The nations fighting Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during World War II, primarily Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. Other countries included: China Australia Belgium Canada Costa Rica Cuba Czechoslvakia The Dominican Republic El Salvador Greece Guatemala Haiti Honduras India Luxembourg The Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Norway Panama Poland South Africa Yugoslavia Later countries included: Mexico The Philippines Ethiopia Iraq Brazil Bolivia Iran Colombia Liberia France Ecaudor Peru Chile Paraguay Venzuela Uruguay Turkey Egypt Saudi Arabia Syria Lebanon

Source: Britannica

The incorporation (annexation) of Austria into Germany on March 13, 1938.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

Source: International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

The roll call of prisoners that could take hours. Prisoners were forced to stand outside in all types of weather, usually without proper clothing. These were called for by the commandant of the camp in order to account for all prisoners and /or of the prisoners to witness special punishments or deaths of their fellow prisoners.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

“Work makes you free” is emblazoned on the gates at Auschwitz and was intended to deceive prisoners about the camp’s function.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Term used in Nazi Germany to refer to non-Jewish and non-Roma (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.

Source: USHMM

The largest Nazi concentration 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-labour camp. More than 100 subcamps and labour detachments were administratively connected to Auschwitz III.

Source: USHMM

Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia (after Czechoslovakia divided in 1939), Bulgaria, Yugoslavia.

Source: Britannica

A ravine near Kiev where almost 34,000 Jews were killed by German soldiers in two days in September 1941.

Source: Holocaust Musuem Houston

One of the six extermination camps in Poland, originally established in 1940 as a camp for Jewish forced labor. Germans began construction of an extermination camp at Belzec on November 1, 1941, as part of Aktion Reinhard, code name for the operation to physically destroy the Jews in occupied central Poland. By the time the camp ceased operations in January 1943, more than 600,000 people had been murdered there.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

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 labour.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

A large concentration camp established in 1937 by the Nazis. It was located in north-central Germany, near the city of Weimar.

Source: USHMM

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 labour. Thousands of prisoners died there.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

First death camp to use gassing and first place located outside Soviet territory in which Jews were systematically killed as part of “Final Solution.”

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

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 concentration camps, the Nazi regime ran several other kinds of camps including labour camps, transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, and killing centres.

Source: USHMM

Ovens built in concentration camps to burn and dispose of the large number of murdered bodies.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

German police detective force responsible for investigating non-political crimes.

Source: USHMM

Himmler’s model camp located outside Munich, opened March 20, 1933; initially designed to hold political prisoners.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

When the German army was trapped between the Soviet Army to the east and the advancing Allied troops from the west, the Germans evacuated the camps in 1944 and forced the prisoners to march westward to Germany. During these marches the Jews were starved, brutalised, and killed. Few survived the experience; the paths traveled were littered with bodies. Although death marches occurred throughout the war, the largest and deadliest occurred during the last phase. It is estimated that 250,000 died in death marches between the summer of 1944 and the end of the war, in May 1945.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Enacted on September 5, 1939, the decree stated that any crime against a person, property, the community or public security could lead to a death sentence, if the person accused was seen as exploiting the conditions of war. In practice, the Decree against Public Enemies meant Nazi judges could impose the death penalty much more frequently, even for minor crimes. It led to approximately 15,000 death sentences between 1941 and 1945.

Source: https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-in-nazi-occupied-europe/controlling-everyday-life/media/

Art which did not fit the Nazi ideal.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Forced removal of Jews in Nazi-occupied countries from their homes.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

(“The Attacker”) An antisemitic German weekly newspaper, founded and edited by Julius Streicher, and published in Nuremberg from 1923 and 1945. The phrase “Die Juden sind unser unglück” (“The Jews are our misfortune!”) appeared on each issue at the bottom of the front page.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

The upheavals of war left millions of soldiers and civilians far from home. Millions of DPs had been eastern European slave labourers for the Nazis. The tens of thousands of Jewish survivors of Nazi camps either could not or did not want to return to their former homes in Germany or eastern Europe, and many lived in special DP camps while awaiting migration to America or Palestine.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

The process, either official or unofficial, of people being involuntarily moved from their homes because of war, government policies, or other societal actions, requiring groups of people to find new places to live. Displacement is a recurring theme in the history of the Jewish people.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

