Holocaust Keywords

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Originally founded in 1901 to provide assistance to East European Jews emigrating overseas; after 1933 provided similar assisstance to German Jews except for emigration to Palestine.

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Aid Association of German Jews

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Assembly and deportation of Jews to the death camps; shooting Jews

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Aktion

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Code name for the extermination of the Jews in the Generalgouvernment; Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

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Aktion Reinhard

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Leader of Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April 1943.

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Analiewicz, Mordechai

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"Work Makes One Free" was the slogan above entrance to Auschwitz and many other caps, including Dachau.

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"Arbeit Macht Frei"

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Extermination center of the Auschwitz Complex (also known as Aushwitz II); in additin included Aushwitz (Auschwitz Main Camp) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz or Buna), which was an I.G. Farben camp using forced labor.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau

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Report by two Slovak Jews -Rudolf Vba and Alfred Wetzler- who escaped Auschwitz in April 1944; provided a detailed acount of the killing operations at Auschwitz-Birkenau and an estimate of the number of Jews killed to date.

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Auschwitz Protocols

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Zionist emissary to the United States who was to mobilize Aerican support for the Irgun and a Jewish state in Palestine; led the emergency Committee that publicized the fate of European Jewry and advocated rescue by any means.

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Bergson, Peter

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A member of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Comittee (Va'ada) in Budapest who was sent by Adolph Eichman to negotiate with Jewish leaders and the Allies the exchange of 1 million Hungarian Jews for 10,000 trucks.

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Brand, Joel

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The unit in Auschwitz responsible for sorting clothign and other posessions of those who were killed; also the place in which the sorting took place.

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Canada

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Founded in 1883 to combat anti-Semitism and defend Jewish rights as German citizens ; opposed to Zionism and saw Jews primarily as a religious group.

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Central Association of Germans of the Jewish Faith

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The head of the Waraw Ghetto Judenrat; tried to prevent Germany intervention in the admiistration of the ghetto and limit deportation; committed suicide in 1943 rather than cooperate with the deportation of 3,000 Jews from the ghetto.

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Czerniakow, Adam

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"Stab in the back"; used to describe the belief that the German army was not defeated during world War I, but betrayed by civilian officials, Jews, and Socialists.

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Dolchstoss

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SS Lieutenant Colonel and head of the Gestapo office dealing with Jewish Affairs; played a key role in organizing and implementing the destruction of European Jewry. Captured by the Mossad in Argentina in 1960, he was brought to Israel for trial, found guilty, and executed in May 1962.

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Eichmann, Adolph

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Mobile units of the Security Police and SS Security SErvice that followed the German army into the Soviet Union in June 1941; responsible for the killing of Jews, Communist party officials, handicapped, mentally ill, and Gypsies. There were four operating in the Soviet Union, which were respnsible for the extermination of 1 million Jews.

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Einsatzgruppen

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also "Evacuation to the east"; code for the transfer of Jews from the ghettos and elsewhere in German ocupied Europe to the death camps.

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Evacuation

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Abbreviation for the United Partisan Organization, the Jewish underground movement in the Vilna gheto. Although it prepared for an armed uprising, it rejected that idea in favor of escaping to the forests and joining the Partisans.

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FPO

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Code for the extermination of the Jews in Europe.

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Final Solution to the Jewish Question

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Those parts of Poland that were not incorporated into Germany proper; included Warsaw, Cracow, Lublin and Lvov districts.

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GeneralGouvernment

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SS MAjor General who as head of Aktion Reinhard was responsible for establshed death camps at Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

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Globocnik, Odilo

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Chief propagandist for the Nazi state.

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Goebbels, Joseph

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Responsible for th German economy duing the war; gave Reinhard Hydrich orders for the exterminaton of European Jewry.

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Goring, Hermann

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Head of the SS Securit Service and the Secret Police; charged with carrying out the "Final Solution", and toward that end created the Einsatzgruppen; chaired the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. Assassinated by Czech partisans in May 1942.

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Heydrich, Reinhard

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Commander-in-chief of the SS with overall responsibility for the extermination of the Jews.

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Himmler, Heinrich

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Head of the Nazi party (1919-1945) an chancellor of Germany (1933-1945); known as leader or "Fuehrer".

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Hitler, Adolph

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Cmmandant of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1943 and during the summer of 1944.

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Hoess, Rudolph

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Active in the movement to boycott German goods in the United States and for increased Jewish immigration; organized demonstrations to pressure the Roosevelt administration to rescue European Jews.

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Jewish Labor Comittee

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Term used to describe an area "cleansed" of Jews; all Jews either deported or killed; The term "Judenfrei" means the same.

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Judenrein

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Death/concentration camp inmate who was in charge of other prisners.

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Kapo

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Courier or the Polish underground who brought information to the Allies about the deportation and mass murder of the Jews.

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Karski, Jan

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Senior SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau during 1943-1944; noted for carrying out "medical experiments" on twins and gypsies, and responsible for the selecions.

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Mengele, Joseph

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Under the Nuremberg Laws, a perso of mixed race with one or two Jewish grandparents.

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Mischlinge

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Secretary of the Treasury in the Roosevelt Administration from 193-1945; his staff prepared a report on the State Department's failures to provide help to Jewish refugees. The report led to the formation of the War Refuge Board in January 1944.

