Anne Frank Glossary
Terms
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- Dissent
- To differ in opinion or feeling; disagree; the refusal to conform to the authority or doctrine of an established cultural, political or religious group.. Under a totalitarian dictatorship like Nazi Germany, dissent was eliminated by instilling terror in the general population, and by jailing political opponents.
- Collaboration
- Co-operation b/w citizens of a nation and its occupiers. Throughout Europe, individuals collaborated with the Nazis by carrying out their orders and goals.
- Kristallnacht
- The state-sponsored pogrom unleashed by the Nazis onto the Jewish communities in Germany and Austria on November 9th and 10th, 1938, tha tincluded the vandalism and burning of Jewish shops. Ten thousand Jewish men adn boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
- Third Reich
- Nazi term for Germany and the Nazi-occupied territories in Europe form 1933-1945. Nazi propaganda stated that there would be a Nazi dominated 1000 year Reich that would control the world
- Einatazgruppen
- SS mobile killing units that moved in directly behind the advance units of the German military forces during the German invasion of Russia which began on June 22, 1941. Jews , Gypies, and Communists were among those targeted and the result was the death of 1.5 million Jews on the Eastern Front
- Razzla
- A forced round up of Jews in the Netherlands
- Mein Kampf (My struggle)
- Adolf Hitler's autobiography, written during his imprisonment in 1924. Mein Kampf details his plan to restore Germany to its former greatness and to make Europe judenrein.
- Dolchestossiegend
- The stab in the back theory. During the Weimar Republic, the belief that the German military had not been defeated in WWI, but had been stabbed in the back by the civilian government, Jews, Communists and others. Military leaders like HIndenberg promoted this theory. Hitler and the Nazis made the stab in the back theory a central tenet of their regime and they vowed to destroy those who had betrayed Germany.
- Totalitarianism
- The total contorl of all the aspects of life, of a people or state, by one person or party. Opposing parties are not permitted to exist.
- Westerbork
- A transit camp for Dutch Jews in Holland. B/w 1942 and 1944, about 100,000 Jews, including all those who were hiding in the Secret Annex, were transported from Westerbork to concentration and death camps
- Allies
- The twenty-six nations, led by the USA, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, who united to oppose the Axis powers--Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies, in WWII
- Euthanasia
- The action of killing an individual for reasons considered to be merciful. The Nazi euthanasia program was designed to kill people hwo were considered undesirable because of physical or mental infirmities. The myth of Aryan racial purity called for the elimination of individuals considered inferior.
- National Socialist German Workers' Pary
- The Nazi Party, a righ twing, anti-Semitic, nationalist party led by Adolf Hitler from 1921-1945
- Annihilation
- The act or process of being completely destroyed
- Weimar Republic
- The German democratic state from 1919-1933. With Weimar as its capital city, it was the first parliamentary democracy in Germany's history.
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
- The largest of the Nazi death camps which was located in southwestern Poland near the city of Krakow. Over one million Jews, as well as Poles and others, were murdered there. Tens of thousands were put to work as slave laborers for nearby industrial complexes. Also, Auschowitz 11 or Monowitx, was a huge slave labor complex hwere workers serviced the company, I.G. Farben, in the manufacture of Bunda, a synthetic rubber. All the inhabitants of the Secret Aneex were sent from Westerbork to Auschwitz in September 1944
- .Deportation
- The forced removal of Jews from their homes in Nazi-occupied countries under the pretext that they would be resettled in the eat. Most were deported vi cattle cars to concentration and death camps
- Nuremberg Laws
- Racial laws, passed in the fall of 1935 in Germany, which stripped Jews of their political and civil rights by making them non-citizens. As the Nazi armies advanced in Europe, racial laws were instituted in the occupied countries. Anne Frank describes in her diary the effect that these laws had on her life in Holland.
- SS (Schutzetaffel)
- Hitler's black-shirted, elite guards. They also ran the concentration and death camps.
- Aryan
- A central myth of the Nazi ideology was the belief in Aryan racial superiority. An Aryan was supposed to be a person of pure Teutonic German backgroud with distinct racial characteristics including fair skin. In Mein Kampf (My struggle), HItler wrote about the war b/w the Aryan and non-Aryan races. The Nazi extermination policy was enacted to eliminate those races deemed inferior or threatening to Aryan racial purity. The term was orginally used to describe the family of languages of the Indo-European peoples
- Genocide
- From the word genus (race) and (cide) killing. Coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Russian Jewish jurist, in 1944, it refers to the intentional, systematic murder of all of the people in a targeted group. The 20th century has seen recurrent episodes of gnocide including that of the Armenians in WWI, the Jews during WWII; and post-1945, genocides took place in many areas including CAmbodia, Rwanda, Guatemala and the forer Yugoslavia.
- Bergen-Belsen
- A concentration camp in norther Germany for the detainment of prisoners of war and other "exchangeable" prisoners. As the number of prisoners increased, houisng conditions deteriorated and food became scarce. Anne and Margot Frank were among the over 30,000 people who died of starvation or disease in Bergen Belsen. The camp was liberated by British troops in April, 1945