An unfinished apartment complex in the Paris suburb of Drancy that became a transit camp for most Jews shipped from France to Auschwitz. From 1942 to 1944 more than 60 of the 79 trains that left for the East from France left from Drancy.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

A scandal that rocked France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Dreyfus affair involved a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1894, after a French spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a ripped-up letter in a waste basket with handwriting said to resemble that of Dreyfus, he was court-martialed, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to life behind bars on Devil’s Island off French Guiana. In a public ceremony in Paris following his conviction, Dreyfus had the insignia torn from his uniform and his sword broken and was paraded before a crowd that shouted, “Death to Judas, death 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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

SS officer, head of the “Jewish section” of the Gestapo. He participated in the Wannsee Conference (January 20, 1942) and was Instrumental in implementing the “Final Solution” by organizing the transportation of Jews to death camps from all over Europe. At the end of World War II he was arrested in the American zone of Berlin. However, he escaped, went underground, and disappeared. On May 11, 1960, members of the Israeli Secret Service uncovered his whereabouts and smuggled him to Israel from Argentina. Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem (April-December 1961), convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on May 31, 1962.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

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.

Source: USHMM

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).

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

"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 for systematic killing institutionalised mentally and physically disabled patients, without the consent of themselves or their families.

Source: USHMM

A meeting of delegates from some 32 countries in the summer of 1938 that met at the French summer resort to discuss the refugee problem caused by Nazi persecution of Jews. Few countries were willing to open their doors, giving a clear message to Adolf Hitler as to the true feelings of many foreign countries toward the Jews.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Six major camps designed and built for the sole purpose of killing Jews. These were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

A political movement that exalts the collective nation, and often race, above the individual and that advocates: a centralised 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.

Source: USHMM

The Nazi plan to annihilate the European Jews.

Source: USHMM

Camps where prisoners were used as slave labour.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

A dedicated Nazi bureaucrat and one of Hitler’s earliest followers. In 1933 Frick was appointed Minister of the Interior, where he was responsible for enacting Nazi racial laws. As of 1943, he served as governor of Bohemia and Moravia. In 1946, he was tried at Nuremberg, convicted and executed.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

German word for “leader,” it was adopted by Adolf Hitler as his title after Hindenburg’s death.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Large, sealed rooms (usually with shower nozzles) used for murdering prisoners of concentration camps; many people were led into gas chambers with the belief they were going in to take a shower.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

That part of German-occupied Poland not directly annexed to Germany, attached to German East Prussia, or incorporated into the German-occupied Soviet Union.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

SS Officer and head of the Waffen SS Office of Hygiene in Berlin. Gerstein purchased the Zyklon B gas officially needed in Auschwitz for fumigation purposes, but actually used for exterminating Jews. He wrote a widely-quoted description of the gassing procedures in Belzec and forwarded information about the killings to the Dutch underground and Swedish and Vatican representatives. His efforts met with little success. After the war, Gerstein was captured by the French and he committed suicide in a French jail.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

The German Secret State Police, which was under SS control. It was responsible for investigating political crimes and opposition activities.

Source: USHMM

A section of a city where Jews were forced to live, usually with several families living in one house, separated from the rest of the city by walls or wire fences, and used primarily as a station for gathering Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The word “ghetto” was first used in 1516 in Venice, Italy, to refer to the segregated neighborhood of the city’s Jewish inhabitants, who were required by law to reside within a few small blocks.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston and The National WWII Musuem - New Orleans

Joined the Nazi party in 1924, and in 1933, became Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Public Information. He decided that “all un-German” books would be burned on May 10, 1933. He controlled the media and was also one of the creators of the “Fuhrer” (the leader) myth, an important element in the Nazis’ successful plan for support by the masses. He supervised the publication of Der Sturmer and conducted the propaganda campaign against the Jews. On the day following Hitler’s death, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide in Hitler’s bunker, after first ordering the murder of their six children, all under the age of thirteen.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

