
Auschwitz I: The main camp at the Auschwitz complex.
Auschwitz II (Also known as Birkenau): The extermination center at the Auschwitz complex.
Auschwitz III (Monowitz): The I.G. Farben labor camp near Auschwitz, also known as Buna.
Ausrotten: German word meaning "exterminate." Because it is a verb with a separable prefix (aus: meaning out) it is much more "externalizing" than in English; emphasis being placed on the word out. (Waite)
Babi Yar: A ravine two miles from the outskirts of Kiev where Nazi mobile killing units massacred more than 33,000 Jews on 29-30 September 1941. During the following months, executions of Jews, Gypsies, Soviet POWs, and handicapped hospital patients pushed the total dead at Babi Yar close to 100,000. In August 1943 two special German units known as Sonderkommando 1005 A and 1005 B utilized 377 prisoners (including about 100 Jews) from the Syretek camp to obliterate traces of this massacre by burning the disinterred corpses. Upon completion of the task, the Jewish and other prisoners were to be executed; however, 25 prisoners escaped, 15 of whom survived.
Barbarossa: Code name, derived from the name of a famous medieval German emperor, for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941.
Bar mitzvah: A Jewish boy who reaches his 13th birthday, attaining the age of religious majority and responsibility. Also, the synagogue ceremony at which he assumes these duties.
Belzec: Nazi killing center located in eastern Poland. It opened in March 1942 and closed in December 1942. More than 600,000 persons, overwhelmingly Jews, were murdered there, initially in gas vans and later in gas chambers.
Bergen-Belsen: Opened in 1940 as a prisoner-of-war camp for Belgian and French prisoners. It was renamed Stalag 311 in 1941 for about 20,000 Soviet POWs. In 1942, 16,000-18,000 Soviet POWs died there of epidemics, malnutrition, and exposure. The camp was renamed Bergen-Belsen in April 1943 and became an exchange camp for male and female Jews with foreign passports or visas. Between March 1944 and early 1945, it was a concentration camp, receiving incapacitated prisoners for possible exchange, many with foreign visas, from other camps and large numbers of prisoners evacuated from the east. Poor conditions, epidemics, and starvation led to the deaths of thousands.
Berlin Document Center: This Center was created after the war by the US Government. It contains personal files on almost all Germans who belonged to the Nazi Party, the SS, or to other National Socialist organizations.
BETAR (Brith Trumpeldor): Activist Zionist youth movement associated with HA-ZOHAR, founded by Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky in 1923.
Blitzkrieg: Lightning war or attack. Such an operation was first used by the Germans during their invasion of Poland in September 1939.
Blutkitt (Blood Cement): Hitler's concept of bonding through shared atrocities and horrible experiences. Probably derived from the writings of Michael Prawdin and his two books on Genghis Khan.
Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil): Pseudo-mystical slogan of German agrarian romanticism.
Blutzeuge (Blood Witness): A mystical National Socialist term that carried considerable racial and ideological impact. It was celebrated each year after the Nazis came to power as the "Day of National Solidarity" in honor of the Nazi "martyrs" who had been shot down during the Munich putsch of November 9, 1923. It was also on this same day each year that all new SS candidates were first allowed to wear their black SS uniforms and took their personal oaths of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass pogrom) of November 9, 1938, is believed to have been planned well in advance by Goebbels to coincide with Blutzeuge.
(Note: Most historians believe it is only a bizarre coincidence that the Berlin Wall came down of November 9, 1989. Many Neo-Nazis claim otherwise.)
Bolshevik: A member of Lenin's Communist party in Russia. The name comes from the word bolshinstvo, which means majority.
Brith Trumpeldor: See BETAR
Brit ha-Biryonim (Covenant of Terrorists): A secret Revisionist Zionist organization in mandatory Palestine. The term was derived from a group of Jewish terrorists in action against the Romans during the first century.
Buchenwald: One of the first major concentration camps, opened in 1937; located on the Ettersberg hillside overlooking Weimar, Germany. The first German and Austrian Jewish prisoners arrived in 1938; German and Austrian Gypsy prisoners deported there after July 1938. During the war political prisoners came to dominate the camp is internal administration. Included the Little Camp, an enclosure for prisoners evacuated from camps in the east. Shortly before it was liberated by the United States Army on April 11, 1945, the prisoners themselves seized control of the camp. Buchenwald developed more than 130 satellite labor camps, including Langenstein-Zwieberge, code name "Malachit." More than 65,000 of the approximately 250,00 prisoners perished at Buchenwald; others died in the subsidiary labor camps.
Central Museum of the Extinguished Jewish Race: A Nazi museum project in Prague that was never completed.
Chelmno (in German, Kulmhof): Killing center opened in late December 1941 in incorporated western Poland (the Wartheland) where the SS, using special mobile gas vans, killed more than 320,000 Jews from Lodz and Poznan provinces as well as about 5,000 Austrian Gypsies incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. It operated from December 1941 to March 1943 and resumed operation between April and August 1944 during the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto.
Confessing Church: Protestant church founded by Martin Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, and Eberhard Bethge to confront the Nazi-organized "German Christian" movement.
Covenant of Terrorists: See Brit ha-Biryonim.
Cracow (Kracow): A historic city in southern Poland, once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1918. In October 1939 the Germans made Cracow the capital of the General Government. On 3 March, 1941, a decree establishing the ghetto was published. At the end of May 1942, the Germans began deporting the ghetto's 60,000 Jews to extermination camps. Most of the deportees were sent to Belzec, the rest to Auschwitz, and some to Plaszow concentration camp located inside the Cracow city limits.
Crimea: Peninsular subdivision of the Ukrainian SSR, overrun by the German army in the fall of 1941. Einsatzkommando D operate there and decided to include the Krimchaks, Tartar-speaking Jews who had settled in Crimea as early as the second century B.C., in the Final Solution.
