Glossary

Aryanization:: The expropriation of Jews, extending to companies and other business interests, houses and property, shares and cash, and their transfer to non-Jewish (in National Socialist terms “Aryan”) individuals and firms or to the state.
Bar/bat mitzvah (pl. mitzvot):: On completion of his 13th year a Jewish boy comes of age in the religious sense: as a ‘son of the Law’ he is called upon for the first time to give a Torah reading in the synagogue. Since the 19th century the bat mitzvah, the corresponding ceremony for girls aged 12, has been celebrated in liberal synagogues, with the girl giving a reading. As a ‘daughter of the Law’ she now counts as a member of the minyan, the quorum of 10 adults required for a religious service.
Beate and Serge Klarsfeld:: Beate and Serge Klarsfeld are a German-French married couple committed, even at the risk of their own lives, to bringing former Nazis and war criminals to trial.
Drancy:: A central assembly and transit camp near Paris from which tens of thousands of (mostly French or stateless) Jews were deported to death camps in occupied Poland. Prisoners in Drancy were subjected to appalling conditions.
Degenerate art:: In Nazi usage the term ‘degenerate art’ was used for any artwork or movement that was incompatible with their ideal of beauty and their understanding of art – for example Expressionism, Impressionism, Dadaism, New Objectivity, Surrealism, Cubism. Works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Ernst and Paul Klee, among others, were banned as ‘degenerate’. In 1937 an exhibition of these and other works was launched, in which they were shown alongside drawings by mentally disabled people and photographs of physically mutilated people with the intention of exciting feelings of revulsion and disgust. Under National Socialism many such works were destroyed or sold abroad.
Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France (FFDJF: Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France):: An association founded in 1979 by the Klarsfelds – and subsequently led by them – to assert the rights of descendants of deported Jews and bring to trial those who had been responsible for the Shoah. Their persistent work caused the French authorities to publicly recognize the role of the Vichy regime in the persecution of Jews in France. The involvement of French civil authorities and police in the Shoah in the name of France had long been suppressed or disputed.
Geltungsjude:: The Nuremberg Laws, passed by the National Socialist regime in 1935, were a racist system excluding from German citizenship (and corresponding rights) any person who had at least one Jewish grandparent as defined by the state, whether they were practising Jews or not. A distinction was made between Volljuden (full Jews) and Halbjuden (half Jews, also called Mischlinge or half-castes). A person of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish parentage who had been raised in the Jewish tradition was a so-called Geltungsjude (‘one counted as Jewish’). Marriages between Jews and non-Jews whose children were not raised in the Jewish tradition were classed as ‘privileged mixed marriages’; the Jewish partner was not in that case (so long as they had children) required to wear the yellow Star of David badge.
These discriminatory laws were alien to Jewish tradition and must be considered an abuse of human rights.
Gestapo:: Abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police). As political police, the Gestapo had unrestricted power to persecute opponents of the National Socialist regime – not only political opponents but all those considered ‘inferior’ in National Socialist ideology. These included Jews, Sinti and Romanies, homosexuals, and disabled people, among others. The Gestapo were notorious and feared for the brutality of their torture methods. They were a decisive force in the deportation and industrial murder of European Jews, Sinti and Romanies in the National Socialist era.
Ghetto house:: Judenhaus (‘Jews’ house’) was the name given by National Socialists to houses formerly owned by Jews into which (from c. 1939) the Jewish population was compelled to move and where they had to live in extremely restricted circumstances, often with complete strangers. In order to avoid National Socialist terminology, the term Ghettohaus (‘ghetto house’) is today preferred.
Jawne:: Jewish secondary school in Cologne from 1919 to 1942, the first such school in the Rhineland.
Jew:: Under National Socialism the term covered anyone classified as a Jew in National Socialist ideology (see Geltungsjude above).
Lischka:: Kurt Lischka was an Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the SS and a high Gestapo officer who played an active role in the persecution of Jews. From January to August 1940 he was head of the Gestapo unit at EL-DE-house in Cologne. In November of that year he was transferred to Paris, where he remained until September 1943. He was co-responsible for the deportation of at least 73,000 Jews via Drancy to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war he lived and worked freely for many years until the Klarsfelds eventually tracked him down in Cologne. He was only brought to trial in 1979, when he was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
National Socialist Party:: Founded in 1920, the ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’ (Nazis for short) was a political party whose programme, ideology and world-view were marked by radical nationalism and antisemitism, as well as by the rejection of democracy and communism. From 1921 the party was led by Adolf Hitler, who later (1933–1945) became Chancellor (prime minister) of the German Reich. During the so-called ‘Third Reich’ the Nazis were the only party allowed to exist in Germany. After the war the Allies considered the Nazi party and sub-groups like the Hitlerjugend (Hitler youth) and Kraft durch Freude (‘strength through enjoyment’) movements as criminal organisations. They were accordingly prohibited and dissolved.
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA):: Established in 1939, the ‘Reich Security Head Office’ combined the former HQs of Gestapo, crime police and security services. This step enhanced the competencies of state authorities and sub-organisations of the National Socialist party and achieved the far-reaching autonomy of the machinery of violence established and promoted by Heinrich Himmler.
Shoah:: A Hebrew word for ‘catastrophe’ used for the systematic industrial murder of some 6 million European Jews during the National Socialist era.
Stolpersteine:: So-called ‘stumbling stones’ are small (cobblestone-sized) memorials set in the pavement (sidewalk) in front of the residence of victims of National Socialism to recall their individual fates and raise the issue of guilt regarding their persecution. Stolpersteine can be initiated for all victims of the Nazi regime, whether Jews, Sinti, Romanies, homosexuals, or political opponents. The project was launched in Cologne in the mid-1990s by the artist Gunter Demnig; by summer 2021 some 2500 stones had been laid in that city alone, and many other cities in Germany, as well as countries invaded by Germany during World War II, have followed suit. Based on civil commitment and individual or group sponsoring, Stolpersteine are often laid by people who live or work nearby. Many associations commemorate former members in this way, and schools regularly sponsor stones in their neighbourhood or at the school for former students.
Death camp:: A concentration camp whose sole purpose was to kill prisoners deported there. Death camps were built by the National Socialist regime especially for the systematic extermination of European Jewry. Most such camps were in occupied Poland.