A member of the Nazi Party from its earliest days who participated in Hitler’s “Beer Hall Putsch” (The failed attempt by Hitler and his associates to overthrow the German Weimar Republic on November 9, 1923.) Served as president of the Reichstag (German parliament) in 1932 and, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he made Goring Air Minister of Germany and Prime Minister of Prussia. Goring organised Hitler’s wartime economic system and was responsible for the rearmament program. In 1939, Hitler designated him his successor. Convicted at Nuremberg in 1946, Goring committed suicide by taking poison two hours before his scheduled execution.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Designation of an expanded Germany that was intended to include all German speaking peoples. It was one of Hitler's most important aims. After the conquest of most of Western Europe during World War II, it became a reality for a short time.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

A Polish Jewish youth who emigrated to Paris. He agonized over the fate of his parents who, were trapped between Germany and Poland in “no man’s land”. On November 7, 1938, Grynszpan went to the German Embassy where he assasinated Third Secretary Ernst von Rath. The Nazis used this incident as an excuse for the KRISTALLNACHT (Night of Broken Glass) pogrom.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

A traditional term, sometimes perceived as pejorative, for Roma and Sinti, a nomadic, ethnic group which was made up of two main groups: Roma and Sinti. This group had a long history of persecution in most of Western and Eastern Europe because of its beliefs and lifestyle. A group 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.

Sources: Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Deputy and close aide of Hitler from the earliest days of the Nazi movement, who participated in Hitler’s “Beer Hall Putsch” (the failed attempt by Hitler and his associates to overthrow the German Weimar Republic on November 9, 1923). Hess believed he could persuade the British to make peace with Hitler. To further his idea Hess flew to Scotland prior to Hitler’s invasion of the former Soviet Union. Arrested by the British, Hitler promptly declared Hess insane. Hess was tried at Nuremberg, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. He was the only prisoner in the Spandau prison in Berlin, Germany, until he committed suicide in 1987.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

(1904–1942) SS General and chief of the Security Police and SD. Sometime in December 1940, Heydrich was tasked with developing a "Final Solution" of the Jewish question in Europe. On July 31, 1941, he was given authority to deal with all agencies of the Reich in his capacity as the official responsible for coordinating the implementation of the "Final Solution". SS General and Chief of the Security Police and SD (RSHA after 1939). In December 1940, he was tasked with developing the so-called Final Solution to the "Jewish question" in Europe. On July 31, 1941, he was given authority to deal with all agencies of the Reich in his capacity as the official responsible for coordinating the implementation of the "Final Solution".

In January 1942 Heydrich presided over the Wannsee Conference, where the implementation of the “Final Solution” was discussed. On May 29, 1942 Heydrich was assasinated near Prague, by a member of the Czech resistance. In retaliation the Nazis destroyed the Czech town of Lidice and murdered all its men. To honor Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazis gave the code name “Operation Reinhard” to the destruction of Polish Jewry.

Sources: USHMM and Musuem of Tolerance

(1900–1945) Reichsführer-SS (Reich Leader of the SS) and Chief of German Police, a position which included supreme command over the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the Waffen-SS. After 1943, Himmler was Minister of the Interior of Nazi Germany, principal planner for the aim of Nazi Germany to kill all European Jews. Himmler committed suicide on May 23, 1945, before he could be brought to trial.

Source: USHMM

An organisation set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youth in Nazi principles. Under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach, head of all German youth programs, the Hitler Youth included by 1935 almost 60 percent of German boys. On July 1, 1936, it became a state agency that all young “Aryan” Germans were expected to join.

Source: Britannica

(1889–1945) Führer (leader) of the National Socialist (Nazi) movement (1921–1945); Reich Chancellor of Germany 1933–1945; Führer of the German Nation (1934–1945).

