DRANCY A transit camp located in the suburbs of Paris. Almost all Jews rounded up in France passed through Drancy before being shipped to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. It wasn’t until 1995 that the French government acknowledged the culpability of the Vichy regime in the Nazis’ “Final Solution.”
FLIC (French/slang) Policeman.
FRONT POPULAIRE A broad coalition of leftist French political parties and major trade unions formed in July 1935. The three main parties were the French Socialist Party (SFIO), the French Communist Party (PCF), and the le Parti Radical. The head of the Front Populaire was Leon Blum, leader of the SFIO. The coalition headed the French government from June 1935 to March 1940.
FUSSLAPAN (German) Foot rags.
GARDES-MOBLES French Federal Police.
GENDARMES French Military Police.
GESTAPO Short for Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police. Allowed to work above the law, the Gestapo was the tool of terror in Germany and all Nazi-occupied countries. Its primary task was to round up Jews and other “undesirables.” At the Nuremberg trials, the entire organization was charged with crimes against humanity.
GRAND GUIGNOL (French) Used to describe any dramatic entertainment designed to shock, horrify, and sicken and usually featuring the violently gruesome and gory. The phrase comes from the Theatre du Grand Guignol in Montmarte, Paris, which specialized in “shock theatre.”
HÄFTLING/E (German) Inmate/s.
HIMMLER, HEINRICH The man responsible for the implementa-tion of the “Final Solution.” Hitler appointed him Reichsführer-SS (Reich SS leader) in 1929. In Aprir 1934, Hermann Göring, the president of the Reichstag, gave Himmler power over the Gestapo. All the concentration camps were under his command. In the summer of 1942, he ordered the Warsaw Ghetto to be emptied because the Jews were dying too slowly in the confined area. In 1943, he was named Minister of the Interior, then in 1944, was appointed the chief of the Replacement Army. On May 23, 1945, Himmler was captured by British forces and committed suicide.
HKB/HÄFTLINGSKRANKENBAU (German) Inmates’ infirmary.
I. G. FARBEN A German conglomerate formed in 1925. Major companies included Bayer, Agfa, and BASF. Seeing great postwar potential, I.G. Farben funded I.G. Auschwitz without any government money. It was their largest plant and cost more than 900 million Reichsmark (over $250 million). Zyklon B was produced by the I.G. Farben company Degesch. After the war, the Allies disbanded the conglomerate, but allowed the original companies to continue doing business.
JUDE (German) Jew, a “yellow triangle.” The only group of human beings the Nazis wanted to annihilate completely. When Hitler took power on January 30, 1933, German Jews were systematically stripped of all political, economic, and social rights. On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Racial Laws were decreed, which banned Jews from being German citizens. On February 21, 1939, German Jews were forced to hand over all their gold and silver items. With the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, the Nazis rounded up the Jews in all the countries they occupied, putting them into ghettos or concentration camps. As Nazi forces tore into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen (Special Forces under the control of Heinrich Himmler) began the mass killing of Jews (along with Gypsies and Communist leaders). On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference was held and the “Final Solution”(Endlösung der Judenfrage) was set in motion. In the Shoah (Hebrew term for “calamity”), over 6 million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by the Nazis.
KANADA KOMMANDO (German) The work detail that gathered and sorted the belongings of the new arrivals to Auschwitz. Anything of value was earmarked for shipment to Germany, but some items found their way to Auschwitz’s black market. The inmates nicknamed the Kommando “Kanada” because Canada was seen as a country of wealth and prosperity.
KIPP LORE (German) A coal car with a container that can be tilted to easily empty the load.
KOMMANDO (German) Work detail.
KAPO (German) Inmate supervisor of a Kommando. Assigned by the SS and usually a German convict.
KRÄTZEBLOCK (German) Barracks for inmates with scabies, skin mange, or contagious itch.
K.L. Abbreviation of Konzentrationslager, the German word for “concentration camp.”
LAGER (German) Camp.
LAGERÄLTESTER (German) Camp elder, most of the time a German convict in charge of discipline in the camp.
LAGERFÜRHER (German) A warden, usually an SS officer who oversaw discipline in the camp
LANDSTURM (German) German reserve forces that are called on last, composed of men not in the armed forces (mainly elderly veterans and teenagers).
LEBENSRAUM (German) Literally, “living space.” One of Hitler’s excuses for invading Poland and the Soviet Union was to acquire land to be colonized by Germans.
LEICHENWAGEN (German) Hearse.
MAKHORKA (Russian) A harsh Russian tobacco composed of tobacco leaf stems.
MALHEURE (French) Horrible or bad luck.
MAQUIS (French) Literally “sage brush,” the name for the French Resistance. The resistance was given that name because most of the men and women lived or hid in the French mountainsides.
MAQUISARDS (French) French Resistance fighters.
MAUTHAUSEN A concentration camp 20 kilometers from Linz, Austria, which was opened in August 1938. The total number of Häftlinge who passed through the camp is estimated at 199,404, and of that number, 119,000 died. The camp was liberated by the U.S. 11th Armored Division on May 5, 1945.
MESSERSCHMITT The Messerschmitt BF-109 was the standard German fighter plane. It had a water-cooled Daimler-Benz 12-cylinder engine with over 1,000 horsepower.
MON AMI (French) My friend/buddy.
MONOWITZ Auschwitz III, operational in May 1942. A slave labor camp built in the town of Monowice, Poland, whose name was Germanized into Monowitz. The camp supplied workers for the I.G. Farben plant. At the roll call before the death march out of Auschwitz, there were 10,244 inmates.
MUZHIK (Russian) A term for a Russian peasant, especially before the 1917 Revolution.
MUSELMANN/MUSELMÄNNER (German) Literally, Muslim/s, but camp slang for an inmate near death, who has given up on life.
ORGANIZE Camp slang for stealing anything from the Nazis that could help in one’s survival or for illicit trade in stolen items. If a prisoner was caught with an “organized” item, it could mean a beating, the Stehbunker, or execution.
PAJAMAS Camp slang for the thin gray-and-blue striped uniforms given to Häftlinge.
PÈRE LACHAISE The oldest and largest cemetery in Paris. Named after Père François de la Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV, the cemetery was built on an old quarry. Père Lachaise holds the remains of many famous people, including Molière, Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Chopin, Proust, Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, and Jim Morrison.