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VOCABULARY FOR TEACHERS
AND PARENTS
anti-Semitism: Prejudice
and/or discrimination against Jews.
Chancellor: The chief
minister, or ruler, of Germany. Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany
in 1933.
concentration camps: Camps established for
the imprisonment of Nazi "enemies." The first camps were built
in 1933, the year in which Hitler came to power. Originally established
for Nazi political opponents (communists, socialists), camps eventually
held Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, the mentally
handicapped, and criminals. The Nazis imprisoned Jews simply for being
Jewish and others for their "deviant" lifestyles. Prisoners
never received trials before their arrival at camps. Conditions were
horribly harsh, and hundreds of thousands died from starvation, disease,
and maltreatment.
death camps: Camps built
by Nazis for the sole purpose of killing Jews and other Nazi "enemies."
During World War II, the Nazis operated six major death camps.
Final Solution: A term
for the Nazi's systematic scheme to destroy the entire population of
European Jews. The plan called for the mass genocide of Jews in death
camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
Gentile: A term for a
person who is not Jewish; mainly refers to Christians.
ghetto: A quarter of a city in which Jews
were forced to live. During World War II, Jews wee forced to live in
isolated sections of certain European cities.. Nazis built large walls or
strung barbed wire around ghetto boundaries to stop Jews from escaping.
Jews living in ghettos needed special permission to leave. Inside ghetto
walls, life was difficult and dangerous: overcrowding, malnutrition,
manual labor, and violent treatment at the hands of Nazi soldiers were
common.
Gypsy: A member of a race of nomadic
people who are believed to have originally come from northern India and
first arrived in Europe around the fifteenth century. Evidence of their
persecution spans hundreds of years. The Nazis considered all Gypsies to
be criminals, and hoped to rid Germany of these "deviants." As
many as 500,000 Gypsies died in Nazi concentration and death camps. Other
terms for Gypsy are Roma or Sinti.
Holocaust: The systematic and planned
murder of six million European Jews and millions of others by Nazis during
the years 1941-1945. The term "Holocaust" is a Greek word
meaning "fire which consumes all lives." The Hebrew word for
Holocaust is Shoah.
Jehovah’s Witness: A
member of a religious group that was singled out for punishment by Nazis
during World War II. The religious beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses did
not allow them to salute the German flag, serve in the Nazi military, or
serve in the Nazi government. The Nazis considered Jehovah's Witnesses to
be political dissidents; they were forced to wear a badge that identified
them as Nazi enemies, and they were often sent to concentration camps.
Some were sent to death camps to be murdered.
Theresienstadt: A World
War II Nazi concentration camp established in 1942. Two hundred and
eighty-one Danish Jews, unable to escape from Denmark in the fall of 1943,
were shipped via ship and cattle car to the camp. Theresienstadt was an
interim stop for Jews on their way to death camps such as Auschwitz, and
conditions were very harsh. Denmark worked to improve the fate of its
imprisoned Jewish citizens by sending a steady stream of care packages to
Theresienstadt prisoners, pressuring Nazis not to send Danish Jews onto
death camps, and arranging an International Red Cross inspection visit to
the camp. Prior to the Red Cross’s arrival, however, the Nazis
transformed the Danish section of Theresienstadt into a "model"
ghetto, with fresh paint and other improvements. Of the original 281
Danish Jews sent to Theresienstadt, all but 51 survived the imprisonment.
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