Holocaust: PERPETRATORS, COLLABORATORS, AND BYSTANDERS

Final Solution

A Nazi code phrase referring to their systematic plan to murder every Jewish man, woman, and child in Europe.

Evian Conference

A conference convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the problem of refugees. While thirty-two countries were represented at the conference in Evian-les-Bains, France, not much was accomplished, since most western countries were reluctant to accept Jewish refugees.

Bermuda Conference

A conference convened by the United States and Great Britain on April 19, 1943, ostensibly to find solutions for wartime refugees. In fact, it marked the high point of efforts by officials in both nations to thwart a move for more effective action to rescue European Jewry.

Wannsee Conference

A conference held on January 20, 1942, beside Lake Wannsee in Berlin. At this conference, the apparatus was coordinated to carry out the total annihilation of European Jews.

Vichy

A government set up by the Nazis after they conquered France in spring 1940, with its capital in the town of Vichy, in the southern part of France.

Hate Group

A group whose worldview is based significantly on strong intolerance or hatred of a certain group(s) of people based on race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Hate groups usually, but not always, claim superiority to those whom they oppose. They often advocate separation: removing themselves from the presence of the people they hate, or removing the people they hate from their presence. They sometimes advocate elimination: killing those people whom they hate.

Facism

A social and political ideology that has as its primary guiding principle that the state or nation is the highest priority, rather than personal or individual freedoms.

War Crimes Trial

A trial of a punishable offense during war time by a person or persons, military or civilian. Under international law, war crimes are offenses that fail to adhere to the norms of procedure and rules of battle, including mistreatment of prisoners of war or attacking those displaying a flag of truce.

Crimes Against Humanity

Acts of persecution against a group or groups so heinous as to warrant punishment under international law. The term was first used in the preamble of the Hague Convention of 1907 and subsequently used during the Nuremberg Trials as a charge for actions during World War II—actions that did not violate a specific treaty but were deemed to require punishment.

Eichmann Trial

Adolf Eichmann, SS Lieutenant-colonel and head of the "Jewish Section" of the SD, was arrested at the end of World War II in the American zone, but escaped, went underground, and disappeared.

Revisionism

Advocating for the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements. To give themselves more legitimacy, many Holocaust deniers call themselves "revisionists."

Holocaust Denial

An antisemitic movement that claims the Holocaust never happened or that minimizes or trivializes it.

Refugee

One who flees or is deported in search of safety, as in times of war, political oppression, or religious persecution.

Bystander

One who is present at an event or who knows about its occurrence without participating in it.

Einsatzgruppen

Referring to the four mobile death squads (A, B, C, and D) estimated to have killed more than 1.5 million Jews. Victims were executed in mass shootings and buried in unmarked graves — usually in the ditches they were forced to dig themselves. (See also Babi Yar.)

Antisemitism

hatred for Jews, often leading to discrimination against Jewish people

Partisans

Forces that use guerrilla tactics when operating in enemy-occupied territory. Throughout occupied Europe, partisans banded together to engage in guerrilla warfare against the Germans.

Perpetrator

Someone who does something that is morally wrong or criminal.

Palestine

The Roman term for what is now Israel; the name used by the British during World War II to denote the area they held under a League of Nations mandate.

Genocide

The United Nations defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about a physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Collaboration

The act of working jointly; in the context of war, it is often the act of cooperating traitorously with an enemy that is occupying one's country. --collaborator n.

Great Depression

The economic crisis beginning with the stock market crash in the United States in 1929 and continuing through the 1930s; a worldwide economic downturn resulted.

Nuremberg Trials

The war crimes trials of twenty-two major Nazi figures in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946 before the International Military Tribunal.