Croatia: Nazi puppet state in Yugoslavia; established with German encouragement in April 1941. Of its population of 6.3 million, 40,000 were Jews and 30,000 were Gypsies. The Ustachi, a local fascist movement, gained control of the government and set out to rid Croatia of foreign elements, especially the Serbian minority. They independently, and in collaboration with the Germans, killed Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies.
Dachau: The first concentration camp, near Munich, Germany. The camp opened on 20 March 1933. When the camp opened, only known political opponents were interned. Gradually, more and more groups were incarcerated there. In Dachau there was no mass extermination program, but out of the total number of 206,206 registered prisoners, there were 31,591 registered deaths. However, the total number of deaths in Dachau, including the victims of individual and mass executions and the final death marches, will never be known. On 29 April 1945 the camp was liberated.
DAP (Austrian): The Austrian group known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) was first organized in the northern Bohemian city of Aussig (Usti nad Labein) on November 15, 1902, and officially founded at Trautenau (Trutnou) on August 15, 1904. Two of its first leaders were from Hitler's hometown of Linz. In a speech in 1920, Hitler declared, "the same movement that started in Austria in 1904, has just now begun to gain a footing in Germany." In 1911 DAP headquarters were located in the same Vienna neighborhood as Hiler's apartment. In August, 1918, under the leadership of its chairman, Dr. Walter Riehl, the DAP changed its name to the German National Socialist Worker's Party (DNSAP) at a meeting in Vienna. In September 1919 Riehl sent copies of the Austrian Nazi program to Anton Drexler, chairman of the new German DAP and suggested that Drexler change the name of his German group to coincide with that of Riehl's Austrian Nazi party (DNSAP). No one is sure when Riehl and Hitler became acquainted, but between 1920 and 1923, Hitler made a number of speeches in Austria -- at Innsbruck, Hallein, Saint Polten and Vienna among others. Some of these meetings were organized by Riehl's group, and Hitler is known to have written several articles for a newspaper published by the Austrian DAP in Vienna. Hitler and Riehl are said to have split over strategy and tactics in 1923. (Unknown Nazis)
DAP (German): The German group known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) party was formally founded in Munich at the Furstenfelder Hof tavern by Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer and others on January 5, 1919. Drexler was elected chairman and his constitution was accepted by 24 men, mostly from the locomotive works where Drexler was employed. Drexler was also an active member of the Thule Society (Germanenorden). In September 1919, Hitler, still in the German Army, was assigned by his superiors to investigate the DAP, and soon was ordered to become a member. He quickly became its most prominent organizer, pushing Drexler and Harrer aside. On February 24, 1920, Hitler officially announced the "Twenty-five Point Program" of the German DAP, and on August 8, 1920, received permission to rename the DAP -- it became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).
Note: It seems more than coincidental that the name Hitler chose was so similar to Riehl's German National Socialist Workers Party (DNSAP). See DAP (Austrian) above.
Dawes Plan: An Allied program for stablizing German business conditions after World War I. It also provided ways and means by which Germany could repay its reparations to the Allies. The plan was named for Charles G. Dawes, later Vice President of the United States, who headed the committee that drew it up. The committee had two members each from Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy and the U.S. The plan, accepted by the Reichstag in 1924, did much to eliminate the spiraling inflation that had devastated the German economy in 1923.
Death camps: See "killing centers."
DEGESCH: A German subsidiary of the I.G. Farben chemical conglomerate; the German firm that oversaw the distribution of Zyklon B gas.
DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft): German Association for Scientific Research.
DNSAP: The Austrian group that later became the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) was first organized as the German Workers Party (DAP) in 1904. See DAP (Austrian) above.
Dolchstoss: German term for "stab in the back." It was commonly used to describe the belief that the German Army had not been defeated in combat, but betrayed by the "November Criminals" in the civilian government, traitorous Jews and socialist revolutionaries at home.
Drancy: Assembly center located in an unfinished housing project near the Parish suburb of Drancy. Opened in December 1940, it became the largest transit camp for the deportation of Jews from France. Sixty-two deportation trains containing about 61,000 Jews left Drancy between July 1942 and August 1944; most of the deportees perished in Auschwitz.
Drobitski Yar (Drobitski Ravine): Site, near Kharkov, of German massacres of Jews.
Einsatzkommando: A detachment (commando) of an Einsatzgruppe.
Einsatzgruppe: A special action group organized under the aegis of the SD of the SS for the specific purpose of exterminating Jews, Gypsies, mental patients, and other 'undesirable elements', usually by shooting. Similar groups were active on a smaller scale in Poland in 1939-1940. The plural is Einsatzgruppen.
Einsatzgruppen: The mobile units of the Security Police and SS Security Service that followed the German armies into the Soviet Union in June 1941. Their charge was to kill all Jews as well as Soviet commissars, the handicapped, institutionalized psychiatric patients and Gypsies. They were supported by units of the uniformed German Order Police and often used local auxiliaries (Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian volunteers). The victims were executed by mass shootings and buried in unmarked mass graves; later, the bodies were dug up and burned to disguise all traces of what had occurred. At least one million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen. There were four Einsatzgruppen (A, B, C and D) in the USSR and Baltic States, and they were subdivided into subsidiary units, known as Einsatzkommandos.
Endlösung (Final Solution): German code name for the plan to murder all the Jews of Europe under Nazi control.
Euthanasia: A euphemism for the deliberate killing of the institutionalized physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped. The "euthanasia" program began in 1939, with German non-Jews as the first victims. It was extended to Jews in 1940. Originally known as T4 (T-4), the program utilized carbon monoxide in mobile vans to kill Jews; later, closed chambers were used. The staff of T4 subsequently provided the trained force of killers at the Operation Reinhard camps in Poland: Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor. After 1941, it also included a program designated "14 f 13," used to kill concentration camp prisoners unable to work.
