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Holocaust Glossary
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● Allies: 26 nations led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union that opposed Germany, Italy, and Japan (known as the Axis powers) in World War II. ● Antisemitism: Hostility toward or hatred of Jews as a religious or ethnic group, often accompanied by social, economic, or political discrimination. (USHMM) ● Appellplatz: German word for the roll call square where prisoners were forced to assemble. (USHMM) ● Arbeit Macht Frei : “Work makes you free” is emblazoned on the gates at Auschwitz and was intended to deceive prisoners about the camp’s function (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Aryan: Term used in Nazi Germany to refer to non-Jewish and non-Gypsy Caucasians. Northern Europeans with especially “Nordic” features such as blonde hair and blue eyes were considered by so-called race scientists to be the most superior of Aryans, members of a “master race.” (USHMM) ● Auschwitz: The largest Nazi concentration camp/death camp complex, located 37 miles west of Krakow, Poland. The Auschwitz main camp (Auschwitz I) was established in 1940. In 1942, a killing center was established at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II). In 1941, Auschwitz-Monowitz (Auschwitz III) was established as a forced-labor camp. More than 100 subcamps and labor detachments were administratively connected to Auschwitz III. (USHMM) Pictured right: Auschwitz I. B ● Babi Yar: A ravine near Kiev where almost 34,000 Jews were killed by German soldiers in two days in September 1941 (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Barrack: The building in which camp prisoners lived. The material, size, and conditions of the structures varied from camp to camp. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the wooden barracks were originally designed to hold horses and were divided into stalls holding three-tiered wooden bunks. Inmates were squeezed in five or six across on the wooden planks. The buildings had little ventilation and were not insulated from the heat or cold. There was usually no sanitary facilities. As many as 500 inmates lodged in a single barrack. ● Baum Gruppe: Named after its leaders, Herbert and Marianne Baum, Baum Gruppe was diverse in its membership but unified in its opposition to the Nazis. Founded in 1937 and composed mainly of young Jewish Communists, the group also included fervent, left-wing Zionists. The Baum Group produced and distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets, arranged educational events for the increasingly isolated Jewish youth of Berlin, and offered moral support and camaraderie. In May 1942 members engaged in a daring anti-Nazi act, an attempt to burn down an anti-Bolshevik propaganda exhibit called Das Sowjetparadies (The Soviet Paradise). Herbert, Marianne, and 25 other members were caught, tortured, and either
killed or sent to concentration camps. Five hundred Berlin Jews not associated with the group also were arrested in reprisal and sent to camps or killed. ● Bergen-Belsen : Nazi concentration camp in northwestern Germany. Erected in 1943. Thousands of Jews, political prisoners, and POWs were killed there. Liberated by British troops in April 1945, although many of the remaining prisoners died of typhus after liberation. (FCIT) ● Birkenau: Nazi camp also known as Auschwitz II (see Auschwitz above), Birkenau contained systematic mass killing operations. It also housed thousands of concentration camp prisoners deployed at forced labor. (USHMM) Pictured right: Birkenau. ● Block: A single concentration camp barrack. (Voices of the Holocaust) ● Blood Libel: An allegation, recurring during the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, that Jews were killing Christian children to use their blood for the ritual of making unleavened bread (matzah). A red mold which occasionally appeared on the bread started this myth. (FCIT) ● Breendonck: The concentration camp at Breendonck, Belgium, was a primary internment point for jews in Occupied Belgium. ● Buchenwald: A large concentration camp established in 1937 by the Nazis. It was located in north-central Germany, near the city of Weimar. (USHMM) ● Buna: Industrial plant established by the I.G. Farben company on the site of Auschwitz III (Monowitz) in German-occupied Poland. I.G. Farben executives aimed to produce synthetic rubber and synthetic fuel (gasoline), using forced labor. Thousands of prisoners died there. (USHMM) ● Bystander: One who is present at some event without participating in it. (FCIT) C ● Canada : The name given to the storage buildings by the prisoners who worked in them. These buildings held the clothing and other possessions of those Jews who had just arrived into the extermination camps and were usually gassed shortly afterward. Much of the most valuable items were “stolen” by guards or went to the remaining ghettos to be “repaired” in the workshops there. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Chancellor: A senior state or legal official. This was the title for the head of the government in Germany. ● Chelmno: First death camp to use gassing and first place located outside Soviet territory in which Jews were systematically killed as part of the “Final Solution.” (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Concentration Camp: Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Nazis established 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. Imprisonment in a concentration camp was of unlimited duration, was not linked to a specific act, and was not subject to any judicial review. In addition to
