Holocaust Vocabulary

Blitzkrieg

•A swift, sudden military offensive, usually by combined air and mobile land forces. Hitler’s fighting strategy.

Zionism

•Jewish movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine

Kapo

•prisoner given authority over other prisoners

Anti-Semitism

•attitude that creates discrimination against Jews

Buchenwald

•concentration camp in central Germany

Death Marches

•forced marches of concentration camp prisoners, carried out to evacuate camps before the American or Russian Armies arrived to liberate prisoners.

synagogue

•Jewish house of worship

Pogrom•an organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews.

Auschwitz

•town in Poland, site of major death camp during the Third Reich

Genocide

•the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

Hanukkah

•Jewish festival characterized chiefly by the lighting of the menorah on each night of the festival.

Gestapo

•German secret police

Kristallnacht

•night of broken glass, Germans riot destroying Jewish homes and businesses

Star of David

•six point star, symbol of Judaism

Holocaust

•a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering, the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II

Aryan

•a non-Jewish Caucasian, esp. those with fair coloring

Nazi

•National Socialist German Workers' party of Germany, which in 1933, under Adolf Hitler

menorah

•a candelabrum having nine branches, for use on the Jewish festival of Hanukkah

Nuremberg

•city in Germany, name used to identify anti- Semitic laws established in Nazi Germnay.

rabbi

•Jewish teacher, official in synagogue

selection

•in a concentration camp, choosing who was going to die

Death Camps

•concentration camps during WWII which were used for killing large numbers of Jews and political prisoners.guarded compound for detention of members of ethnic minority

Ghetto

•section of a city occupied primarily by a specific ethnic group

Red Army

•Soviet army

Final Solution

•Nazi plan to kill all Jews.

SS

•Nazi elite guard, secured concentration camps

Deportation

•expulsion of people from their homes to a concentration camp

Swastika

•German symbol of Third Reich

Third Reich

•third government of Germany, Hitler’s government

Zyklon+B

•chemical used in concentration camp gas chambers

Passover

•a Jewish festival that celebrates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt

Concentration Camp

•guarded compound for detention of members of ethnic minority

Mein Kampf

•My Struggle, a book by Hitler describing his political beliefs

Internment Camp

•camp used to imprison Japanese Americans during WWII