Glossary beginning with A

Abbreviation for concentration camp. Prison in which political and religious dissidents, ethnic and racial opponents were involuntarily held. Before the end of World War II, the Germans set up several thousand such camps.

Born in 1887. Writer and dramatist, who with his wife belonged to the circle of the Red Orchestra, founded in 1933. Kuckhoff wrote for the anti-fascist newspaper, "Die Innere Front" ["The Inner Front"], and was a go-between for academic and literary resistance circles. He was arrested in August 1942 and executed in Plötzensee on August 5, 1943.

Born in 1906. Joined Austrian Nazi party and SS, 1932, promoted to SS Lieutenant Colonel of the General SS, 1941, and SS Second Lieutenant of the Waffen SS, 1944, noncommissioned officer with SS Regiment Dachau, 1933, transferred to SS Security Service, October 1934, member of Office II/112 (Jewish Department) of the SS Security Service, 1934, organized Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, 1938, chief of Office IVb4 in the Central Office for Reich Security charged with the deportation of the Jews, 1940-1945. Eichmann fled to Argentina in 1946, was kidnapped in 1960 and executed in Jerusalem in 1962.

Born in 1898. Teacher, professor of history and civics in Halle after 1930, dismissed in 1933 and subsequently employed as country school teacher and museum educator. Arrested in July 1944, he was sentenced to death by the People's Court as a member of the Kreisau resistance circle [Kreisauer Kreis] and executed at Berlin-Plötzensee in October 1944.

Born in 1903. Professor of political geography in Berlin, author of tragedies in verse, and representative of conservative resistance. He was the son of Karl Haushofer, the German geopolitical theoretician, whose student, Rudolf Hess, was Hitler's deputy. Albrecht Haushofer is thought to have encouraged Hess' failed flight to England. Afterwards, he was spied on by the Gestapo and arrested in December 1944. In the Berlin-Moabit prison, he wrote the "Moabite Sonnets," which were not discovered until after his death. Haushofer was shot by an SS commando on April 23, 1945.

Austrian sculptor and graphic artist, born in Vienna in 1928. His works – sculptures, sketches, and etchings – are known for their expressiveness. Hrdlicka presents themes such as murder and violence as definitive phenomena of our time. This is shown by "Plötzensee Danse Macabre," completed in 1972, in the "Evangelisches Gemeindezentrum Plötzensee" (Berlin), near the Nazi places of execution and present-day Plötzensee memorial site. Hrdlicka's sculpture in remembrance of the persecution of the Jews of Vienna, which has stood at the Albertinerplatz in Vienna since 1988, was the subject of much controversy.

Born in 1929. A Jewish teenaged girl who, with her family, went into hiding in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The diary that she kept during that time has become a classic. Anne and her family had moved from Frankfurt to Amsterdam in 1933. The family went into hiding in 1942 and was betrayed in August 1944. Family members were subsequently deported via Westerbork to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Anne and her sister were transported to Bergen-Belsen at the end of October 1944 and Anne died of typhus in March 1945, shortly before Bergen-Belsen was liberated.

The incorporation of Austria into the German Reich on March 13, 1938.

Anti-Semitism is a form of racism that denigrates a group of people. Anti-Semitism has three main variations: (1) anti-Judaism is a religiously-based hostility to Jews, particularly by Christianity. Its roots lie in pre-Christian antiquity. (2) Modern anti-Semitism is based on racial theories that are often politically and economically motivated. (3) Anti-Zionism is a phenomenon of both the extreme right and extreme left and demonizes the state of Israel as a Jewish national movement for a homeland.

An umbrella category including the "work shy," migrants, Gypsies, homosexuals, pimps, prostitutes, and any person the German police thought unfit for civilian society. They were sent to concentration camps after December 1937 under new laws allowing "protective custody." Some were also sterilized or killed under the "euthanasia" program.

Public boycott of Jewish and non-Aryan owned businesses announced for April 1, 1933 in Germany. This was also the beginning of exclusionary legislation that banned Jews and non-Aryans from employment in the civil service and as judges, professors, physicians, teachers, etc.

1900-1991.Sculptor. After 1933 in Berlin, where he benefited from Nazi state patronage, Breker created sculptures at the Olympic stadium and the courtyard of the Reich Chancellery. After the war, he made numerous portrait busts of famous sports and public figures.

The name, used by the Nazis and others, of the "race" of people speaking Indo-European languages. The Nazis viewed Aryans as racially superior and they applied this term to those of Teutonic or Nordic racial background. Proof of Aryan ancestry [Ariernachweis] to one's grandparents was required for employment in Nazi Germany after 1933.

The expropriation of Jewish businesses and property by the German authorities after 1933, as well as similar measures by other Axis nations.

A complex of concentration, labor and extermination camps located approximately 40 miles west of Cracow in Upper Silesia (Poland). Established in 1940 as a concentration camp, it became a killing center in 1942. Auschwitz I was the central camp. Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau, was the killing center. Auschwitz III, or Monowitz, was the IG Farben labor camps, also known as BUNA. In addition, there were numerous subsidiary camps. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945.

Code word for Holocaust deniers. Since 1985, this type of defamation is treated as a criminal offense under paragraph 194 of the German penal code.