to the Jew.” In 1896, the new head of the army’s intelligence unit, Georges Picquart, uncovered evidence pointing to another French military officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real traitor. However, when Picquart told his bosses what he’d discovered he was discouraged from continuing his investigation, transferred to North Africa and later imprisoned. Nevertheless, word about Esterhazy’s possible guilt began to circulate. In 1898, he was court-martialed but quickly found not guilty; he later fled the country. After Esterhazy’s acquittal, a French newspaper published an open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” by well-known author Emile Zola in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the military of a major cover-up in the case. As a result, Zola was convicted of libel, although he escaped to England and later managed to return to France. The Dreyfus affair deeply divided France, not just over the fate of the man at its center but also over a range of issues, including politics, religion and national identity. In 1899, Dreyfus was court-martialed for a second time and found guilty. Although he was pardoned days later by the French president, it wasn’t until 1906 that Dreyfus officially was exonerated and reinstated in the army. (History.com, Elizabeth Nix, 2015) E ● Edelstein, Jacob: Edelstein was among the leading figures in Czechoslovakia’s Zionist movement before the start of the war. He became the first chairman of the Theresienstadt Ghetto’s Jewish Council. He used this position to resist efforts to deport the ghetto’s Jews. Bravely, he falsified daily reports concerning the number of Jews in the ghetto. The Nazis deported him in December 1943 to Auschwitz, where he and his family were shot on June 20, 1944. (The Holocaust Chronicle) ● Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units): Mobile units of the German Security Police and SD augmented by Order Police and Waffen-SS personnel. These units followed the German army as it invaded the nations of central and eastern Europe. Their duties included the arrest or murder of political opponents and potential resistance. In Poland in 1939, these units were assigned to shoot Polish intellectuals and to concentrate the Jewish population into large cities. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Einsatzgruppen personnel killed Jews, Soviet political commissars, Gypsies (Roma), mentally disabled persons, and other perceived "racial" and ideological enemies, usually by mass shootings. (USHMM) ● Einsatzkommando: Command units that carried out killing operations, particularly of groups of Jews who were to be exterminated in gas vans or by firing squads (Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota) ● Eugenics: The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis. ● Euthanasia: “Euthanasia” (literally, “good death”) usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual. In Nazi usage, however,
“euthanasia” was a euphemistic term for a clandestine program which targeted institutionalized mentally and physically disabled patients for systematic killing, without the consent of themselves or their families. (USHMM) ● Evian Conference: Held July 6-15, 1938. Delegates from 32 countries and representatives from relief organizations met in Evian-les-Bains, a spa town in France, to discuss German- Jewish refugees. The United States encouraged all countries to find a long-term solution to the problem. (USHMM) ● Extermination Camps: Six major camps designed and built for the sole purpose of killing Jews. These were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. (Holocaust Museum Houston) F ● Fascism: A political movement that exalts the collective nation, and often race, above the individual and that advocates a centralized totalitarian state headed by a charismatic leader; expansion of the nation, preferably by military force; forcible suppression and sometimes physical annihilation of opponents both real and perceived. (USHMM) ● “Final Solution”: The Nazi plan to annihilate the European Jews. (USHMM) ● Flossenburg: Bavarian camp established in 1938/39 mainly for political, particularly foreign, prisoners. (FCIT) ● Forced-Labor Camps: Camps where prisoners were used as slave