AKTION  Pronounced "action". A raid against the Jews, involving the mass assembly, deportation and murder by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

ALLIES  The nations, including the United States, Britain free France and the Soviet Union, that joined to fight in World War II against Germany, Italy, Japan and other Axis nations.

ANTI-SEMITISM  Hostility to Jews as individuals, to Judaism as a religion. to the Jewish people as a group. It manifests itself through religious bias, social ostracism, economic boycotts, legislative restrictions, physical attacks. killings and exiling identifiable Jews.

ARYAN  A non-Jewish, Nordic type Caucasian. In Nazi terminology it was used to mean superior.

AUSCHWITZ  Concentration and extermination camp in upper Silesia Poland. Established as a concentration camp in early 1942. Eventually, it consisted of three sections: Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp; Auschwitz III (Monowitz), the I.G. Farben labor camp.

AXIS  The Axis powers during World War II included Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and later Japan.

BAECK, LEO  Chief Rabbi of Berlin during the time that the Nazis came to power. He became Chief of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany, an organization responsible to the Nazi regime concerning Jewish matters. He refused to leave his people despite the opportunity to emigrate. In 1943 he was deported to Terezin, where he came the spiritual leader of the Jews imprisoned there. He survived the War and emigrated to England.

BEER HALL PUTSCH  Hitler's aborted attempt in 1923 in Munich to take over the government of the Weimar Republic. Led to arrest and imprisonment.

BELZEC  Nazi killing center located in Eastern Poland. It opened in March 1942 and closed in December 1942. More than 600,000 people, overwhelmingly Jews, were murdered there.

BERGEN-BELSEN  Nazi concentration camp located in north-western Germany.

BERMUDA CONFERENCE  The meeting between US and British government representatives in 1943 at which the problem of refugeess from Nazi occupation was discussed.

BLOOD LIBEL  The false accusation that Jews kill Gentiles to obtain their blood for Jewish rituals.

BONHOEFFER, DIETRICH  Protestant theologian. Head of the Confessing Church that opposed the Nazis. He was arrested and executed in 1945.

BOYCOTT (ANTI-JEWISH)  To engage in a concerted refusal to have anything to do with; an expression of disapproval (i.e., not buying in Jewish stores or using a Jewish doctor).

BRAUN, EVA  Hitler's mistress, she married him shortly before committing suicide by poison.

BUCHENWALD  One of the first major Nazi concentration camps. It opened in 1937, located on the Ettersberg overlooking Weimar, Germany. Political prisoners were the camp's administration.

CATTLE CAR  Vehicle used for the transportation of animals. During the Holocaust cattle cars were used to transport Jews to concentration camps.

CENTRAL EMIGRATION OFFICE  The name given by the Nazis to the organization which was set up to murder the Jews.

CHAMBERLAIN, NEVILLE  Prime Minister of Britain (1937-40), remembered most for his policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini to avoid war. He resigned his post in May 1940.

CHELMNO  An extermination camp opened at the end of 1941 in occupied Western Poland, where the SS - using special mobile gas vans - killed Jews from Lodz and Poznan provinces as well as Austrian Gypsies incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto.

CHRISTIAN X  The King of Denmark during WWII. It was his successful policy to save all of his citizens, including the Jews.

CHURCHILL, SIR WINSTON  Prime Minister of Britain during most of World War II. He led his country to fight against the Axis powers.

COLLABORATION  Cooperation between citizens of a country and its occupiers.

COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY  The act of holding a group responsible for the actions of any of its individual members.

CONCENTRATION CAMP  Prison in which political and religious dissidents, resistors. ethnic and racial opponents were concentrated. Before the end of World War II, over 100 such camps had been established.

CREMATORIUM  Oven in which death-camp victims' bodies were burned.

DACHAU  A concentration camp built for medical experiments on living victims. It was located 10 miles outside of Munich.

DEATH MARCHES  Forced marches of all concentration camp prisoners capable of being force marched out of camps in order to delay impending liberation by allied forces.

DEMAGOGUE  A person who obtains power by means of appeals to emotions and prejudice.

DEPORTATION  The Jews forced relocation from their homes to other places, usually ghettos or Nazi camps.

DISCRIMINATION  An act of exclusion because of prejudice directed against an individual or group.