Final Solution: See Endlösung.
Führer (Fuehrer): Adolf Hitler, on assuming the functions of President and Chancellor [Der Kanzler] of the Reich, allowed the title of Reichspresident to fall into disuse and was always known asDer Führer, the guide or leader.
Freikorps (Free Corps): Para-military groups that sprang up all over Germany after the First World War.
Gas chambers: Sealed rooms in killing centers. Jewish and other prisoners were crowded into these rooms, and poison gas or carbon monoxide was released, killing them. Zyklon B was used at Birkenau (Auschwitz) and Majdanek; the other killing centers used carbon monoxide.
Gau: The principal territorial unit (district) of Germany during the Nazi period.
Gauleiter: Nazi party political leader of a Gau (district).
Geheimrat: A high civic rank, Councillor, both before and during the Third Reich.
Generalgouvernement (The General Government): Those parts of prewar Poland which were not incorporated into the Reich, but were under direct German rule. In 1939 this area consisted of the four districts of Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Cracow. Eastern Galicia was added in 1941 after being occupied during the war against the USSR, which had annexed the region in 1939.
Genocide: The systematic killing of a nation or race of people.
Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police): An agency of the RSHA of the SS established in Prussia in 1933. By 1936 its authority extended throughout Germany. Together with the Kriminalpolizei, or the nonuniformed detective forces, the Gestapo constituted the Sicherheitspolizei, or Security Police.
Ghetto: The Nazis revived the medieval term ghetto to describe their compulsory "Jewish Quarters." These were poor sections of a city where all Jews from the city and surrounding areas were forced to reside. Surrounded by barbed wire or walls, the ghettos were sealed, and no one could leave. Established mostly in occupied eastern Europe (for example, Lodz, Warsaw, Vilna, Riga, Minsk), the ghettos were characterized by overcrowding, starvation and heavy labor. All were eventually dissolved, and the Jews were deported and murdered. Several ghettos (Warsaw, Lodz and Bialystok) also included Gypsies deported from surrounding regions and from western Europe.
Gypsies: Today the term "gypsy" is considered a pejorative collective for Roma and Sinti, a nomadic people believed to have come originally from northwest India, which they left for Persia in the first millennium A.D. Traveling mostly in small caravans, they first appeared in western Europe in the fifteenth century. Within a century, they had spread to every country of Europe. Alternately tolerated and persecuted since that time, they were considered enemies of the state by the Nazis and relentlessly persecuted. Some 500,000 Gypsies are believed to have died in Nazi concentration camps and killing centers.
Hadamar: A psychiatric hospital founded in 1906 at the site of an earlier workhouse established in 1883 for debtors and alcoholics. The red brick clinic was located in the town of Hadamar. In 1933 it was renamed as State Psychiatric Hospital and Sanitarium. From 1941 to 1945, it was rented to T4 as the site of a "euthanasia" killing center where more than 11,000 people were murdered.
Hagana: Underground military organization, founded in 1920, by the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine.
Ha-Poel: A labor-oriented Zionist youth group.
HA-ZOHAR: Union of Zionist Revisionists founded by Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky in 1925.
Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL): Underground Jewish paramilitary group that broke away from the Hagana in 1931 and became intirely independent in 1937. Primarily noted for its violence and terrorism.
I.G. Farben (IGF): Powerful German industrial conglomerate, comprising eight leading German chemical manufacturers. Benefited enormously under Hitler's Four-Year Plan to revitalize Germany's economy for war. Established an installation near Auschwitz known as Buna, taking advantage of the cheap conscript labor there. Zyklon-B gas, used in Auschwitz for the killing of Jews, was a product of DEGESCH, a firm in which IGF had a major share. After the war, the monopoly exercised by this company over the chemical industry was ended during what was called "decartelization" when it was broken up into a number of smaller, successor companies.
Jehovah's Witnesses: A religious sect. In 1933 the Witnesses had about 20,000 members in Germany. Although they were outlawed in several German states beginning in 1933, it was only when the Witnesses refused to use the Heil Hitler salute, and, after 1935, to serve in the army, that they were seen as enemies of the Nazi state. The Witnesses also refused to salute the flag, bear arms in war, or participate in the affairs of government. These beliefs led to the first wave of arrests and imprisonment in concentration camps in 1936 and 1937. At all times the Witnesses in the concentration camps were a relatively small group of prisoners (not exceeding several hundred per camp), mostly of German nationality. About 10,000 Witnesses were imprisoned in the concentration camps; and of these, about 2,500 died.
Judenrat (Jewish Council): Council of 'elders' established on Nazi orders in ghettos in Poland and occupied Soviet and Baltic territories, and in the ghetto of Theresienstadt (Terezin, in Czech). While theoretically the Judenrat administered the ghettos, they were, in reality, totally under Nazi domination. They were forced to implement German orders while attempting, usually in vain, to modify them.
Judenrein: German expression meaning "cleansed" of Jews.
Kapo: Although the origin of the term is not fully known, the word kapo probably came from the Latin capo, meaning "head." It was probably introduced into Dachau by Italian workers in the 1930's. During World War II, in popular language, kapo became a generic term for all inmate functionaries.
Kasserine Pass: Site of decisive battles in Tunisia in 1943 that helped turn the tide of battle against the Germans in North Africa. After initial setback on 14 February 1943, Allied forces regained the initiative on 26 February 1943.