labor. G ● Generalgouvernement (General Government): That part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to German East Prussia, or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union. (USHMM) ● Genocide: Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Article 2 CPPCG) ● Gestapo: The German Secret State Police, which was under SS control. It was responsible for investigating political crimes and opposition activities. (USHMM) ● Ghetto: A confined area of a city in which members of a minority group are compelled to live. The first use of the term “ghetto” for a section of a city in which Jews lived was in Venice, Italy, in 1516. (USHMM) ● Gypsy: A traditional term, sometimes perceived as pejorative, for Roma, a nomadic people whose ancestors migrated to Europe from India. Nazi Germany and its Axis partners persecuted and killed large numbers of Roma during the era of the Holocaust. (USHMM) ● Goebbels, Joseph (1897-1945) : In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany, he named Joseph Goebbels, his trusted friend and colleague, to the
● Judenrein: “Cleansed of Jews,” a German expression for Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of Jews. (Holocaust Museum Houston) K ● Kapo: a concentration camp prisoner selected to oversee other prisoners on labor details. The term is often used generically for any concentration camp prisoner to whom the SS gave authority over other prisoners. (USHMM) ● Killing Centers: The Nazis established killing centers for efficient mass murder. Unlike concentration camps, which served primarily as detention and labor centers, killing centers (also referred to as “extermination camps” or “death camps”) were almost exclusively “death factories.” German SS and police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting. (USHMM) ● Kindertransport: The informal name of a series of rescue efforts which allowed for thousands of Jewish children to be sent from Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia to Great Britain between 1938 and 1940. ● Kommando : German word for “detachment,” such as a detachment of concentration camp prisoners at forced labor. (USHMM) ● Korczak, Janusz: Korczak, with the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish-Jewish physician, writer, and educator. He spent his entire professional life studying and caring for children. With the outbreak of World War II, and the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, Korczak dedicated himself to helping Jewish boys and girls. On August 5, 1942, the Nazis rounded up Korczak and his 200 children.After a three-mile march to the deportation trains, nothing more is known of Korczak or his children and their journey to Treblinka where they were gassed. ● Krakow Ghetto: The ghetto in Krakow, Poland, where Oskar Schindler gave factory jobs to remaining Jews thus saving them from deportation in March 1943. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Krakow/Plaszow: Home to the oldest and most important Jewish communities in Europe, Krakow, Poland was transformed by the Nazis into a place of terror. The city was occupied by the Germans in September 1939 and declared capital of the Generalgouvernment of Poland. All anti-Jewish legislation for the region was issued from Krakow. Terror campaigns against the Jews began in December 1940. Jewish property was seized, synagogues were burned, and thousands of Jews were expelled from their residences. A formal ghetto that measured 656 x 437 yards was established in March 1941. Jews from the neighboring communities were packed into the ghetto; by the end of the year, 18,000 Jews were imprisoned in Krakow. The overcrowding and deplorable sanitary conditions caused many deaths. Deportations from Krakow to Belzec and Auschwitz death camps began in May 1942 and continued until March 1943. On March 13, 1943, 2,000 Jews were transferred to the Plaszow forced-labor camp. Located on the outskirts of Krakow, the Plaszow camp was run by the notorious Amon Goeth, a psychopathic killer who took pleasure in shooting Jews for sport
from his balcony. The Krakow ghetto and Plaszow labor camp provided the setting for the film Schindler’s List. ● Kristallnacht : usually referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass.” It is the name given to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. Instigated primarily by Nazi party officials and the SA (Nazi Storm Troopers), the pogrom occurred throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. (USHMM) ● Kube, Wilhelm: a Nazi official who was appointed Generalkommissar of Belorussia in 1941. One of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, Kube was a Nazi deputy in the Weimar Republic’s Reichstag , before Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933. A political figure to the end, Kibe opposed SS deportations and mass murder because he did not want more Jews brought into his area. He was assassinated by a Russian partisan disguised as