Fuhrer und reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Although born in Austria, he settled in Germany in 1913. At the outbreak of World War I, Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army, became a corporal and received the Iron Cross First Class for bravery. Returning to Munich after the war, he joined the newly formed German Workers Party, whichc was soon reorganised, under his leadership, as the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). In November 1923, he unsuccessfully attempted to forcibly bring Germany under nationalist control. When his coup, known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch,” failed, Hitler was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison. It was during this time that he wrote Mein Kampf. Serving only 9 months of his sentence, Hitler quickly re-entered German politics and soon outpolled his political rivals in national elections. In January 1933, Paul vom Hindenburg (Reich President) appointed Hitler chancellor of a coalition cabinet. Hitler, who took office on January 30, 1933, immediately set up a dictatorship. In 1934, the chancellorship and presidency were united in the person of the Fuhrer. Soon, all other parties were outlawed and opposition was brutally suppressed. In addition, he initiated antisemitic policies and programs. By 1938, Hitler implemented his dream of a “Greater Germany,” by the annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland and, finally, Czechoslovakia itself. On September 1, 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. By this time western democracies realised that no agreement with Hitler could be honoured and World War II had begun. Although initially victorious on all fronts, Hitler’s armies suffered setbacks after the United States joined the war in December 1941. The war was obviously lost by early 1945, but Hitler insisted that Germany fight to the death. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide rather than be captured alive.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Holocaust derived from the Greek word, holokauston, “an offering consumed by fire,” and has a sacrificial connotation to what occurred. As of the 1950’s the term refers to the destruction of some 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe between the years 1933-1945. Other individuals and groups were persecuted and suffered grievously during this period, but only Jews were marked for complete and utter annihilation.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

A religious sect, originating in the United States, and organized by Charles Taze Russell. The Witnesses base their beliefs on the Bible and have no official ministers. Recognizing only the kingdom of God, they refuse to swear allegiance to any worldly power; to salute the flag; to bear arms in war; and to participate in the affairs of government. Therefore, the Witnesses were persecuted as “enemies of the state.” About 10,000 Witnesses from Germany and other countries were imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II. Of these, about 2,500 died.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Persons identifying themselves with the Jewish community or as followers of the Jewish religion or culture.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Jewish councils set up within the ghettos to maintain order and carry out the orders of the German army.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

“Cleansed of Jews,” a German expression for Hitler’s plan to rid Europe of Jews.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

A concentration camp prisoner selected to oversee other prisoners on labour details. The term is often used generically for any concentration camp prisoner to whom the SS gave authority over other prisoners. Many Kapos are remembered negatively.

Source: USHMM

The Nazis established killing centres for efficient mass murder. Unlike concentration camps, which served primarily as detention and labour centres, killing centres (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 centres either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting.

Source: USHMM

German for “children’s transport.” Immediately after Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the British government, with the aid of Jewish, British and Quaker relief organisations, set up the Kindertransport to evacuate children from Nazi oppression to Great Britain. Nearly 10,000 children were rescued from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Most of these children never saw their parents again. It is believed that 20-25% eventually made their way to the United States and Canada.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

German word for "detachment", such as a detachment of concentration camp prisoners at forced labour.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

The ghetto in Krakow, Poland, where Oskar Schindler gave factory jobs to remaining Jews thus saving them from deportation in March 1943.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

The Nazi Kripo, or Criminal Police, was the detective force of Nazi Germany. They were responsible for investigating crimes such as theft and murder. During the Nazi regime and World War II, they became a key enforcer of policies based in Nazi ideology. The Kripo helped persecute and murder Jews and Roma. They also conducted the widespread arrest and imprisonment in concentration camps of people whom the Nazi regime categorized as asocials, professional criminals, and homosexuals.

Source: USHMM

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. This so-called “spontaneous demonstration” against hundreds of synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, homes and Jews themselves, was in reaction to the assassination of a German official by a Jewish student whose parents had been deported to the Polish border.

Sources: USHMM and Holocaust Museum Houston

Female counterpart of the Hitler Youth formed in 1927 but not formally integrated by Hitler until 1932.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Meaning “living space,” this was the excuse used by Hitler for the taking over of territories for the “superior” Aryan peoples.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