Katyn Forest Massacre: In 1940 more than 4,000 Polish army officers were murdered at Katyn, a small town near Smolensk. Both the Soviet Union and Germany denied responsibility and blamed the other for the massacre, but it is now believed that the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) was responsible. In 1943 the Polish government-in-exile in London charged the Soviets with responsibility for the massacre, and the Soviet Union severed relations with the London Poles on 25 April 1943.
Kehilla: The organized Jewish community, or the council running a local Jewish community.
Kiev: Capital of the Ukraine. Occupied by the Germans from September 19, 1941 until November 1943. A week after the occupation, the Germans decided to put to death the Jews of Kiev in retaliation for alleged attacks on German-held installations. In the months that followed, Jews were taken to the Babi Yar ravine and executed. Gypsies, Soviet POWs and some local disabled and institutionalized patients were also murdered at Babi Yar. It is estimated that close to 100,000 people died at Babi Yar.
Killing centers: Special concentration camps built specifically to kill Jews and other perceived enemies of the Nazis. Usually identified as Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka, as well as killing sections of Auschwitz and Majdanek. Often referred to as "death camps."
Kovno: City in central Lithuania, important Jewish spiritual and cultural center. In 1939 approximately 40,000 Jews (one-fourth of the city's total population) lived in Kovno. The Germans occupied Kovno in June 1941. Ten thousand Jews were killed in June and July 1 941 , and the ghetto was sealed off in August, trapping the remaining 30,000 Jews. In autumn 1943 the Kovno ghetto became a central concentration camp for Austrian and some French Jews. As the Soviet Army approached, many of the Jews were transferred to concentration camps inside Germany. Only 90 Jews were alive in Kovno when the Soviet Army liberated the city on 1 August 1944.
Kracow: See Cracow.
Kriminalpolizei (KRIPO): German Criminal Police headed by Arthur Nebe.
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): A nationwide night of rioting and looting throughout Germany organized by Joseph Goebbels on November 9, 1938. Hundreds of Jewish schools, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed. The Jews were blamed for the riots, because the Nazis claimed it was a spontaneous public demonstration against the murder of Ernst vom Rath, a minor German embassy official in Paris, by Hirshel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish youth born in Hanover. As many as 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to Dachau and other concentration camps; thousands more immigrated overseas. According to many historians, Kristallnacht demonstrated for the first time that the Nazis sought to solve the "Jewish Question" through violence. (See Blutzeuge)
Kriminalpolizei (Kripo): The German (nonuniformed) detective forces. Together with the Gestapo, they formed the Sicherheitspolizei In 1939 the Kripo became Department V of the Central Office for Reich Security (RSHA).
KWG (Kaiser Wilhelm-Gesellschaft): The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of the Sciences, which was dissolved after WW II and reconstructed as the MPG, the Max-Plank-Gesellschaft, which had a similar structure.
KWI (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute): These institutes had a director and department heads who also often held a university professional title.
Land (Länder in the plural): A state of the Reich. After the war a state of West Germany.
Lidice: A Czech mining village (population 700). In reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis "liquidated" the village in 1942. They shot the men and older boys, deported the women and children to concentration camps, razed the village to the ground and struck its name from the map. After World War II a new village was built near the site of the old Lidice, which is now a national park and memorial.
Liquidationsanstalt (extermination center): Under the control of T4, a number of institutions were created or designated for killing adult patients during the euthanasia program. In general, children were killed in other institutions (see Reichsausschuss) although there was some overlap.
Lodz (Litzmannstadt): City in western Poland, where the first major Jewish ghetto was created in April 1940. By September 1941 the ghetto's population already faced severe overcrowding; nevertheless, in October 1941, more than 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate were also sent to the Lodz. During 1942 and from June to July 1944, there were massive deportations from Lodz to the "killing center" at Chelmno. In August-September 1944 the Lodz ghetto was dissolved and the remaining 60,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz.
Luftwaffe: The German Air Force.
Majdanek (Maidanek): Nazi concentration and labor camp with "killing center" near Lublin in eastern Poland. Opened for men and women in late 1941. At first a labor camp for Poles and a POW camp for Russians, it was classified as a concentration camp in April 1943. Like Auschwitz it was also a major killing center. Majdanek was liberated by the Soviet Army in July 1944; one of the first war crimes trials was held in October 1944; a memorial was opened in November of that year.
Maly Trostinets: Concentration camp in eastern Byelorussia, near Minsk, Jews from the final operations in Minsk were murdered and buried at Maly Trostinets in July 1942 and in October 1943. Also during 1942 Jews from the Protectorate, Austria, Germany, Holland and Poland were transported to Maly Trostinets to be killed. It is believed that there are 65,000 bodies at Maly Trostinets, including those of about 39,000 Jews from the final operations in Minsk. Most of the victims were lined up in front of pits 164 feet long and 10 feet deep, and shot to death. After the execution the pits containing the victims were leveled by tractors.
Mauthausen: A concentration camp for men opened in August 1938 near Linz, Austria. The camp was established to exploit nearby stone quarries, and was classified by the SS as a camp of utmost severity. Conditions at Mauthausen were brutal, even by concentration camp standards. Many prisoners were killed by being pushed from 300-foot cliffs into the quarries. Liberated on May 5, 1945 by the U.S. Army.
Mechelen (in French: Malines): A city in Belgium, midway between Antwerp and Brussels, which served as an assembly center and transit camp for the Jews of Belgium. The Germans utilized its convenient rail connections to the concentration and extermination camps of eastern Europe.
Minsk: Capital of Byelorussia and a center of Yiddish culture and literature. On July 20, 1941 the Germans ordered the establishment of the Minsk ghetto. Altogether, 100,000 persons were rounded up and sealed behind the walls. Later, there was also a second separate ghetto for Jews from Germany deported to Minsk between November 1941 and October 1942. On March 2, 1942, after the Jewish Council (Judenrat) failed to hand over 5,000 Jews as ordered, the Germans rounded up more than 5,000 from the ghetto streets and the orphanages, carried them off and killed them. The last 4,000 Jews from Minsk were killed in October 1943.