a housemaid in September 1943 (Holocaust Chronicle). L ● League of German Girls: Female counterpart of the Hitler Youth formed in 1927 but not formally integrated by Hitler until 1932. (FCIT) ● Lebensraum : Meaning “living space,” it was a basic principle of Nazi foreign policy. Hitler believed that eastern Europe had to be conquered to create a vast German empire for more physical space, a greater population, and new territory to supply food and raw materials. (FCIT) ● Legion Vlaandern (Flanders Legion): A collaborationist military unit in Belgium established on August 6, 1941. (Holocaust Chronicle) ● Le Juif et la France (The Jew and France): An exposition opened by the Nazis in Paris, France. The exhibits appealed to French patriotism by portraying the Jew as the enemy, a monster intent on destroying France. In its first days, the exhibits drew 100,000 Parisians (The Holocaust Chronicle). ● Liberate: To set someone free from a situation, especially imprisonment or slavery, in which their liberty is severely restricted. M ● Madagascar Plan: A Nazi policy that was seriously considered during the late 1930s and 1940s which would have sent Jews to Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa. At that time, Madagascar was a French colony. Ultimately, it was considered impractical and the plan was abandoned. (FCIT) ● Majdanek: Death camp located in a suburb of Lublin, Poland, where 360,000 people were shot, beaten, starved, or gassed to death. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Mass Murder: The act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity. ● Mauthausen: Hard labor and concentration camp located near Linz, Austria. (Holocaust Museum Houston)
of 100 people for the Reichsfuhrer ’s viewing. Himmler, sickened at the sight, became particularly distressed over two women not killed outright. He then instructed Nebe to find more “humane” methods for killing. When given the task of ending the suffering of insane- asylum inmates, Nebe used dynamite on the mentally ill. Involved in the plot against Hitler, Nebe was himself reportedly executed in 1945. (The Holocaust Chronicle). ● Nuremberg Laws: Laws which excluded Jewish people from German life and took away some of their natural rights. They were first declared at the annual Nazi rally held in Nuremberg in 1935. ● Nuremberg Trials: A series of trials held between 1945 and 1949 in which the Allies prosecuted German military leaders, political officials, industrialists, and financiers for crimes they had committed during World War II. O ● Ohlendorf, Otto: German SS-Gruppenfürer and head of the interior division of the SD. ● Ordnungspolizei : Regular uniformed German police force. Central Headquarters were in Berlin. Municipal Police ( Schutzpolizei ) served as the urban police forces. Gendarmerie, or rural police, served in the countryside. There were also larger units of Order Police called Police Battalions. (USHMM) ● Organize: to organize in concentration camps meant to find and steal items needed to survive. (CANDLES) P ● Perpetrators: Those who do something that is morally wrong or criminal. (FCIT) ● Pogrom: An organized, state-sponsored attack on a group of people. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Police Battalion 101: Police Battalion 101 was made up of mostly middle-aged family men who had been in Poland less than three weeks. These members of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), on July 13, 1942 , heard the teary-eyed Major Wilhelm Trapp explain that the battalion had orders to round up Jozefow’s Jews. They were to select the able-bodied males for labor and shoot everyone else: women, children, and the elderly. Trapp’s explanation included a significant option: Those Ordnungspolizei who could not perform the task did not have to kill. Murder, in other words, was not mandatory. About a dozen members of the 500 - man battalion accepted this offer. The rest murdered 1500 of Jozefow’s Jews. By the end of 1943, Reserve Police Battalion 101, in conjunction with other Order Police killing units, had shot 38,000 Jews and helped deport 45,000 to Treblinka. ● Prejudice: A judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known. In most cases, these opinions are founded on suspicion, intolerance, and the irrational hatred of other races, religions, creeds, or nationalities. (FCIT) ● Preventive Arrest : Instrument of detention that permitted criminal police detectives to take persons suspected of engaging in criminal activities into custody without warrant or judicial
