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Aktion A-B (Operation A-B)

Aktion A-B is the contraction for "Ausserordentlichen Befriedungsaktion," special pacification operations that began in the General Government in April 1940 organized to liquidate the Polish intelligentsia, including academics, priests, potential resistance, and individuals defined as "criminals." More than 3,500 members of the resistance and 3,000 "criminals" had been killed by late summer 1940. It is analogous to the Nacht und Nebel ("Night and Fog") decree issued on December 7, 1941, for rounding up suspected members of the anti-Nazi resistance and "persons endangering German security" in occupied western Europe.

Auschwitz

A complex of concentration, labor, and extermination camps located approximately 40 miles west of Krakow in Upper Silesia (Poland). Established in 1940 as a concentration camp, it became a killing center in 1942. Auschwitz I: The central camp. Auschwitz II: Also known as Birkenau, was the killing center. Auschwitz III: Monowitz, was the IG Farben labor camps, also known as BUNA. In addition, there were numerous subsidiary camps. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945. The number of victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau is estimated at:

Mortality rate 1,082,000 to 1,100,000 Jews 94.4 percent 21,000 Gypsies 93.5 percent 70,000 to 75,000 Poles 58.1 percent 15,000 Soviet POWs 99.2 percent 5,000 prisoners of other nationality not known

(Source of statistics is: Franciszek Piper, "Number of Victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau," Yad Vashem Studies 21 (1991), 98.)

Auschwitz I

Auschwitz I was the main camp or Stammlager in Oświęcim; it also included 50 satellite camps. The first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz on May 20, 1940. The first experiments with the use of Zyklon B (Cyclon B) occurred on September 3, 1941 in the cellar of Barrack 11, and killed 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 Polish male prisoners from the infirmary. The camp included the "Wall of Death" in the courtyard of Barrack 11, where at least 20,000 Polish political prisoners had been executed. It also contained Crematorium I, in operation from 1940 to 1943. The first Jewish transports from Upper Silesian ghettoes were gassed there in the spring of 1942. The first period of the camp from May 1940 to mid-1942, Auschwitz I mainly held Polish prisoners; after mid-1942, European Jews were the majority of deportees and victims. See entry for Auschwitz.

Auschwitz II

Auschwitz II was the killing center at Birkenau (Brzezinka in Polish) established in 1942 and also included subcamps for agriculture and live-stock breeding. It is estimated that about 1.25 million Jews had been killed by illness, execution, and gassing at Birkenau. The construction of Birkenau began in October 1941, and the mass murder of Jews at Birkenau began in the beginning of 1942. See entries for Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Auschwitz III

Auschwitz III or the Monowitz subcamp was created in December 1943, and had jurisdiction of 37 subsidiary camps, where approximately 150,000 prisoners perished. See entries for Auschwitz and Buna-Monowitz.

Birkenau

Unlike Auschwitz I which included 28 brick buildings, Auschwitz II or Birkenau was the killing center and larger camp. Construction of Birkenau began in October 1941. Erected on swampy ground, the barracks were partly brick and partly wooden, adapted from horse stables. Birkenau was the site of four gas chambers and crematoria. After the revolt of the Sonderkommando on October 7, 1944 was suppressed, the number of arriving transports decreased. On November 2, the gassings stopped and shortly thereafter, the SS dismantled the remaining crematoria to destroy the most conspicuous evidence of their crimes. The transport of 2,000 Jews from Theresienstadt that arrived at Birkenau on October 30, 1944, was the apparently the last transport killed in the Birkenau gas chambers. See entries for Auschwitz and Auschwitz II, BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe.

BIIb

The family camp for ca. 17,517 Jews from Theresienstadt at Birkenau existed from September 1943 to mid-July 1944; 3,500 had been reassigned to labor crews before the liquidation of the Theresienstadt family camp, and 1,167 survived at liberation. From September 1943 to May 1944, the Theresienstadt family camp consisted mostly of Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with several hundred Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. There were two main transports in September and December 1943 and a smaller one in May 1944. Initially the Theresienstadt prisoners had been allowed to keep their civilian clothing, their hair was not shaven, and families were permitted to remain together although the barracks had been separated by gender. The life expectancy of each transport was about 6 months. One of the most poignant acts of resistance was committed by 3,971 Czech Jews, who on March 8, 1944, suspecting that they would be gassed, began singing the Jewish anthem Hatikvah and the Czech national anthem, although this was obviously prohibited. The SS killed all but 37 of this group.

BIIc

Existed after June 1944 as the transit camp for Jewish women, mostly from Hungary.

BIId

The men's camp, including Jews and non-Jews, at Birkenau; existed from July 1943 to January 1945.