Mischlinge: A Nazi term for persons in Germany and occupied Europe having one or two Jewish or Gypsy grandparents. In 1943 German policy attempted to deport or sterilize many Germans of mixed Jewish or Gypsy ancestry, and to kill or sterilize part-Jewish children in Germany.
MPG (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft): The Max Planck Society. The postwar reconstituted form of the KWG in West Germany.
Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog): Code name for the rounding up of suspected members of the anti-Nazi resistance in occupied western Europe.
Nazi: An abbreviated form of "Nationalsozialistische," meaning National Socialist. The full name of the Nazi Party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). See DAP (German) and NSDAP.
Neo-Nazis: Literally "New Nazis." Yet, in reality, there is nothing new about these racists and antisemites. Their ideology of hatred and violence differs little from their World War II counterparts.
Ninth Fort: A 19th century fortress in Kovno used as a prison under independent Lithuania. It was here that more than 50,000 Jews from Kovno, Austria and France were slaughtered between June 1941 and summer 1944. In autumn 1943, Special Unit (Sonderkommando) 1005 was charged with the task of obliterating all traces of mass murder. Sixty-four prisoners were able to organize their escape from the fort on 24 December 1943.
Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaft (NDW): Association for the Emergency Funding of German Science. Its name was changed to DFG in 1936.
November 9th: Date of the Nazi party's most "sacred" national holiday. Established in 1933 to memorialize the Nazi "martyrs" who had bee killed on November 9, 1923, during the Munich putsch.Most historians believe it is only a bizarre coincidence that the Berlin Wall came down of November 9, 1989. Neo-Nazis claim otherwise.(See Blutzeuge)
NSDAP: Abbreviation of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, led by Adolf Hitler from 1921 to 1945. Originally known as the German Workers' Party (DAP), it was founded in Munich on January 5, 1919. In September 1919, Hitler, still in the German Army, was assigned by his superiors to investigate the DAP. Soon afterward he was ordered to join the party as an undercover agent. He quickly became the DAP's chief of propaganda and most active member. On February 24, 1920, Hitler publicly announced the DAP's "Twenty-five Point Program," and on August 8, 1920, received permission from its leadership to rename the party -- it became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazis. By July 1921, Hitler had become the NSDAP's undisputed leader. See DAP (German).
Nuremberg Laws: Two laws issued in 1935 to further the legal exclusion from German life of persons considered alien, drawing distinctions between Aryans (persons with "German or related blood") and non-Aryans. The first law removed the citizenship of non-Aryans, and the second law defined them and prohibited them from engaging in sexual relations with Germans. The laws were proclaimed at the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935. The term non-Aryan referred to all non-Germanic peoples, but was usually applied to and implemented against Jews, Gypsies and Afro-Germans.
Nuremberg Trials: The trial of 22 major Nazi figures in Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946 before the International Military Tribunal, and also the subsequent American military tribunals held at Nuremberg in 1946-48.
Numerus Clausus: Laws and regulations establishing a percentage quota limiting the number of Jews and other minorities admitted to schools, universities, government positions and the professions. Usually based on the minority's percentage of the total population.
Nyilaskeresztes Part: See Arrow Cross Party.
Oberdienstleiter: A title indicating a high rank in the central hierarchy in Berlin of the Nazi Party.
OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres): High command of the German army.
OKK (Oberkommando des Kriegsmarine): High command of the German navy.
OKL (Oberkommando des Luftwaffe): High command of the German air force.
OKW (Oberkommando des Wehrmacht): High command of the German armed forces. In 1938, Hitler created the OKW as the supreme High Command of the entire Wehrmacht. This single organization controlled the High Commands of the Army (OKH), Navy (OKK), and Air Force (OKL), and was directly responsible to Hitler as Commander in Chief.
"Old Fighters" (Altkampfers): Men who took part in Hitler's failed putsch in Munich on November 9, 1923.
Operation Harvest Festival (in German, Aktion Emtefest): On November 3, 1943, the liquidation of 6,000 Jewish workers transferred from the Warsaw ghetto earlier that year to factories in Trawniki and Poniatowa, and also the killing of 42,000 Jews in labor camps in the Lublin district.
Operation Reinhard: Code name for the operation whose objective was the physical destruction of the Jews in the General Government (occupied central Poland). The name was coined by the SS men in charge of the operation in memory of Reinhard Heydrich, chief planner of the Final Solution in Europe, who had been fatally wounded by Czech partisans in May 1942.
Ordensburgen: Order Castles for educating the future Nazi elite.
Ostland: The eastern European territories occupied by the Nazis, consisting of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and the western half of Byelorussia.
Palestine: Territory that was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917, when it was conquered by General Allenby. In 1920 it was assigned as a British mandate, effective in 1923. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 expressed British support for creation of a Jewish national home there. A reversal of British policy in 1939 and an increase in the number of Jewish immigrants led to growing conflict between Jews and Arabs, both opposing British control. The British mandate was abolished on 15 May 1948, and the mandate territory was divided into the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan.
Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband): Influencial group of prominent German super-Nationalists founded in September 1890 by Alfred Hugenberger and others. Its total membership during the Second Reich never reached more than 40,000, but the names of its members read like a "who's who" of German academic, industrial and political life. Its primary focus was unification of all German-speaking peoples into one empire; members from Austria-Hungary composed a large percentage of its membership. Racial mystics such as Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List were active and popular within its ranks, and the Pan-Germans became one of the most effective groups in spreading hatred and fear of Jews, demanding restrictions on the Jewish press, enactment of laws barring Jews from key professions, and prohibitions against "mixed" marriages.
