Glossary beginning with R

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.

Concentration camp for women opened near Fürstenberg, 56 miles north of Berlin, in May 1939. It was constructed on reclaimed swampland and built by male prisoners from Sachsenhausen during the winter of 1938-1939. Designed to hold 15,000 prisoners, Ravensbrück eventually held more than 120,000 women from 23 nations. The prisoners included political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Jews, and Jehovah's Witnesses. It included a separate men's camp, a children's camp at Uckermark, and, from January to April 1945, a killing center. It was liberated by the Soviet Army in late April 1945.

Code name for the Gestapo search and arrest operation of the left-wing liberal resistance circle of Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen. Harnack was a senior government official in the Reich Economics Ministry, and Schulze-Boysen an officer in the Reich Aviation Ministry. The classification of this group as a Soviet spy ring falsified the motives and political goals of this group and had a negative effect on its recognition in the postwar era. One hundred twenty of the over 50 women and 100 men of the "Red Orchestra" were arrested in late 1942. Ninety-two of them were put on trial, of those, 49 were condemned to death and executed. Nineteen of those killed were women.

Passed on September 15, 1935, this was one of the Nuremberg Laws. It defined who was "Jewish," not by faith, culture or self-identification, but based on ethnic ancestry. Broadly speaking, every Jew was grouped into one of three racial categories: a "full" Jew was any person with three or four Jewish grandparents, a first-degree Jewish "hybrid" [Mischling] had two Jewish grandparents, and a second-degree Jewish "hybrid" had one Jewish grandparent. Semi-official commentaries interpreting these laws classified Gypsies, along with Jews and blacks, as racially distinctive minorities with "alien blood."

Founded by law on September 22, 1933 and linked to the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The Reich Cultural Chamber was divided into seven sub-chambers for literature, film, theater, radio, fine arts, and the press, all under Goebbels' direction. Membership was compulsory, Jews and Gypsies were expelled and thus unable to work. The Reich Literature Chamber was one of the seven sub-chambers.

Sub-chamber of "Reich Cultural Chamber". Founded by law on September 22, 1933 and linked to the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The Reich Cultural Chamber was divided into seven sub-chambers for literature, film, theater, radio, fine arts, and the press, all under Goebbels' direction. Membership was compulsory, Jews and Gypsies were expelled and thus unable to work. The Reich Literature Chamber was one of the seven sub-chambers.

1904-1942. Head of the SS Security Service. In 1939, Heydrich combined the SD and the Security Police into the Central Office for Reich Security. He organized the Einsatzgruppen [task forces] and was asked by Göring to "implement the final solution." In 1941, Heydrich was appointed Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. On May 27, 1942, he was fatally wounded by Czech partisans. In retaliation for his assassination, the Germans liquidated the Bohemian village of Lidice on June 6, 1942, killing men over the age of 16 and deporting women and children to concentration camps. Some of the children were gassed at Chelmno.

A legal but far-right-wing party in the Federal Republic of Germany.

A 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.

1899-1993. A German attorney who served as chief legal adviser to the Prussian police, emigrating to the United States in 1933 because of his opposition to the Nazis. He was employed at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice during World War II. Kempner was assistant U.S. chief counsel at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg and also at the 1947-1948 Wilhelmstraße trial of the German Foreign Office. He is credited with finding the text of the Wannsee protocol. He was an expert witness at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.

"Rom" means man or person and is the collective designation for European "Gypsies." (See "Gypsies," "Sinti")

The main language spoken by Sinti and Roma, with local differences in various areas.

Jewish New Year

Born in 1900. Joined Nazi party, 1922, and the SS, 1937, promoted to SS Lieutenant Colonel, 1942, served as noncommissioned officer and junior officer at the Dachau concentration camps, 1934-1938, Adjutant and Protective Custody Camp Leader at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1938-1940, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, 1940-1943 and summer 1944, department head of Office D of the SS Central Office for Economy and Administration, 1943-1945, sentenced to death in Poland, hanged at Auschwitz, 1947.