To set someone free from a situation, especially imprisonment or slavery, in which their liberty is severely restricted.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Poland’s second largest city. The Lodz economy was based on the textile industry, much of which was established by the local Jewish population. Home to a large Jewish working class, Lodz was a center for Jewish culture and social political activities. On September 8, 1939, the Germans occupied Lodz, and on April 11, 1940 renamed the city Litzmannstadt, after the German general Karl Litzmann who had conquered it in World War I. In April 1940, Lodz became the site of the first major ghetto established by the Nazis, who forced all Jews from Lodz and the surrounding areas into the ghetto. The Lodz Ghetto was sevely overcrowded and lacked food, medicine and heat. Daily people died of starvation and disease. In January 1942, the Germans began raiding the ghetto and rounding up Jews for deportation to the Chelmno Extemination Camp. By September 1942, the ghetto was almost empty. Only able bodied men and women were kept alive for forced labor. In the spring of 1944 the Germans liquidated the ghetto, clearing street by street and transporting the remaining Jews to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp and to the Chelmno Extemination Camp. The ghetto was liquidated by the fall of 1944.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Death camp located in a suburb of Lublin, Poland where 360,000 people were shot, beaten, starved or gassed to death.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

The act of murdering a number of people, typically simultaneously or over a relatively short period of time and in close geographic proximity.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Hard labour and concentration camp located near Linz, Austria.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, written in 1924 during his imprisonment in the Landsberg prison for his role in the “Beer Hall Putsch” (the failed attempt by Hitler and his associates to overthrow the German Weimar Republic on November 9, 1923). In his book, Hitler details his plan for the future of Germany, including his foreign policy and his racial ideology to make Europe judenrein (“Jew-free.”) The Germans, belonging to the “superior” Aryan race, have a right to living space (Lebensraum) in the East, which is inhabited by “inferior” Slavs. Throughout the book, Hitler accuses the Jews of being the source of all evil. Unfortunately, most of the people who read Mein Kampf (except for Hitler’s admirers) did not take him seriously and believed the book to be the ravings of a maniac.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

(1911–1979) SS physician assigned to Auschwitz; notorious for conducting so-called medical experiments on inmates, especially twins and dwarfs.

Source: USHMM

Derogatory Nazi term meaning “mongrel” that denoted people having both Christian and Jewish ancestors. See Nuremberg Laws.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

The Einsatzgruppen (task forces, special action groups) were units of the Security Police and SD (the SS intelligence service) that followed the German army as it invaded and occupied countries in Europe. Often referred to as “mobile killing squads,” they are best known for their role in the systematic murder of Jews in mass shooting operations on Soviet territory.

Source: USHMM

Term used by the Nazis for the German people as a whole. It refers to race-conscious “Aryan” Germans who accepted, obeyed, and conformed with Nazi ideology and social norms.

Source: USHMM

Name for members of the NSDAP, National Socialist Democratic Workers Party, who believed in the idea of Aryan supremacy.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Short term for National Socialist German Workers’ Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei NSDAP). A right-wing, nationalistic and antisemitic political party formed in 1919 and headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921 to 1945.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

German Protestant Pastor who headed the Confessing Church during the Nazi regime. During World War I Niemoeller distinguished himself in the German Navy. He was ordained as a minister in 1924, and in 1931, became pastor of Dahlem parish in Berlin, where his naval fame and his preaching drew large crowds. In 1937, he assumed leadership of the Confessing Church. Subsequently, he was arrested for "malicious attacks on the state," given a token sentence and made to pay a small fine. After he was released, he was re-arrested on direct orders from Adolf Hitler. He spent the next seven years in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, usually in solitary confinement. Despite this, at the beginning of World War II, the patriotic Niemoeller offered his services to the German Navy, but was refused. In 1945, he was released by the Allies, and became an avowed pacifist who supported a neutral, disarmed and unified Germany. The following statement is attributed (but never recorded officially) to Martin Niemoeller and authenticated by Niemoeller's second wife and widow, Sibylle Niemoeller. Taken from the The Christian Century, Dec. 14, 1994, v. 111, n. 36, p. 1207(1): "First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist--so I said nothing. Then they came for the social democrats, but I was not a social democrat--so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew-- I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me."

Source: Museum of Tolerance

German term for political prisoners from western Europe who disappeared without leaving a trace.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Secret order, issued by Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941, to seize "persons endangering German security" who were to vanish without a trace into “night and fog.”

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Two anti-Jewish statutes enacted in September 1935 during the Nazi party's national convention in Nuremberg. The first, the Reich Citizenship Law, deprived German Jews of their citizenship and all pertinent, related rights. The second, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, outlawed marriages of Jews and non-Jews, forbade Jews from employing German females of childbearing age, and prohibited Jews from displaying the German flag. Many additional regulations were attached to the two main statutes, which provided the basis for removing Jews from all spheres of German political, social, and economic life. The Nuremberg Laws carefully established definitions of Jewishness based on bloodlines. Thus, many Germans of mixed ancestry, called "Mischlinge," faced antisemitic discrimination if they had a Jewish grandparent.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

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.