Partisans: Guerrilla fighters; also known in France as "maquis," a word that was originally coined in Corsica.
Pogrom: A violent mob action against the Jews, usually in the streets or against their homes. Originally a Russian word meaning "devastation."
Ponary: Mass extermination site near Vilna, Lithuania. Originally, large pits were dug by Soviet authorities for fuel storage tanks. Between July 1941 and July 1944, during the German occupation, between 70,000 and 100,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered there. In September 1943 the Germans used special units to evacuate the site and burn the corpses in an attempt to destroy all physical evidence of mass murder.
Quisling: A pejorative or insult directed at a citizen of one of the conquered nations who collaborated with the Germans. The term was taken from the name of Vidkun Quisling, the pro-Nazi Norwegian leader.
Ragnarok: Ancient Nordic term for the time at the end of the world, a Nordic apocalypse. (Waite)
Rampa: A Polish term for the railway platform for arriving trains at a concentration or extermination camp.
Rassenhygienische und bevölkerungsbiologiche Forschungsstelle: Translated as 'Section for Research on Race-hygiene and Population Biology'. An agency of the Reich Department of Health (Ministry of the Interior) supported to a large extent by the Reich Ministry of Science through the DFG. Dr. Ritter as head of this section worked on the identification and classification of Gypsies.
Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP (Race-policy Bureau of the Nazi Party): Its function was to decide on theoretical questions about race and racial propaganda on behalf of the Nazi Party.
Rassenschande (Miscegenation): Nazi term for sexual contact or liaison between an Aryan and a Jew.
Ravensbruck: Concentration camp for women opened near Furstenberg (56 miles north of Berlin) in May 1939. It was constructed on reclaimed swamp land by male inmates from Sachsenhausen during the winter of 1938-1939. Designed to hold 15,000 prisoners, it eventually housed more than 120,000 women from 23 nations. The prisoners included political prisoners, Jews, Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses. It later included a separate men's camp, a children's camp at Uckermark and from January to April 1 945 an extermination installation for women. It was liberated by the Soviet Army in late April 1945.
Razzia: A roundup of Jews, or also, a raid for finding dissidents or members of the resistance.
Reich (empire): The Nazi state was known as the Third Reich and, sometimes, as the Thousand-Year-Reich.
Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erb- und anlagebedingten schweren Leiden: The Reich Commission for the Scientific Registration of Hereditary and Constitutional Severe Disorders, abbreviated in the text as the 'Reich Commission for Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood'. Created in 1939, this Commission consisted of Professor Catel and Dr. Wentzler, who were pediatricians, and Professor Heinze, a child-psychiatrist. It was directly responsible to the Hitler's Chancellery. Beginning in August 1939, midwives were required to report all cases of handicapped and malformed live-born infants. All physicians were required, in addition, to report children under the age of four years with the same specified range of defects. The Commission then decided after examination of the completed registration forms whether the infant should be killed, as part of the euthanasia program. Later, the Commission also made decisions about the killing of older children. Dr. Wentzler subsequently extended his role to signing requests by Gypsies for voluntary sterilization as an alternative to commitment to a concentration camp. His signature gave a semblance of legality to the procedure, and legality was an obsession.
Reichsbahn: The German state railways.
Reichsfuehrer-SS: (Reich Leader of the SS): Heinrich Himmler's primary title as leader of the SS. His full title was Der Chef der Polizei und Reichsfuehrer der SS (Chief of Police and Leader of the SS). As a result of this double role, each regional police organization contained some SS-officers.
Reichsleiter (Reich Leader): This is a title which indicates a very high rank in the central hierarchy in Berlin of the Nazi Party.
Reichsmarschall: A title specially created for Hermann Goering, the Chief of the Luftwaffe, on 19 July 1940, when he became the senior serving military officer.
Reichsminister: A minister of the Reich, or of Germany as a whole, as opposed to a minister in the government of one of the Länder (states).
Reichssippenamt (Reich Kinship Bureau): An agency of the Ministry of the Interior which decided on all questions of classification of Jews and part-Jews. In some cases, it asked for racial expert opinions or reports (Gutachten) from qualified investigators and institutes.
Reichstag: The lower house of the German parliament during the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. During the Republic, one deputy represented 60,000 persons. Membership in the Reichstag fluctuated from 475 to 600, according to the size of the popular vote. During the Nazi regime, the Reichstag lost most of its power and served mainly as a forum for Hitler's speeches. After WWII, the lower house of the West German parliament became known as the Bundestag.
Resettlement: German euphemism for deportation to killing centers in Poland.
RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt): Reich Security Head Office. An agency of the SS.
Rienzi: Composer Richard Wagner's first opera, originally produced in Dresden in 18??.. Hitler was so taken with Rienzi that after an evening performace at the Linz opera house in November, 1906, he went into a trance-like possession on a nearby hilltop. Soon afterward, he became an arent admirer of Wagner's music and racist, theoretical writings.During the 1930's, Hitler told Wagner's widow, Cosima, that "it all started... on that night" in 1906. (Kubizek)
Rune: Any one of the charcters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Teutonic peoples of northern Europe. The term rune comes from a Gothic word meaning secret. Norsemen believed that the characters were the sacred invention of Odin (Wotan). Ancient priests are said to have first used them in their charms and magic spells.
RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt): Head Office for Race and Settlement. An agency of the SS. It included the Rassenamt, Race Bureau and Heiratsamt, Marriage Bureau. Among the functions of the Race Bureau were to decide on the 'Aryan qualities' of individuals belonging to conquered nations and their potential for 'Germanization'. The Marriage Bureau conducted medical examinations of SS candidates and of their brides before marriage. In both cases, applicants were required to produce documentation of Aryan ancestry going back to 1800.