DISPLACED PERSONS (DPs)  Persons driven out of their countries of origin during the War. This includes liberated survivors.

EICHMANN, ADOLF  SS Lieutenant Colonel and head of the "Jewish Section" of the Gestapo. He was instrumental in implementing the "Final Soultion", organizing transports of Jews from throughout Europe, to Nazi death centers. He escaped to Argentina after the War. In 1960 he was discovered, tried, convicted and executed.

EINSATZGRUPPEN  (Action group) Special unit responsible for locating and exterminating Jews.

EUTHANASIA  The original meaning of this word was an easy and painless death for a terminally ill patient. The Nazi use of this procedure entailed taking measures to improve the "quality" of the German "race". This program included the sterilization or murder of the insane, disabled (including hearing, speech or sigh impairments), and otherwise superfluous.

EVIAN CONFERENCE  Convened by US President Roosevelt to discuss the problem of refugees. Little was accomplished as many of the Western nations expressed little desire to accept Jewish refugees.

FASCISM  A doctrine which promotes strong national loyalty and military force to gain and retain power. The individual is subservient to the state in this totalitarian system of government.

FINAL SOLUTION  The cover name for the plan to destroy the Jews of Europe. The complete title was "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question." Beginning in 1941 Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps in the East. The program was deceptively disguised as "resettlement" in the East.

FÜHRER  Adolf Hitler's title in Nazi Germany.

GAS CHAMBER  Sealed rooms in the death camps. Jewish and Gypsy prisoners were crowded into small rooms disguised as showers and poison gas was released, suffocating the victims.

GENOCIDE  The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, cultural or religious group.

GENTILE  Non-Jew.

GESTAPO  The brutal Nazi secret police.

GHETTO  Poor sections of a city where all Jews were forced to reside. They were surrounded by walls or barbed wire and guarded so that no resident was able to leave. They were characterized by overcrowding, starvation and imposed heavy labor. All were eventually dissolved and the residents were murdered.

G.I.  A member of the US Armed Forces.

GOEBBELS, JOSEPH  Nazi Minister of Propaganda.

GOERING, HERMANN  Organizer and head of the Gestapo.

GREATER GERMAN REICH  Designation of an expanded Germany to include all German speaking people. This was one of Hitler's most important goals. It was realized briefly for a short time after the War. It means the third empire.

GRYNSZPAN, HERSCHEL  A Polish Jewish youth who had emigrated to Paris. He agonized over the fate of his parents in Poland. On November 7, 1938 he went to the German Embassy in Paris and shot and mortally wounded the Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. The Nazis used this as a justification for Kristallnacht although documents were to prove that the Night of Broken Glass had been planned long in advance.

GYPSIES  A nomadic people believed to have originated from North-West India. They travel in small caravans and their bands are led by their Elders. Gypsies appeared in Europe in the 15th century. They were persecuted almost as relentlessly as the Jews. Approximately 500,000 Gypsies perished during the Holocaust. Note: Most Gypsies were shot, not gassed.

HERRENVOLK  (Master race) The Nazis racial definition of the German people.

HERZL, THEODOR  A Viennese Jew who is known as the Father of Zionism.

HESS, RUDOLF  Hitler's Deputy, at his side from the very earliest stages of Nazism. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment at Spandau Prison. Still inprisoned, he committed suicide in 1987.

HIMMLER, HEINRICH  Head of the SS Troops.

HITLER, ADOLF  Führer and Reich Chancellor. He was born in Austria and later settled in Germany. In 1923 he unsuccessfully attempted to forcibly bring Germany under nationalist control. He was inprisoned, where he wrote Mein Kampf. Once released he reentered politics. In 1933 he was named Chancellor and immediately set up a dictatorship. All other parties were outlawed. He committed suicide immediately after World War II.

HOLOCAUST  Literally, destruction of people or animals by fire. It was the systematic, planned murder of six million European Jews during World War II. Many non-Jews also died. [ View video using QuickTime or Real]

HÖSS, RUDOLF  Camp commandant of Auschwitz. Served as a witness against the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.

JEHOVAH'S WITNESS  A religious sect whose doctrine is based on the second coming of Jesus Christ. Recognizing only the kingdom of God, they refuse to salute a flag, bear arms and participate in government affairs. They were considered enemies of the Nazi state and persecuted accordingly.