review of any kind. Preventive arrest usually meant indefinite internment in a concentration camp. (USHMM) ● Propaganda: False or partly false information used by a government or political party to sway the opinions of the population. (FCIT) ● Protective Detention: Instrument of detention that permitted secret state police detectives to take persons suspected of pursuing activities hostile to state interests into custody without warrant or judicial review of any kind. Protective custody most often meant indefinite internment in a concentration camp. (USHMM) R ● Racism: The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. ● Ration: A fixed amount of a commodity officially allowed to each person, usually during a time of shortage, as in wartime. Concentration camp rations were meagre, often consisting of foods with low nutritional value such as thin soup, ersatz coffee, and bread. ● Red Army : The army of the Soviet Union. (USHMM) ● Refugee: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. ● Reich Commissariat Ostland: A German civilian occupation region that included the Baltic States and most of Belarus. (USHMM) ● “Resettlement”: A Nazi euphemism for deportation and murder. (USHMM) ● Revisionists: Those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. (FCIT) ● Riga Ghetto: In August 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in the southeastern area of Riga, Latvia. This ghetto was sealed in October 1941, imprisoning some 30,000 Jews. In late November/early December, the Germans announced that they planned to settle the majority of ghetto inhabitants “further east.” On November 30 and December 8 - 9, German killing squads and their Latvian auxiliaries shot at least 26,000 Riga Jews in the Rumbula Forest, five miles southeast of Riga. The surviving 4,000-5,000 Jews were incarcerated in an area of the ghetto known as the “small” or “Latvian” ghetto. The Germans then deported some 20,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Riga. The section of the ghetto where these new groups were imprisoned was called the “big” or “German” ghetto, established as a separate entity from the “Latvian” ghetto. In the summer of 1943, the Germans deported some ghetto inhabitants to the newly opened Kaiserwald concentration camp, which had been established in March in the north of the city. Others were deported to Kaiserwald subcamps nearby. The Germans destroyed the ghetto in December 1943 and deported the last Jews to Kaiserwald. (USHMM)
● Sonderkommandos (special detachments): In killing centers, Sonderkommandos consisted of those prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers to facilitate the killing process, particularly the disposal of corpses. (USHMM) ● SS : German abbreviation for Schutzstaffel (literally, “protection squads”). A paramilitary branch of the Nazi party initially created to serve as bodyguards to Hitler and other Nazi leaders. It later took charge of political intelligence-gathering, the German police and the central security apparatus, the concentration camps, and the systematic mass murder of Jews and other victims. (USHMM) ● Stein, Edith: Edith Stein was a German Jew who converted to Catholicism in
- Following a decade of teaching and writing, Stein was appointed to lecture at the German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in 1932. She wrote to Pope Pius XI, asking him to issue an encyclical condemning Nazi racism. She was dismissed a year later because her parents were Jewish. Shortly after, Stein relocated to Cologne, Germany, and became Sister Teresia Benedicta, a Carmelite nun. While at a convent in the Netherlands in 1942, the Gestapo arrested Stein. She was deported to Auschwitz, where she comforted many inmates. She was gassed there on August 8, 1942, ostensibly in retaliation for the anti-Nazi activities of Dutch Catholic bishops. Stein was recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1998. A chapel stands in her honor at Auschwitz. (The Holocaust Chronicle) ● Stereotype: Biased generalizations about a group based on hearsay, opinions, and distorted, preconceived ideas. (FCIT) ● Swastika: The swastika has an extensive history. It was used at least 5,000 years before Adolf Hitler designed the Nazi flag. The word comes from the Sanskrit svastika , which means “good fortune” or “well-being.” To this day it is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism. In the beginning of the 20th century the swastika was widely used in Europe and had many meanings, the most common being a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness. However, populist movements in Germany adopted the swastika as a symbol of “Aryan identity” and nationalist pride, and it then came to represent a racially “pure” state. The swastika would become the most recognizable icon of Nazi propaganda, appearing on the flag as well as on election posters, arm bands, medallions, and badges for military and other organizations. A potent symbol intended to elicit pride among Aryans, the swastika also struck terror into Jews and others deemed enemies of Nazi Germany. T ● T-4 Program: The euthanasia program directed against the physically and mentally handicapped persons who were considered “useless” in the new German Reich. The T- 4 program served as the training ground for methods of mass murder that would later be used in the death camps, such as gassings and cremation of bodies.