SA (Sturm-Abteilung): The so-called "Storm Troopers" also known as the "Brownshirts." Until Hitler came to power, the SA was the most important paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, and his strongest supporters. In early 1934, Heinrich Himmler, ambitious head of the SS, successfully conspired against SA Chief of Staff Ernst Roehm (Röhm), resulting in his summary execution along with most of his top lieutenants during the "Night of the Long Knives" on June 30, 1934. Using a rumored "Roehm Putsch" as his excuse, Himmler destroyed the SA as a rival to the SS. It later became little more than a military sports association under Roehm's successor, Viktor Lutze. Hitler was prompted to go along with the SA murders because of mounting pressure from Hindenburg and the leadership of the German army, who feared that it would be eventually replaced by the much larger, but undisciplined, SA.
Sachsenhausen: Concentration camp for men opened in 1936. Located in Orangienburg, a suburb of Berlin. It was adjacent to the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps. It held about 200,00 prisoners, of whom 100,000 perished. It was liberated by the Soviet Army in late April 1945.
Salonika: Main port city of Macedonian Greece with an ancient Jewish community of 50,000 people. Conquered in 1 941 . In 1943 at least 43,850 Jews were deported from Salonika to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most were gassed on arrival.
SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service): The SS security and intelligence service, established in 1932 under Reinhard Heydrich. Closely connected with the RSHA.
Selection: The process of selecting Jewish deportees immediately after arrival at an extermination camp, separating those assigned to forced labor and those to be killed. The term also refers to the selection of Jews for deportation from ghettos.
Shoah: A Hebrew word many Jews prefer when referring to the Holocaust.
Sobibor: Extermination camp located in the Lublin district in eastern Poland. Sobibor opened in May 1942 and closed one day after a rebellion by its Jewish prisoners on 14 October 1943. At least 250,000 Jews were killed there.
Sondenbehandlung (Special treatment): Euphemism for the killing of Jews and other concentration camp prisoners.
Sonderkommando (Special squad): An SS or Einsatzgruppe detachment; also refers to the Jewish forced-labor units in extermination camps like Birkenau who took away the bodies of gassed prisoners for cremation, removing gold fillings and hair for recycling into the German war economy.
SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad): Originally, guard detachments formed in 1925 as Hitler's personal bodyguard. In 1929, under Himmler, the SS developed into the elite units of the Nazi party. For its emblem, the SS used two symbols copied from Teutonic runes, a parallel jagged double SS. The SS grew into a state within the state. Its divisions included the armed Waffen-SS, and the general Allgemeine-SS which provided the guards and staff of the concentration camps. An attempt was made to maintain the SS as an elite in terms of "racial purity," but it consisted by no means only of German nationals. It contained "Germanic" units (composed of Flemish, Danish, or Dutch) from 1942 onwards. Later there were even units of Poles and Ukrainians who possessed the requisite 'Aryan' physical qualities. In 1943, when the manpower shortage in the armed forces became acute, a Turkic-Moslem unit was formed under SS auspices.
T-4 or T4: Code name for the office directing the Nazi euthanasia program. It's name was derived from Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the villa in Berlin, once the home of a Jewish family, where the office was situated from April 1940. Created in 1939, the office was initially directly responsible to the Hitler's Chancellery. From September 1941 onwards, it was also responsible to the Ministry of the Interior's Department of Public Health and Hygiene. In 1941, T-4 collaborated with Himmler to initiate a program under the code name 14 f 13, to free the concentration camps of the burden of "valueless lives" (Ballastexistenzen). Such individuals were selected for killing by a board of physicians. Children were not, in general, killed in the death camps under the control of T-4. Instead, there were some thirty "pediatric departments" (Kinderfachanstalten) in other institutions which participated in the killing of children.
Theresienstadt (Terezin): Before 1918 this town, located about forty miles from Prague, was known as Theresienstadt. When Czechoslovakia was created as a country after World War I, the name was changed to Terezin. The town was again renamed Theresiendstadt under German occupation; inhabitants were relocated, and the town was made into a ghetto for Jewish deportees from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The SS used the ghetto to show the Red Cross investigators how well Jews were being treated. Most Jews held here were deported and killed in the extermination camps in Poland. Barely 2,000 of the 15,000 children incarcerated in the ghetto survived. On 8 May 1945 the Soviet Army liberated Theresienstadt. Bauschowitz (in Czech, Bohusovice) was the train station closest to the ghetto, and deportees had to march about two miles from this station to the ghetto. The Small Fortress at Theresienstadt was a police prison created by the Prague Gestapo in June 1940, and more than 32,000 political prisoners were held there between 1940 and 1945. This prison existed prior to the creation of the ghetto. Until June 1942 only men were imprisoned in the Small Fortress; the first women prisoners arrived in the summer of 1942. The largest prisoner groups were members of the Czech resistance, followed by escaped Soviet prisoners of war and Polish labor conscripts accused of violating Nazi regulations. Toward the end of the war, participants in the Slovak uprising of 1944 and Allied prisoners of war were also held at the Small Fortress. Jews held in the Theresienstadt ghetto were also at times transferred to the Small Fortress for infractions of ghetto rules. The most famous were the clandestine Theresienstadt artists arrested in 1944.
Third Reich: The semi-official name of the Nazi-German state established by Adolf Hitler in 1933. The First Reich was said to be the Holy Roman Empire which ceased to exist in 1806. The Second Reich created by Otto von Bismarck spanned only 47 years, from 1871 to 1918. Hitler's Third Reich, which he proclaimed would last a thousand years, survived for little more than twelve.