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Morgenthau, Henry Jr.

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Concentration camp slang for an inmate who had given up all hope; survival is unlikely.

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Musselman

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the underground archive in the Warsaw ghetto created by Emmanuel Ringelblum; its members tried to obtain docuents and nformation about Jewish deportations and to chronicle Jewish life i the ghetto.

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Oneg Shabbat

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Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe, ost ntably Poland, to Germany during and after World War I.

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Ostjuden

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Formed in 193 as an umbrella oganization for Jewish political and community organizations with the goal of coordinating relations with the Nazi government; focused on Jewish education, economic ais, emigration.

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National Representation of German Jews

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Jewish Soviet prisoner of war who organized the revolt at the Sobibor death camp.

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Perchersky, Aleksander

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Mass exterination site near Vilna in Lithuania; between 70,000-100,000 persons, mostly Jews, were killed there between July 1941 and July 1944.

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Ponary

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New name for National Representatio in 1939; embraces all legal Jewish organizations under tight Nazi control; all Jews, as defined by Nuremberg Laws, must belong.

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Reich Association of Jews in Germany

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Created by the merger of the Security Service, the Security Police, and the Criminal Police; directed the deportations, ghettos, slave labor camps, and death camps.

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Reich Main Security Office

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Composed of Jewish soldiers who had fought in World War I; focused on Jewish pride, combating anti-Semitism, paticularly notion that Jews shirked their responsibilities during war, and German patriotism.

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Reich Union of Jewish Front Veterans

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Code for deportations of Jews to the death camps; same as "evacuation to the east."

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Resettlement

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Representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva who played a key role in getting information to Jewish leaders in Great Britain and the United States in 1942 abou the destruction of European Jewry.

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Reigner, Gerhart

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Historian and founder of the Oneg Shabbat archives; Notes fro the Warsaw Ghetto is his very valuable diary of what took place from the creation of the ghetto.

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Ringelblum, Emmanuel

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Member of the Jewish underground in Auschwitz-Birkenau who was responsible for smuggling the gunpowder that the sonderkommando used to blow up one of the crematorium during their revolt.

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Robota, Roza

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German Othodox community leader who came to he United States in 1941; supported by a systematic rescue program and was an active member of the Va'ad Ha-hatsala.

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Rosenheim, Jacob

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The head of the Lodz ghetto Judenrat; known for the active role he took in Jewish deportations and the iron rule he imposed on the ghetto.

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Rumkowski, Mordechai Chaim

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Abbreviation for the so-called "Storm Troopers" or Brown Shirts; Paramilitary arm of the NAzi arty effectively destroyed in 1934 as a rival to the SS.

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SA

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Abbreviation for the Security Service; SS Security and intelligence serve fouded in 1932 under Heydrich.

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SD

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Abbreviation for the Protection Squad; originally Hitler's personal bodyguard that grew into the ost elite unit in Nazi Germany; Waffen-SS fough with the German army, and death camp and concentration camp personnel were.

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SS

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Term refers to determining which Jews would be asigned to forced labor and which would e killed immediately; took place on arrival at the extermination camp, and there would be periodic selections of forced labor barracks.

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Selection

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Code for the killing of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen or at a death or concentration camp.

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Special Treatment

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Jewish prisoners responsible for work in the changing rooms, gas chambers, and crematoria, most notably at Auschwitz-Birkenau; were periodically killed themselves.

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Sonderkommando

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Commandant of the Soribor and Treblinka death camps where 90,000 Jews were killed.

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Stangl, Franz

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"The Attacker"-anti-Semitic newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923-1945.

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Der Strummer

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Code-name for the Nazi euthanasia program that was first established in 939 to kill physically and mentally handicapped Germans with carbon monoxide gas; staff worked with the Einsatzgruppen and in the death camps.

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T-4

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Founded by the Unio of Orthodox Rabbis in 1939 to rescue rabbis and yeshiva students who had fled from Poland to Lithuania; the scope of its activities broadened to embrace general Jewish rescue and it worked with Peter Bergson; organized the "Rabbis March on Washington" in October 1943.

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Va'ad Ha-hatsala

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Held on January 20, 1942 to coordinate efforts of various parts of the Nazi bureaucracy for the extermination of the Jews of Europe; Reinhard Heydrich and Adolph Eichman played a key role.

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Wannsee Conference

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Founded in January 1944 by executive order at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the board worked with Jewish groups and neutral countries to rescue approximately 200,000 Jews from Europe.

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War Refugee Board

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Reform rabbi, founder of the American Jewish Congress, ad leading American Zionist; tried to involve the Roosevelt administratin in Jewish rescue efforts.

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Wise, Stephen S.

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Abbreviation for the Jewish fighting Organization in the Warsaw ghett; founded in July 1942 and led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising under Mordechai Anielewicz.

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ZOB

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Abbreviation for the Jewish Militay Union made up of the Betar youth groups and Revisionists; participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

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ZZW

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Jewish Council or Council of Jewish Elders established by the Nazis in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union; responsible for the administration of the ghettos and carrying out Nazi order iwth respect to Jews.

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Judenrat

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Reform rabbi and leading Zionist; founded Zionist Emergency Council in 1942 that advocated free imigration to Palestine and the best method of rescuing Jews.

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Silver, Abba Hillel