● Treaty of Versailles: The Treaty of Versailles, presented for German leaders to sign on May 7, 1919, forced Germany to concede territories to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The Germans returned Alsace and Lorraine to France. All German overseas colonies became League of Nation Mandates, and the city of Danzig (today Gdansk), with its large ethnically German population, became a Free City. The treaty demanded demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, and special status for the Saarland under French control. Perhaps the most humiliating portion of the treaty for defeated Germany was Article 231, commonly known as the "War Guilt Clause," which forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for initiating World War I. As such Germany was liable for all material damages. Moreover, the German army was to be limited to 100,000 men, and conscription banned; the navy to vessels under 10,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet; and Germany was forbidden to maintain an air force. Finally, Germany was required to conduct war crimes proceedings against the Kaiser and other leaders for waging aggressive war. The war guilt clause was particularly onerous to most Germans, and revision of the Versailles Treaty represented one of the platforms that gave radical right wing parties in Germany, including Hitler's Nazi Party, such credibility to mainstream voters in the 1920s and early 1930s. (USHMM) ● Theresienstadt (a.k.a. Terezin): Located near Prague, Czechoslovakia; used as the “model” concentration camp to deceive the world about the true nature of Nazi plans for European Jews. “Theresienstadt” is the German word for this camp; “Terezin” is the Czech word for this camp. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Third Reich: The Third Empire; name given to the Nazi regime in Germany. Hitler boasted that the Third Reich would reign for 1,000 years. (Holocaust Museum Houston) ● Transport: To take or carry (people or goods) from one place to another by means of a vehicle, aircraft, train, or ship. Nazis used packed cattle cars on the railways to transport victims. ● Treblinka: Death camp located in sparsely populated area near Treblinka, Poland, approximately 870,000 Jews killed. (Holocaust Museum Houston) U ● Upper Silesia: An area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland. (USHMM) ● Umschlagplatz : The tragic history of the Warsaw Jewish community resonates with the word Umschlagplatz (transfer point). During the massive deportations that began in July 1942, an average of 7000 Jews per day were forcibly marched to the Umschlagplatz , a way station on the route to the Treblinka extermination camp. During the first ten days of the Atkion, 65,000 Jews were herded through the Umschlagplatz en route to their deaths. The violence of this operation surpassed anything the Nazis had previously perpetrated in Warsaw. The SS,
● Weimar Republic: Name for the parliamentary democracy established in Germany from 1919 – 1933, following the collapse of imperial Germany and preceding Nazi rule. (USHMM) ● Westerbork: A transit camp in northeast Holland through which almost 100,000 Jews were deported between 1942 and 1944 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Theresienstadt, and Bergen-Belsen concentration and death camps. ● White Rose Movement: A group of young German students who protested against the Nazi treatment of Jews and others. Most of the members of this group were eventually rounded up and executed. (Holocaust Museum Houston) Y ● Yellow Star: A badge featuring the Star of David (a symbol of Judaism) used by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust as a method of visibly identifying Jews. (USHMM) Z ● Zionism: Political and cultural movement calling for the return of the Jewish people to their Biblical home. (FCIT) ● Zyklon B: A chemical developed as an insecticide, the pellets of which were shaken down an opening in the euphemistically called “shower rooms,” or gas chambers. The Nazis found this to be a quicker, cheaper, and more reliable method of mass killing than carbon monoxide. (Holocaust Museum Houston)
