Glossary beginning with C

1889-1938. German journalist and pacifist, editor of "Weltbühne" ["The World Stage"] in the 1920s, who was imprisoned in Esterwegen for three months in 1933. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935 as a prisoner in the concentration camps but was prohibited by the German government from accepting the award in person. Died prematurely of tuberculosis contracted in the camps.

Also known as RSHA, the acronym for Reichssicherheitshauptamt, with headquarters located on Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin. This Nazi administrative office was formed in September 1939 from the union of the Security Service and Security Police (the latter also included the Gestapo and the Kriminalpolizei [Central Detective Forces]). The RSHA was initially headed by Reinhard Heydrich. After Heydrich's assassination, Ernst Kaltenbrunner directed the RSHA from 1943-1945.

There were four chancelleries serving Hitler. The Presidential Chancellery [Präsidialkanzlei], headed by State Secretary Otto Meissner, was Hitler's office as head of state. The Reich Chancellery, headed by State Secretary Hans Heinrich Lammers, was Hitler's office as head of government. The Chancellery of the Führer, headed by Reich Leader Philipp Bouhler, was Hitler's private office. The Party Chancellery in Munich, first headed by Rudolf Hess as the Deputy to the Führer and later by Martin Bormann, directed all Nazi party affairs.

Killing center opened in late December 1941 in incorporated western Poland [Wartheland], where the SS, using special mobile gas vans, killed more than 320,000 Jews from Lodz and Poznan as well as about 5,000 Austrian Gypsies incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. The killing center at Chelmno operated from December 1941 to March 1943 and resumed operations between June/ July 1944 during the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto and January 1945.

Restitution of expropriated, stolen real estate and money (arisation) and individual compensation paid to the victims of National Socialist persecution for physical and mental suffering endured. In Germany, the legal term "Wiedergutmachung" [restitution and compensation] became generally accepted to describe the complex framework of treaties and laws related to compensation, because it has a connotation of "paying a penalty for something". This term was used colloquially, however, it did not appropriately describe the problem. Compensation claims had already been discussed by Jewish organisations and the US-administration before the end of the Second World War. The first international agreement was signed in the end of 1945: the Paris Agreement on Reparation, signed by 18 allied states. The law on restitution (US-REG) was passed in 1947 on an initiative of the United States. The German Federal Law on Restitution (Bundesrückerstattungsgesetz) was only passed in 1957. Compensation and restitution were unpopular and led to resentments against those who were entitled to it. Collective agreements of the Federal Republic of Germany: 1952, with Israel and the Claims Conference. Individual compensation starting from 1953 according to the Federal Compensation Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz). The law put certain groups at a disadvantage, e.g. non-German victims of National Socialism and a number of German groups, like the Sinti and the Roma, communists, pacifists, homosexuals, those concerned by the Nazi laws on hereditary diseases and so-called anti-social elements. Only 1.5 million out of an estimated total 20 million of victims of National Socialist persecution actually received any compensation. The procedures to establish the damage endured and the compensations actually paid for severe suffering came under harsh criticism. Until the end of the 1990ies, the Federal Republic of Germany had paid a total of 100 billion DM for compensations, 80% of these monies went to Jewish Holocaust survivors. In July 2000, the German parliament set up the foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility, Future" for the compensation of the about 1.2 million surviving forced labourers who had worked for German industries during National Socialism.

Abbreviated as KZ. 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.

Dissenting Protestant church founded by Martin Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, and Eberhard Bethge to confront the theory of the "total state" and the Nazi-organized "German Christian" movement.

Crystalline hydrogen cyanide, used in the gas chambers of the killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was first used in September 1941 on Soviet and Polish prisoners at Auschwitz.