Source: USHMM

Member of a resistance group operating within and behind enemy lines, using guerrilla tactics. During World War II, this term was applied to resistance fighters in Nazi occupied countries. There was a general partisan movement that included Jews. Jewish partisan groups operated in White Russia, Poland, and Lithuania.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

An organised, state-sponsored attack on a group of people.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

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.

Source: USHMM

False or partly false information used by a government or political party to sway the opinions of the population.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

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.

Source: USHMM

A ficticious, infamous publication written in Paris, in 1894, by members of the Russian Secret Police who claimed to offer conclusive evidence of the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world by creating feuds among Christians, corrupting and undermining established systems. The Protocols were adapted from a nineteenth century French satire by a French lawyer Maurice Joly against Napoleon III (Dialogue aux enfers entre Montesquieu et Machiavel – Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. Brussels: 1864). Although it has long been repudiated as an absurd and hateful lie, the protocols are still being published and distributed around the world by white supremacists and others who are committed to intolerance and the hatred of Jews.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Third secretary at the German Embassy in Paris who was murdered on November 7, 1938 by Herschel Grynszpan. His murder was the excuse for Kristallnacht.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

The army of the Soviet Union.

Source: USHMM

A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

A German civilian occupation region that included the Baltic States and most of Belarus.

Source: USHMM

Legal register for the Reich since 1871. Since 1922 the Gazette had two parts: Part I contained laws, decrees, and rulings having the force of law, and Part II contained international treaties and agreements between the German Reich and other states.

Source: USHMM

Headquarters of the Commander of the Security Police and SD. Included the central offices of the Gestapo, the Kripo, and the SD. Commanded by Reinhard Heydrich and, later, Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

Source: USHMM

A Nazi euphemism for deportation and murder.

Source: USHMM

A term designated by Yad Vashem, the remembrance authority in Jerusalem, Israel, as the tribute to non-Jews who, at the risk of their own lives, saved Jews from Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. These people are often referred to as “Righteous Gentiles.”

Source: Museum of Tolerance

The Sturmabteilung, or SA, was a paramilitary organisation associated with the Nazi Party. The SA was integral to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, violently enforcing party norms and attempting to influence elections. After Hitler purged the SA during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, the SA lost most of its power to the Schutzstaffel, or SS, although the SA did not disband until the war ended in 1945.

Source: USHMM

The principal Nazi concentration camp for the Berlin area.

Source: USHMM

An SS agency which served as the political intelligence service of the Nazi party and, later, of the German Reich. The SD also claimed to be the repository of the intellectual elite of the Nazi SS. The SD played a central role in carrying out the Holocaust. All key departments of the Security Police were commanded by SD officers.

Source: USHMM

The SD (Sicherheitsdienst) was a Nazi Party intelligence service. It was part of the SS (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squadron), an elite Nazi Party paramilitary organization that was under Heinrich Himmler’s control. Over the course of the Nazi era, the SD took on an increasingly prominent role in Nazi anti-Jewish policies. Most infamously, the SD was a key component of the Einsatzgruppen.

Source: USHMM

A process of separating prisoners upon their arrival at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Most people were directed to the gas chambers and were killed immediately. The rest, if they were considered fit to work, were sent to forced labor in Auschwitz and other camps.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Yiddish term for a small Eastern European Jewish town or village.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Death camp in the Lublin district of Poland where approximately 250,000 Jews were gassed.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

In killing centres, this was a group of prisoners whose job it was to remove bodies from the gas chambers and to burn the bodies in the crematorium. At Auschwitz-Birkenau this group was successful in blowing up one of the crematorium.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Special court or tribunal for minor political crimes established in each Superior Court district by federal law on March 21, 1933. Defendants convicted for offenses before the special courts had no right of appeal.

Source: USHMM

German abbreviation for Schutzstaffel (literally, protection squads). A paramilitary formation 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.

