Concept
The Holocaust
Related concepts (122)
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele (ˈjoːzɛf ˈmɛŋələ; 16 March 1911 7 February 1979) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician during World War II. Nicknamed the "Angel of Death" (Todesengel), he performed deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers, and was one of the doctors who administered the gas. Before the war, Mengele received doctorates in anthropology and medicine, and began a career as a researcher.
Rumbula massacre
The Rumbula massacre is a collective term for incidents on November 30 and December 8, 1941, in which about 25,000 Jews were murdered in or on the way to Rumbula forest near Riga, Latvia, during World War II. Except for the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine, this was the biggest two-day Holocaust atrocity until the operation of the death camps. About 24,000 of the victims were Latvian Jews from the Riga Ghetto and approximately 1,000 were German Jews transported to the forest by train.
History of the Jews in Germany
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (circa 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The community survived under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades. Accusations of well poisoning during the Black Death (1346–53) led to mass slaughter of German Jews and they fled in large numbers to Poland.
Jedwabne pogrom
The Jedwabne pogrom was a massacre of Polish Jews in the town of Jedwabne, German-occupied Poland, on 10 July 1941, during World War II and the early stages of the Holocaust. Estimates of the number of victims vary from 300 to 1,600, including women, children, and elderly, many of whom were locked in a barn and burned alive. At least 40 ethnic Poles carried out the killing; their ringleaders decided on it beforehand with Germany's Gestapo, SS security police or SS intelligence, and they cooperated with German military police.
Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy
In World War II, many governments, organizations and individuals collaborated with the Axis powers, "out of conviction, desperation, or under coercion." Nationalists sometimes welcomed German or Italian troops, believing they brought liberation from colonization. The Danish, and Belgian and Vichy French governments attempted to appease or bargain with the invaders, in hopes of mitigating harm to their citizens and economies.
Riga Ghetto
The Riga Ghetto was a small area in Maskavas Forštate, a neighbourhood of Riga, Latvia, designated by the Nazis where Jews from Latvia, and later from Germany, were forced to live during World War II. On October 25, 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and its vicinity to the ghetto while the non-Jewish inhabitants were evicted. Most of the Latvian Jews (about 35,000) were killed on November 30 and December 8, 1941, in the Rumbula massacre. The Nazis transported a large number of German Jews to the ghetto; most of them were later killed in massacres.
Holocaust studies
Holocaust studies, or sometimes Holocaust research, is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust. Institutions dedicated to Holocaust research investigate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of Holocaust methodology, demography, sociology, and psychology. It also covers the study of Nazi Germany, World War II, Jewish history, religion, Christian-Jewish relations, Holocaust theology, ethics, social responsibility, and genocide on a global scale.
War of annihilation
A war of annihilation (Vernichtungskrieg) or war of extermination is a type of war in which the goal is the complete annihilation of a state, a people or an ethnic minority through genocide or through the destruction of their livelihood. The goal can be outward-directed or inward, against elements of one's own population. The goal is not like other types of warfare, the recognition of limited political goals, such as recognition of a legal status (such as in a war of independence), control of disputed territory (as in war of aggression or defensive war), or the total military defeat of an enemy state.
Ostarbeiter
Ostarbeiter (ˈɔstˌʔaʁbaɪtɐ, "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginning of the war and began doing so at unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa in 1941. They apprehended Ostarbeiter from the newly-formed German districts of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, District of Galicia (itself attached to the General Government), and Reichskommissariat Ostland.
Bandenbekämpfung
In German military history, Bandenbekämpfung (German; "bandit-fighting" or "combating of bandits"; English equivalent of anti-partisan operations), also referred to as Nazi security warfare during World War II, refers to the concept and military doctrine of countering resistance or insurrection in the rear area during wartime through extreme brutality. The doctrine provided a rationale for disregarding the established laws of war and for targeting of any number of groups, from armed guerrillas to the civilian population, as "bandits" or "members of gangs".