JÜDEN  German word for Jews.

JÜDENFREI  (Free of Jews) Nazi term for the absence of Jews in an area after complete deprtation and/or extermination.

JÜDENRAT  (Jewish Council) Council of Jewish leaders in the ghettos. Imposed by Nazi orders, their jobs included making sure that all Nazi orders were carried out within the ghettos.

JÜDENREIN  (Cleansed of Jews) See Jüdenfrei.

KILLING CENTERS  Also known as death camps. they were centers built specifically to murder Jews and other enemies of the Nazi state. There were six centers: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

KOMMANDO  (Polish) A work battalion.

KRISTALLNACHT  (Night of the Broken Glass) A pogrom (mass riot) unleashed by the Nazis in early November, 1938. All over Germany and Austria. Synagogues, Jewish homes and stores were looted and burned as an act of the state. 35,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. (See Grynszpan, Rath)

LABOR CAMP  A Nazi concentration camp in which the prisoners were used as slave laborers.

LAGER  Camp.

LEBENSRAUM  (Living space) Principle of Nazi ideology and foreign policy, expressed in a drive for the conquest of territories, mainly in the East.

LIBERATOR  Someone who frees people or a country from an enemy or tyrant. Used to refer to the people who freed the victims from the concentration camps.

LIQUIDATION  The act of getting rid of, as in killing.

MAJDANEK  Mass murder camp in Eastern Poland. At first it was a labor camp for POWs and Russians; it was later turned into a gassing center for Jews. 250,000 people lost their lives in this camp.

MASTER RACE  Hitler's ideological belief that a "super" race of people could be created from the Aryan people.

MAUTHAUSEN  A concentration camp for men, opened in 1938 in Northern Austria. The conditions were particularly brutal, even by other camp standards. 125,000 prisoners of various nationalities were worked and tortured to death before the Americans liberated it in 1945.

MEIN KAMPF  (Mv Struggle) Hitler's book expounding his ideology about the Jews and other issues. Written while he was imprisoned.

MENGELE, JOSEF  The medical doctor and SS Captain at Auschwitz made "selections" and conducted sadistic medical experiments on prisoners. He escaped to Paraguay after the War and died of natural causes.

MISCHLINGE  Nazi term for persons having one or two Jewish grandparents.

MUSSELMANN  Nazi camp slang word for a prisoner who has given up the will to live and is on the brink of death.

MUSSOLINI, BENITO  Absolute Ruler of Italy. Allied with Hitler. He was killed by enemies in 1945.

NAZI  Shortened form of National Socialist German Workers Party.

NIEMOLLER, MARTIN  A Pastor and founder of the Pastors' Emergency League of the Confessing Church. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp from 1937-1945, until acquitted by the courts.

NIGHT AND FOG DECREE  Issued by Hitler in 1941, persons endangering German security, who were to vanish without a trace into night and fog.

NUREMBERG LAWS  Two laws issued in 1935 to further the legal exclusion of Jews from German life. The first stripped Jews of their citizenship and the second defined Jews racially and prohibited them from marrying Germans.

NUREMBERG TRIAL  The post-War trial of twenty-two major Nazi figures. They were tried by an international tribunal.

PARTISANS  Irregular troops engaged in guerilla warfare, often behind enemy lines. This term applies to all resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied countries. Many Jews were also partisans.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE  Opposition without resorting to force or overt actions. An example is holding Jewish prayer services in a concentration camp where it was forbidden and to be caught meant death.

PERSECUTION  The act of constant oppression against an individual or a group of people. Oppression denies its victims their political, social, religious, economic and civil rights.

POGROM  An organized massacre of, or attacks on, the Jews of Europe.

POPE PIUS XII  Head of the Catholic Church during WWII.

PROPAGANDA  The systematic and widespread dissemination of particular ideas, doctrines or practices to further one's own cause or to damage an opposing one.

QUOTA SYSTEMS  Limitations and restrictions imposed by each country on the number of immigrants permitted from other countries.

RACISM  Practice of discrimination, segregation, persecution and domination on the basis of race. The Nazis considered non-Aryan inferior.

RATH, ERNST VOM  Third Secretary at the German Embassy in Paris, who was assassinated in November, 1938 by Herschel Gynszpan.

