Glossary beginning with D

The first durable concentration camp, near Munich, Germany, opened in late March 1933. At first, political opponents were interned in Dachau. Gradually more groups were incarcerated there. In Dachau, there was no mass extermination program, but out of a total of 206,206 registered prisoners, there were 31,591 registered deaths. However, the total number of deaths in Dachau, including victims of individual and mass executions and death marches, will never be fully known. On April 29, 1945, the camp was liberated by units of the U.S. Seventh Army.

Forced evacuation marches by foot and train from concentration camps, usually at or shortly before liberation. Prisoners were usually driven westward or southward toward Germany from the eastern camps as they were about to be liberated by the advancing Soviet and other Allied armies. The mortality rates on these evacuations were very high, caused by hunger, exposure, shooting by SS guards, and the chaos of the last months of the war.

Title of a Düsseldorf exhibit shown as part of the "Reich Music Days" in 1938. A defamatory Nazi concept used to designate modern avant-garde music, jazz and swing music.

Special barracks designated to disinfect prisoner clothing in order to combat typhus epidemics, since such epidemics could potentially also spread to SS guard personnel.

The forced relocation of Jews and Gypsies as well as Slavic native populations from their homes to other localities, usually to ghettos or concentration camps, labor camps and killing centers. Nazis referred to deportations as "evacuations" or "resettlements" to disguise this component of mass murder.

Born in 1906. Protestant theologian and one of the founders of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Germany after 1933. He was also involved in smuggling 15 Jews to Switzerland in 1942, which led to his arrest in early April 1943. After the July 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler, Bonhoeffer was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. He was subsequently transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was executed on April 9, 1945.

A survivor of a concentration or labor camp. Millions of displaced persons were encountered by the Allies when they entered the German Reich, most were repatriated within the first four months of the war's end.

Abbreviation for Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro GmbH [the German News Agency]. It was founded on December 5, 1933, merging the Continental Telegraph Company and Wolffs Telegraphic Bureau. The Nazi government distributed all official announcements via the DNB.