Glossary beginning with E

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A state hospital located near Wiesbaden with a children's killing ward in 1939, later a transit institution for the "euthanasia" killing center at Hadamar. Under its director, Friedrich Mennecke, M.D., Eichberg served as a research station in 1942 for testing the use of insulin in shock therapy.

1899-1950. A Roman Catholic elementary school teacher who published many books of poetry, short stories and novels. In 1936, Langgässer was prohibited from writing by the Reich Literature Chamber in Nazi Germany because she was of Jewish ancestry. Cordelia, the illegitimate daughter of Langgässer and a Jewish man, was deported to Auschwitz at the age of fifteen. Cordelia survived and now lives in Israel.

A chain of 15 concentration camps opened in 1933 and closed in 1936, located close to the Dutch border, initially containing about 4,000 political prisoners. The best known camps were Börgermoor and Esterwegen. From 1939 to 1945, these camps were used for prisoners of war from the Soviet Union, Italy and France, in 1944-1945, the Emslandlager camps became satellites of Neuengamme concentration camp. The Emslandlager camps had their own subsidiary forced-labor camps in northern Germany, northern Norway and western France. A total of 80,000 prisoners was incarcerated there.

This law, enacted on March 23, 1933, provided the basis for Hitler's dictatorship by abolishing the Reichstag and allowing laws to be enacted by the cabinet and prepared by the Chancellor (i.e. Hitler). Laws still had to be published in the "Reichsgesetzblatt" and were implemented the day after publication.

1892-1948. Joined the Nazi party in May 1933 and the SS with the rank of major in August 1934. In 1936, became director of section 6 (foreign currency) in the Office of the Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan. In summer 1938, Neumann rose to the rank of undersecretary and attended Göring's November 1938 meeting about the "Aryanization" of the German economy. Neumann represented the Ministries of Economy, Labor, Finances, Food, Transportation, and Armaments and Munitions at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference. He was interned and interrogated by the Allies in 1945 and released because of ill health in 1948.

1900-1980. An actor and singer who worked with Piscator and Bertolt Brecht in the 1920s, active in the social democratic and later the communist movement. Lived in exile in Holland, Belgium and France, 1933-1939. Performed for republican troops in Spain during the civil war there. Arrested by the Germans in southern France in 1942, he escaped, was rearrested, later placed on trial in Berlin, and sentenced to the Brandenburg penitentiary. After the war, Busch worked with Brecht and Eisler and became a member of the East German Academy of Arts.

Also known as "Race Hygiene." Using eugenics and race hygiene, German scientists and physicians legitimized the racial ideology of the Nazi movement, thereby providing the "scientific" rationale for radical policies of exclusion and mass murder. Linking heredity and genealogy to disease and retardation as well as to crime, they advocated sterilization of humans they.considered inferior. After registration, they were willing to kill these groups. Nazi racial hygiene was especially opposed to all forms of racial mixing. The practitioners of racial hygiene provided the intellectual infrastructure for genocide and conducted research on the disabled and German Sinti and Roma.

Nazi euphemism for the deliberate killing of the institutionalized physically and mentally disabled by gassing and drug overdoses, based on Hitler's backdated authorization of September 1, 1939. Despite elaborate efforts at concealment, the killings became public knowledge. From October 1939 to the summer of 1941, more than 70,000 disabled Germans and Austrians were murdered. After August 1941, the second less-centralized killing phase, known as "wild euthanasia," continued the "euthanasia" program until the war's end. In all, about 200,000-250,000 disabled were murdered, including thousands of Polish and Soviet handicapped killed in the East. (See also "Operation T 4," "Operation 14f13")

Nazi euphemism for deportation. 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.

On November 21, 1938, this decree provided for the cessation of all Jewish business activity and the involuntary sale of Jewish personal and commercial property. This decree implemented the mandatory one-billion-reichsmark "fine" ["Sühneleistung"] that the government levied on the Jews on November 12, 1938 for damage resulting from the Kristallnacht pogrom. All Jewish property (land, securities, jewelry, art, pensions, and insurance) valued at more than 5,000 reichsmarks had to be paid in four installments by August 15, 1939.

The Germans deported the population of the districts of Zamość, Hrubieszów and Tomaszów [Lubelski] between November 1942 and March 1943 (the operation was started by a test operation in November 1941 and concluded by a »pacification« and expulsion operation in June and July 1943 – Operations Werewolf I and II); the operation was carried out by Odilo Globocnik who acted on orders of Heinrich Himmler to set up a German settlement area in this region (in connection with the preparations for "Generalplan Ost" (General Plan for the East). Ethnic Germans ("Volksdeutsche") and Germans from Transylvania and Bessarabia took the places and businesses of the deported Poles. Expulsion and resettlement took a brutal course; often entire villages were burned down and the inhabitants murdered. A considerable part of the expelled persons were taken to the German Reich as forced labourers or sent to concentration camps. The operation came to an end when the situation at the East front became worse for the Germans. A total of 120,000 persons were expelled from 297 villages in the Zamość region, among them 30,000 children; 4,500 of these children were abducted to Germany for »Germanisation«.