Holocaust Encyclopedia
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1. Adolf Eichmann (Abridged Article)
Adolf Eichmann was one of the central actors in the deportation of European Jewry during the Holocaust.
2. Aftermath of the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
In 1945, when Allied troops entered the Nazi concentration camps, they discovered piles of corpses, bones, and human ashes—testimony to mass murder.
3. Anne Frank (Abridged Article)
Anne Frank was one of over one million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.
4. Antisemitism (Abridged Article)
The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews.
5. Auschwitz (Abridged Article)
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest one established by the Nazi regime.
6. Axis Alliance in World War II (Abridged Article)
The belligerents during World War II fought as partners in one of two major alliances: the Axis and the Allies.
7. Belzec (Abridged Article)
In November 1941, German authorities began construction of a killing center on the site of a former labor camp in southeastern occupied Poland.
8. Bergen-Belsen (Abridged Article)
German military authorities established the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1940, in a location south of the small towns of Bergen and Belsen, about 11 miles north of Celle, Germany.
9. Book Burning (Abridged Article)
"Book burning" refers to the ritual destruction by fire of books.
10. Buchenwald (Abridged Article)
Together with its many satellite camps, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps established by the Nazis.
11. Chelmno (Abridged Article)
During the Holocaust, the SS murdered at least 152,000 people at the Chelmno killing center, about 30 miles northwest of Lodz, Poland.
12. Children during the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
Children were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust.
13. Collaboration (Abridged Article)
Collaborators committed some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust era.
14. Dachau (Abridged Article)
Established by the Nazis in March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was located about 10 miles northwest of Munich in southern Germany.
15. Death Marches (Abridged Article)
A massive 1944 summer offensive in eastern Belarus permitted Soviet forces for the first time to overrun a major Nazi concentration camp, Lublin/Majdanek.
16. Displaced Persons (Abridged Article)
After liberation, the Allies were prepared to repatriate Jewish displaced persons (DPs) to their homes, but many DPs refused or were afraid to return.
17. Einsatzgruppen (Abridged Article)
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were squads composed primarily of German SS and police personnel.
18. Euthanasia Program (Abridged Article)
The term "euthanasia" (literally, "good death") usually refers to the inducement of a painless death for a chronically or terminally ill individual who would otherwise suffer.
19. Final Solution (Abridged Article)
The Nazis used the term "Final Solution" to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people.
20. Gassing Operations (Abridged Article)
The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of mental patients ("euthanasia") using pure, chemically manufactured carbon monoxide gas.
21. Genocide (Abridged Article)
The English-language term "genocide" did not exist before 1944.
22. Ghettos (Abridged Article)
The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice, established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities forced the city's Jews to live.
23. Holocaust (Abridged Article)
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
24. International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Abridged Article)
The trials of leading German officials before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the best known of the postwar war crimes trials, formally opened in Nuremberg, Germany, on November 20, 1945, only six and a half months after Germany surrendered.
25. Jewish Resistance (Abridged Article)
Although Jews were the Nazis' primary victims, they too resisted oppression in a variety of ways, both collectively and as individuals.
26. Killing Centers (Abridged Article)
The Nazis established killing centers for efficient mass murder.
27. Liberation of Nazi Camps (Abridged Article)
As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners suffering from starvation and disease.
28. Mosaic of Victims (Abridged Article)
Although the Jews were their primary targets, the Nazis and their collaborators also persecuted other groups for racial or ideological reasons.
29. Nazi Camps (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 40,000 camps and other incarceration sites.
30. Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936 (Abridged Article)
For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympic Games.
31. Non-Jewish Resistance (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, a variety of groups offered resistance to the Nazi regime, both in Germany and in German-occupied territory.
32. Ohrdruf (Abridged Article)
The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the first Nazi camp liberated by American troops.
33. Oskar Schindler (Abridged Article)
Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) was born in Svitavy (Zwittau), Moravia, then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
34. Perpetrators (Abridged Article)
The members of the SS, the elite guard of the Nazi regime, were key players in the "Final Solution," the plan to murder the Jews of Europe.
35. Pogroms (Abridged Article)
Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.”
36. Propaganda (Abridged Article)
The Nazi regime used propaganda to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest.
37. Racism (Abridged Article)
Racists are people who believe that innate, inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior.
38. Refugees (Abridged Article)
Between 1933 and 1945, more than 340,000 Jews emigrated from Germany and Austria.
39. Rescue (Abridged Article)
Despite the indifference of most Europeans and the collaboration of others in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust, individuals in every European country and from all religious backgrounds risked their lives to help Jews.
40. Sobibor (Abridged Article)
In the spring of 1942, German SS and police authorities constructed the Sobibor killing center in a swampy and thinly populated region near the present-day eastern border of Poland.
41. Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings (Abridged Article)
After the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT), American General Telford Taylor was appointed as chief prosecutor for what became known as the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials.
42. Third Reich (Abridged Article)
The Nazi rise to power brought an end to the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary democracy established in Germany after World War I.
43. Treblinka (Abridged Article)
In November 1941, German authorities established a forced-labor camp, later known as Treblinka I, about 50 miles northeast of Warsaw in occupied Poland.
44. United States and the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
During World War II, rescue of Jews and other victims of the Nazis was not a priority for the United States government.
45. Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution" (Abridged Article)
On January 20, 1942, 15 high-ranking Nazi Party and German government officials gathered at a villa in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss the implementation of what they called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."
46. War Crimes Trials (Abridged Article)
After World War II, both international and domestic courts conducted trials of accused war criminals.
47. Warsaw (Abridged Article)
Warsaw is the capital of the modern state of Poland.
48. Women during the Holocaust (Abridged Article)
The Nazi regime frequently subjected women, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to brutal persecution that was sometimes unique to the gender of the victims.
49. World War I (Abridged Article)
World War I marked the first major international conflict of the twentieth century.
50. World War II in Europe (Abridged Article)
World War II resulted in an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide.
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