History

• Semite


  A member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs
• Anti-Semitism


  Hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people
• Racial Science


  A pseudoscientific belief that the human species can be subdivided into biologically distinct taxa called "races," so evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority
• Monotheism


  The belief that there is only one God
• Aryan


  In the late 19th and early 20th century, this was a mythical "race" that was claimed to be superior to other races. In Germany, the Nazis promoted this false notion that glorified the German people as members of the "Aryan race," while denigrating Jews, Black people, and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) as "non-Aryan."
• Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion. Throughout much of the faith's history, Jews lived in territories ruled by other groups. They were often treated as outsiders and blamed for disasters suffered by the societies in which they lived. Continuous rumors, lies, myths, and misinformation about Jews have existed throughout history. Many of them persist in the contemporary world. Often this hatred has led to violence.
• Nuremberg Laws


  Anti-Semitic and racist laws enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935
• Reich Citizenship Law


  Law that defined a citizen as a person "of German or related blood", excluding Jews from full citizenship rights
• Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour


  Law banning intermarriages and sexual relations between Jews and people "of German or related blood"
• The Nazis believed that relationships between Jews and non-Jews led to "mixed race" children, which undermined the purity of the German race
• Aryan


  • (In Nazi ideology) a person of Caucasian race not of Jewish descent
• Mischlinge


  A legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of both Aryan and Jewish ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935
• Vilification


  Abusively disparaging speech or writing
• Persecution


  The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, sex, or disability
• Discrimination


  Hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs; oppression
• Separation


  The division of something into constituent or distinct elements
• Extermination


  Killing, especially of a whole group of people or animals - complete destruction
• Ghetto


  A confined area of a city where the Germans forced the Jewish population to live in often substandard conditions
• Concentration Camp


  A place in which large numbers of people are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities to await mass execution
• Extermination Camps


  Nazi concentration camps that specialised in the mass annihilation of unwanted persons
• Deportation


  To expel someone (usually a foreigner) from a country, typically on the grounds of illegal status or for having committed a crime
• 'Jewish Problem'


  Referred to the belief that the existence of Jews in Germany posed a problem for the state
• Ghettoization


  1. SA and SS troops rounded up Jews, forcibly evicted them from their homes and transported them to overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in ghettos

  2. Many ghettos had walls around them, both to segregate the inhabitants and to prevent the spread of epidemics, such as typhus, that could develop within the area

  3. Some ghettos had no walls; Jews could move in and out of them during the day, but had to be back by curfew
• Ghetto


  A place in which large numbers of people are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities to await mass execution
• Ghettos were developed by the Nazis to confine and control the Jewish population
• Living conditions in Ghettos

  • Food supplies were inadequate and people struggled to avoid starvation
  • Overcrowding was common, with several families sharing each apartment
  • Human waste and garbage accumulated in the streets
  • Unsanitary conditions made diseases common and hard to control
  • Not enough fuel for winter heating needs
  • People did not have the clothing they needed to withstand cold weather
• Methods used to weaken Jewish people in Ghettos included starvation, disease, and lack of basic necessities
• Survival strategies used by Jews in Ghettos


  • Children and others found ways in and out of the ghettos to smuggle in much-needed food, medical supplies and weapons
  • Some people conducted classes so that children could continue their education
  • Some planned revolts against their captors
• The process of sending Jews to the death camps

  1. SS death squads rounded up Jews from ghettos and other areas

  2. Transported them to death camps in Poland using the army, local police, trains and train drivers

  3. Private companies built the gas chambers and ovens, and supplied the Zyklon B gas
• Conditions in the death camps

  • People disembarked from overcrowded and unsanitary freight trains
  • Faced a selection process that decided who would die immediately and who would live a little longer
  • Many died from starvation, diseases, forced labour conditions, torture, or medical experiments and individual shootings
• By the time Germany surrendered in May 1945, one million Jews had died at Auschwitz and the Nazis were responsible for the deaths of six million Jews throughout Europe
• Perpetrator: A person who commits an illegal, criminal, or evil act
• Bystander: People who were passive and indifferent to the escalating persecution that culminated in the Holocaust
• Upstander: Included a wide range of actions to oppose Nazi injustice
• Rescuer: Took action to directly save people from the Nazis by hiding them, taking their children into their homes, helping them get visas to flee to safe countries, and helping in other critical ways.
• Liberation


  Freedom from oppression or confinement
• Retaliation


  To make an attack in return for a similar attack
• Perpetrator


  A person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act
• Heinous


  Extremely wicked or cruel