Thule Society: Mysterious secret society that began operating in Munich shortly before the end of WWI. Many leading members of the Nazi party were later said to be among its members. Although the Thule Society represented itself as a literary society for Germanic studies, it was in reality the center of the counter-revolutionary movement, a hot-bed of ultra-nationalism and Pan-Germanic mysticism. Some researchers believe its inner circle was a coven of occultists led by Dietrich Eckart and that Adolf Hitler was a "visiting" member. (Goodrick-Clarke)
Totenkopf: The "Death's Head" detachments of the SS, which operated the concentration and extermination camps. Members wore the skull and crossbones on their hats and collar patches.
Transnistria: Province in the southern Ukraine occupied and governed by Romania, Germany's ally, from 1941 to 1944. Tens of thousands of Romanian Jews were deported to concentration camps in Transnistria and killed there under brutal conditions.
Trawniki: Labor camp southeast of Lublin, created in autumn 1941 for Soviet POWs and Polish Jews. In early 1942 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews were brought to Trawniki, where many died of starvation or were deported to Belzec. With the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, 10,000 Schultz factory Jews, including tailors, furriers, and broom makers, were brought to Trawniki. Following the uprising at Sobibor, the Germans, concerned about further revolts, killed 43,000 Jews in early November 1943, 10,000 of them at Trawniki.
Treblinka: Killing center on the river Bug northeast of Warsaw in the General Government (Poland). Opened in July 1942, it was the largest of the three killing centers of Operation Reinhard. Between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews were killed there. A revolt of inmates on 2 August 1943 destroyed most of the camp, and it was closed in November 1943.
U-Boats (Unterseeboot): German designation for submarines.
Va'ad Leumi: The National Council of Palestinian Jewry established in 1920 under the British Mandate.
Vichy: Spa town in central France. Capital of unoccupied France and headquarters of the pro-Nazi, nationalist regime headed by Marshal Petain. The Germans occupied Vichy France in November 1942.
Vilna (Vilnius): Capital of Lithuania. Of the 57,000 thousand Jews living in Vilna when the Nazis occupied it, between 2,000 and 3,000 were still alive in July 1944. About a third of the survivors had taken refuge in the forests.
Volk: The German word for nation, race or people.
Völkisch: A German adjective meaning national, ethnic or racial.
Volksgenossen: Members of the Volk (race or people). Racial comrades.
Waffen-SS: Armed military SS units serving with the German army.
Wannsee Conference: A meeting of Nazi bureaucrats called by Reinhard Heydrich to coordinate and implement the logistics of the "Final Solution." It was held at a lakeside villa in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, on January 20, 1942.
Warsaw: Before World War II the capital of Poland. After Poland was defeated by the Nazis, it became a city in the General Government.
Warsaw ghetto: Established in November 1940, it was surrounded by a wall and held nearly 500,000 Jews. More than 45,000 died there in 1941 alone, as a result of overcrowding, hard labor, lack of sanitation, insufficient food and disease. During 1942 most of the ghetto residents were deported to Treblinka, leaving only about 30,000 Jews in the ghetto. In April 1943, when German troops, commanded by SS Major General Jurgen Stroop, attempted to deport the remaining inhabitants to Treblinka, the desperate Jews, armed with only a handful of weapons, revolted. The Jewish defense forces, commanded by Mordecia Anielewicz and including members from all Jewish political parties, fought tenaciously. The bitter fighting continued for twenty-eight days, ending with the ghetto being completely destroyed. The few surviving Jews were sent to camps where nearly all were gassed. Late in 1943, a concentration camp was created on the site of the former ghetto to sift for any usable materials.
Wehrmacht: The combined German armed forces, including the army, navy and air force. (See OKW)
Weltdienst (World Service): A German antisemitic news service.
Westerbork: A transit camp in northeast Holland created by the Dutch Ministry of Interior in October 1939. It initially held 750 German Jews interned for illegal border crossings in 1939, but between July 1942, when the Germans took command of the camp, and December 1943, more than ninety trains left Westerbork for Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and Theresienstadt. These trains carried 88,363 Dutch and German Jews and some 500 Dutch Gypsies to their deaths.
White Rose: The Small group of students at the University of Munich, led by Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, who produced five illegal leaflets against Nazism and painted graffiti on the walls of the university buildings in protest against Nazism. Affiliated with a similar student protest group in Hamburg. The protesting students were arrested, tried by a People's Court, and executed in 1943.
Wotan: Chief of the Teutonic gods; know as Odin to the Norsemen of Scandanavia.
Yishuv: The Jewish settlement in Palestine prior to the founding of Israel.
Young Plan: A plan for reorganizing Germany's WWI reparation payments that came out of a 1919 meeting of an international commission of financial experts held in Paris. The plan named for Owen D. Young, an Amnerican businessman, reduced the German debt to $16 billion (U.S.) and reduced the size of payments by extending the number of payments for decades to come. It also established a Bank for International Settlements to handle the payments. Many Germans complained the Young Plan would enslave their unborn children and grandchildren to this bank for generations. These fears and resentments, combined with the stock market crash later in the year, did much to revitalize Hitler and his movement. In 1934, after Hitler came to power, the war-debt agreements totally collapsed and no further payments were made by any nation.
Zionism: Political and cultural movement calling for the return of the Jewish people to their Biblical home in Palestine. The word Zion comes from the name of a hill in Jerusalem where the the royal palace of King David once stood. Modern Zionism was formally founded by Theodor Herzl of Vienna at an international congress held at Basel, Switzerland in 1897.
Z0B: The Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw ghetto as well as several others in Poland.
Zyklon B: A brand-name of pesticide distribued by DEGESCH, a German subsidiary of the I.G. Farben chemical conglomerate. Its active ingredient was Hydrogen cyanide (Prussic Acid) in crystalline form. Zyklon B was used to murder millions of people, mostly Jews, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau and several other killing centers.