REICHSFLUCHTSTEUER  An extremely heavy emigration tax that Jews had to pay before they could leave Germany.

REICHSTAG  The German Parliament.

RESISTANCE  Passive (without resorting to force) or active opposition.

RESETTLEMENT  The forced relocation of a person or group of people to a different area. During the Holocaust this term was used to hide the fact that the Jews were being sent to death camps.

RIGHTEOUS GENTILE  A non-Jew who hid Jews from the Nazis.

ROMMEL, ERWIN  General in the German Army (Africa Corps and Northern France). He joined the resistance movement and was forced to commit suicide by poison in 19i4. He was given a state funeral to hide his disloyalty.

ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO  US President throughout almost the entire period of Nazi rule. He died, in office, in April, 1945.

SA  (abbreviation for Stuermabteilungen) The Storm Troops of the early Nazi party. Organized in 1921.

SCAPEGOATING  The process of unfairly blaming a person or group of people for a problem.

SHO'AH  The Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

SORBIBOR  Death camp in the Lublin section of Eastern Poland. Opened in 1942 and closed following a prisoner rebellion in 1943. At least 250,000 Jews were murdered there.

SONDERKOMMANDO  Death camp inmates whose lives were temporarily spared so they could work at the camp.

SS  Hitler's elite guard. Nazis who performed the central tasks of the "Final Solution".

"SS ST. LOUIS"  A refugee ship that left Europe in 1939, bound for Cuba. When the ship arrived only 22 of the 1128 refugees were allowed to disembark. No country, including the US, granted the passengers refuge. Finally, when it returned to Europe, most of the refugees were granted entry into England, Holland, France and Belgium.

STALIN, JOSEPH  Dictator of the Soviet Union throughout the entire War.

STEREOTYPE  A fixed image or notion of a person or group; to assign characteristics observed in a few, to an entire group of people.

"STRUMA"  A refugee ship carrying 769 Jews. It left Rumania in 1941. It was refused entry in Turkey and Palestine and tugged out to the Black Sea where it sank in 1942. All but one refugee died.

SURVIVOR  Someone who was persecuted, but managed to survive the Holocaust.

SWASTIKA  Ancient symbol originating in South Asia. It was appropriated by the Nazis as their emblem.

TEREZIN  Also known as as Terienstadt. Nazi camp in Czechoslovakia. It was established to show the outside world, including the Red Cross, how well the Jews were being treated. Most inmates were later transported to death camps.

TESTIMONY  A declaration or statement. Eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust.

THIRD REICH  The official name of the united German State. It was proclaimed by Hitler and lasted twelve years.

TOTALITARIANISM  A government or doctrine in which the party in power maintains complete control and makes all other parties illegal.

TREBLINKA  Extermination camp on the Bug River in the Central Government. Between 700,000 and 900,000 were killed there. Opened in 1942, a revolt of the inmates destroyed most of the camp in August, 1943. It was closed in November of that year.

UNDERGROUND  Secret organizations of resistance.

VOLK  (German) Folk; people.

WAFFEN SS  Militarized units of the SS.

WALLENBERG, RAOUL  Swedish industrialist who, in 1944, went to Hungary, on a mission to save as many Jews as possible by handing out Swedish papers, passports and visas. He is credited with saving at least 30,000 people. After the War he was taken into custody by the Russians. It is widely believed that he died in a Russian prison.

WANNSEE CONFERENCE  January, 1942. A conference where the Nazis mapped out the destruction of European Jewry.

WAR REFUGEE BOARD  US agency established by President Roosevelt to rescue people from Nazi occupied territories.

WEIMAR REPUBLIC  The German democracy, established after World War I. It ended with the installation of Hitler as its Chancellor.

WEHRMACHT  The German armed forces between 1935 and 1945.

WIESENTHAL, SIMON  Jewish victim of the Nazis, has devoted his post-Holocaust life to bringing Nazi criminals to justice He has found many who went into hiding after the war, including Adolf Eichmann.

YAD VASHEM  Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel.

YELLOW STAR  A vellow star or arm band that the Nazis forced Jews to wear constantly, to identify them easily.

ZYKLON B  (Hydrogen Cvanide) Pesticide used in the gas chambers of the killing centers.


Prepared by Melissa Kohn Rosen, Educational Consultant to the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, 1991. Edited 1993.