Glossary
This glossary contains definitions of terms that are commonly used on this website, particularly German words. For concise explanations of historical terms relating to the Holocaust, see the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia.
Name | Description |
---|---|
Aktion | Operation (military) |
Anschluss | The Nazi annexation of Austria (1938) |
Appellplatz | Roll-call square |
Betar | Revisionist Zionist youth organization |
Blockälteste | Block leader |
Bund deutscher Mädel (BDM) | League of German Girls |
Canada | Warehouse in Birkenau used to sort belongings from newly-arrived transports |
Effektenkammer | Property registry office (Auschwitz) |
Einsatzgruppen/ Einsatzkommando | Mobile killing units of the SS that followed the German army into Poland and the Soviet Union |
Gazeta Żydowska | Official newspaper of ghettos in the Generalgouvernement |
Generalgouvernement | General government; name given to parts of Poland not incorporated into the Reich |
Gestapo | Nazi State secret police. |
Häftlingsselbstverwaltung | Prisoner self-government |
Ha’no’ar ha’tsiyoni | Zionist youth; youth movement |
Ha’shomer ha’tsa’ir | The Young guard; Zionist youth organization |
Hitlerjugend | Hitler youth |
Judenrat | Jewish Council; established in the Jewish ghettos on Nazi orders |
Kapo | Leader of work commandos in the Nazi concentration camps |
Kindertransport | The operation to evacuate children to Britain from Nazi Germany |
Kristallnacht | Literally, 'Night of broken glass'; state-organised pogrom that took place throughout Nazi Germany and Austria on 9-10 November 1938 |
Lager | Camp |
Lagerälteste | Camp leader |
Nazi Party | Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP); the political party led by Adolf Hitler, elected in 1933 |
Notenschreiber | Music copyists in the camp orchestras |
Partisan | A member of a military force, but not part of a regular army, fighting for the liberation of a country or group |
Passover | A Jewish festival of freedom remembering when the Jews were led out of Egypt and out of slavery by Moses |
Sturmabteilung (SA) | Storm Troopers or brown shirts; Nazi paramilitary group |
Schallerabende | Communal sing-songs in the concentration camps |
Scheine | Official work-permits issued in the ghettos |
Schreibstube | Administration office |
Schutzstaffel (SS) | Protection squad; Nazi elite unit |
Sonderkommando | Literally, 'special commando'; prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria in the death camps |
Sonderlager | Special camp for Jewish prisoners (Sachsenhausen) |
Warthegau | Territorial administrative unit established in the Polish territories annexed to the Reich |
Wehrmacht | The German army |
Weimar Republic | At the end of the First World War, Germany was declared a republic after the Kaiser abdicated. Weimar in Germany was where the new constitution was written and the new republic was named after it. |
Yiddish | A language incorporating German, Hebrew and Balto-Slavic elements, spoken by the majority of Jews in Eastern Europe before the Second World War |
Zionism | Political movement working towards the establishment of a national homeland for the Jewish people |