Source: USHMM

A steamship, carrying 1128 Jewish refugees, it left Hamburg, Germany in the spring of 1939, bound for Cuba. When the ship arrived, only 22 Jews were allowed to disembark Initially, no country, including the United States, was willing to accept the other passengers. The St. Louis finally returned to Europe where most of these Jewish refugees became victims of the “final solution.”

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Nazi politician and the most fanatical antisemite in the Nazi party, founded the antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer in 1923. As Hitler’s friend he became the head of the region of Franconia, in southern Germany between 1928 and 1940. After World War II, he was convicted at Nuremberg and executed in October 1946.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

National Supreme Court of Justice (the highest tribunal in Germany), established in Leipzig, Germany, by the Court Organisation Act of 1877.

Source: USHMM

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 recognisable icon of Nazi propaganda, appearing on the flag as well as on election posters, arm bands, medallions, and badges for military and other organisations. A potent symbol intended to elicit pride among Aryans, the swastika also struck terror into Jews and others deemed enemies of Nazi Germany.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

In Judaism, a community house of worship that serves as a place not only for liturgical services but also for assembly and study.

Source: Britannica

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

Established in early 1942 outside Prague as a "model" ghetto, Terezin was not a sealed section of town, but rather an eighteenth-century Austrian garrison. It became a Jewish town, governed and guarded by the SS. When the deportations from central Europe to the extermination camps began in the spring of 1942, certain groups were initially excluded: invalids; partners in a mixed marriage, and their children; and prominent Jews with special connections. These were sent to the ghetto in Terezin. They were joined by old and young Jews from the Protectorate, and, later, by small numbers of prominent Jews from Denmark and Holland. Its large barracks served as dormitories for communal living; they also contained offices, workshops, infirmaries, and communal kitchens. The Nazis used Terezin to deceive public opinion. They tolerated a lively cultural life of theatre, music, library, lectures, art and sports. Thus, it could be shown to officials of the International Red Cross. In reality, however, Terezin was only a station on the road to the extermination camps; about 88,000 were deported to their deaths in the East. In April 1945, only 17,000 Jews remained in Terezin, where they were joined by 14,000 Jewish concentration camp prisoners, evacuated from camps threatened by the Allied armies. On May 8, 1945, Terezin was liberated by the Red Army.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

The Third Empire; name given to the Nazi regime in Germany; Hitler boasted that the Third Reich would reign for 1,000 years.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Extermination camp in northeast Poland. Established in May 1942 along the Warsaw-Bialystok railway line, 870,000 people were murdered there. The camp operated until the fall of 1943 when the Nazis destroyed the entire camp in an attempt to conceal all traces of their crimes.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

German word meaning “sub-humans,” used by Nazis to refer to the groups they deemed “undesirable.”

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

An area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: USHMM

This was a movement in Germany that believed in the superiority of the Germanic race. The group feared and hated foreigners, particularly Jews.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

Nazi court with jurisdiction over treason and other politically motivated crimes. It dealt summary justice without right of appeal to all those accused of crimes against the Führer, Adolf Hitler, and against the government of the Third Reich.

Source: USHMM

Lake near Berlin where the Wannsee Conference was held to discuss (January 20, 1942) and coordinate the "Final Solution." It was attended by many high-ranking Nazis, including Reinhard eydrich and Adolf Eichmann.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Established in November 1940, the ghetto, surrounded by a wall, confined nearly 500,000 Jews. Almost 45,000 Jews died there in 1941 alone, due to overcrowding, forced labor, lack of sanitation, starvation, and disease. From April 19 to May 16, 1943, a revolt took place in the ghetto when the Germans, commanded by General Jürgen Stroop, attempted to raze the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to Treblinka. The uprising, led by Mordecai Anielewicz, was the first instance in occupied Europe of an uprising by an urban population.

Source: Museum of Tolerance

Name for the new democratically elected government in Germany following the end of World War I from 1919–1933, following the collapse of Imperial Germany and preceding Nazi rule.

Source: USHMM

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.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

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.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston

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.

Source: USHMM

Political and cultural movement calling for the return of the Jewish people to their Biblical home.

Source: Candles Holocaust Museum

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.

Source: Holocaust Museum Houston