Glossary
- Antisemitism
- Hostility toward Jews as a religious, ethnic, or economic group.
- Auschwitz
- The most infamous of all Nazi concentration camps.
- Communism
- Political creed that holds that power should be in the hands of workers; advocates violent overthrow of
government to accomplish this aim.
- Concentration Camps
- Camps located throughout Nazi-dominated Europe for the incarceration of opponents and other "undesirables"
such as Gypsies, Russian POWs, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Jews.
- Einsatzgruppen
- Mobile units of the Nazi SS and SD: in Russia and Serbia, mobile killing units.
- Euthanasia Program
- So-called "mercy" killing of people seemed incurably insane or biologically inferior by the Nazis, including
Jews and others regarded as "racially valueless." The program culminated in the late 1930's as the first
laboratories for mass murder and in the 1940's as training centers for the death camps.
- Fascism
- A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts the nation above the individual; characterized
by a centralized government and headed by a dictatorial leader.
- Final Solution
- Code name used by the Nazis to describe the mass physical extermination of the Jews.
- Fuhrer
- German for leader; Hitler's title.
- General Government
- Territory in Poland administered by a German civilian governor-general with headquarters in Cracow
after the German occupation in World War II.
- Genocide
- Deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
- Holocaust
- Literary meaning: a complete destruction by fire. Used to describe to systematic destruction of European
Jewry during World War II.
- Kapo
- Prisoner in charge of a group of inmates in Nazi concentratioin camps.
- Kristallnacht (night of broken glass)
- Organized destruction of synagogues, Jewish houses, and shops, accompanied by arrests of individual Jews, which
took place in Germany and Austria under the Nazis on the night of November 9-10, 1938.
- Master Race
- Term used by National Socialism to designate Germans as being a "superior" race as opposed to
the "inferior" races such as Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Blacks, Chinese, etc.
- Mein Kampf
- Title of work written by Adolf Hitler, setting forth his political program.
- Nazi
- Contraction of National Socialism. The term used to describe Hitler's sympathizers.
- Nuremberg Laws
- Discriminatory anti-Jewish legislation passed in 1935; deprived Jews of their German citizenship.
- Reichstag
- German legislature
- SA (Sturmabteilung = Storm Troopers)
- The brown-shirts militia that was the private army of the Nazi government.
- SD (Sicherheitsdienst)
- Security Service of the SS formed in 1932 as the sole intelligence organization of the Nazi party.
- SS (Schutzstaffel = Defense Squad)
- From a small organization serving as a personal bodyguard to Hitler, the SS grew into a gigantic "engine of
terror" without which might never have solidified its power. Headed by Himmler, it was given the task of implementing
the "Final Solution."
- Swastika
- Ancient religious symbol used by Hitler as the official symbol of the Nazi party.
- Third Reich
- Hitler's designation for his rule (1933-1945).
- Weimar Republic
- The German Republic from 1919 to 1933. Its constitutional assembly met in the city of Weimar in 1919.
- Yellow Badge
- Distinctive sign which, by Nazi order, was compulsorily worn by Jews.