BIIe

The family camp for Gypsies at Birkenau, existed from February 1943 to August 2, 1944. On December 16, 1942, Himmler issued his Auschwitz decree on Gypsies, which led to their deportation to and eventual murder in Birkenau. Already on September 26, 1942, three months before Himmler's Auschwitz decree, 200 Gypsies had been transferred from Buchenwald to Auschwitz and assigned to build the new Gypsy enclosure (BIIe) at Birkenau. On February 26, 1943, the first transport of German Gypsies arrived at the newly erected Gypsy "family camp" (BIIe) in Birkenau; Gypsies from occupied Europe arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau after March 7, 1943. The pattern of deporting Gypsies as a family unit had been first established during the May 1940 deportation from Germany to the Lublin region and continued in Auschwitz. The history and fate of the Gypsies in the Birkenau Zigeunerlager paralleled the creation and later destruction of the so-called Familienlager for Theresienstadt deportees in Birkenau BIIb. On August 2, 1944, the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liquidated. An earlier SS attempt to obliterate the Birkenau Gypsy camp on May 16, 1944, had failed because of armed resistance; the prisoners fought the SS with improvised knives, shovels, wooden sticks, and stones. By the time that Birkenau was evacuated, 13,614 Gypsies from the German Reich had died of exposure, malnutrition, disease, and brutal medical experiments, and 6,432 had been gassed; 32 had been shot while trying to escape. Thus, about 20,000 of the 23,000 German and Austrian Roma and Sinti deported to Auschwitz had been killed there. See entry for Birkenau.

BIIg

Contained 30 barracks with warehouses known as the Effektenlager.

Bergen-Belsen

Opened in 1940 as a prisoner-of-war camp, it was renamed Stalag 311 in 1941 for about 20,000 Soviet POWs; 16,000-18,000 died of epidemics, malnutrition, and exposure by 1942. The camp was renamed Bergen-Belsen in April 1943, and held male and female Jews with foreign passports or visas who might be exchanged for German nationals held abroad. Between March 1944 and early 1945, it received prisoners from other camps for possible exchange and large numbers of prisoners evacuated from camps in the east. Rapidly deteriorating conditions led to massive epidemics, starvation, and the deaths of thousands.

Blechhammer (Blachownia Slaska)

Blechhammer was a satellite camp of Auschwitz III (Monowitz), located at Slawiecice near Blachownia Slaska, approximately 47 miles distance from Auschwitz I. From early March 1940 to April 1944, Blechhammer had several forced labor camps for Upper Silesian Jews as well as a labor reeducation camp (AEL). Negotiations for its transfer to the Auschwitz concentration camp system began in late 1943 and on April 1, 1944, it opened as "Arbeitslager Blechhammer" under the jurisdiction of Auschwitz III. The Jewish prisoners incarcerated there came from 16 nations, but were mostly Polish. They were utilized to construct the synthetic gasoline plant for Oberschlesische Hydriewerke AG. After April 1944, Blechhammer had at least 3,056 prisoners, including about 200 women. By January 1945, it included at least 4,000 prisoners. The camp had a separate crematorium because of the high mortality rate (nearly 86 percent). Prisoners were housed in wooden barracks, each containing six rooms, and each room holding 30-40 prisoners. The rooms were overheated in summer and freezing cold in winter, since the heating plant had been damaged by Allied bombing in May 1944. The camp had virtually no sanitary facilities, including one toilet and two baths in a separate barrack. The prisoners were subdivided into work crews of 100-200 persons and "rented" to various concerns for the construction of factories, building roads, and air raid bunkers. Small numbers of prisoners were assigned to the camp shoe and clothing workshops, the warehouse, the infirmary, SS and prisoner kitchens and laundries, as well as the camp orchestra. The camp was evacuated on January 21, 1945 to Gross-Rosen concentration camp, where they arrived on February 2, 1945. Approximately 800 prisoners were killed by SS men during the evacuation "death" march from Blechhammer to Gross-Rosen. After five days at Gross-Rosen, the survivors were transported by train to Buchenwald concentration camp, arriving there on February 10, 1945. The Blechhammer satellite camp was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 28, 1945. (Sources: F. Piper "Das Nebenlager Blechhammer," Hefte von Auschwitz 10 (1967), 19-40; and ITS, Arolsen)

Blockführer or Blockführerin

An SS man (Blockführer) or woman (Blockführerin) who oversaw a residential barrack (block) of prisoners. Their basic duty was to supervise male and female prisoners in their barracks.

Buchenwald

A concentration camp opened in 1937 on the Ettersberg hillside overlooking Weimar, Germany. The first German and Austrian Jewish prisoners arrived in 1938, German and Austrian Gypsy prisoners were deported there after July 1938. During the war, some 65,000 of Buchenwald's quarter-million prisoners perished; others died in its more than 130 satellite labor camps. Buchenwald was one of the few major camps whose prisoners rebelled in the days preceding liberation by units of the U.S. Army on April 11, 1945.

Buna-Monowitz

See entry for Auschwitz III. Located in the village of Monowice about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) from Auschwitz was part of the vast forced labor complex known as Buna-Monowitz, or Auschwitz III, where factories spread over 14 kilometers (about 8.69 miles). The factories, including synthetic rubber, petroleum, pharmaceutical, and chemical plants, erected after February 1941, resulted in enormous profit for both industry and the SS, since prisoners were worked to death on meager rations while the SS and industrialists pocketed their wages.

Concentration camp

Place of imprisonment to which political and religious dissidents as well as ethnic and racial "undesirables" were sent, usually without judicial process. Before the end of World War II, the Germans had set up more than one hundred major concentration camps with several thousand satellite labor camps.

Concentration Camps

In German Konzentrationslager. The official abbreviation was KL, but the popular designation was KZ. The early camps, such as Oranienburg, Columbia Haus, Esterwegen, and Lichtenburg for women, are known as "wild" camps and were later dissolved. The earliest permanent camp was Dachau; before the war five further camps were constructed: Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbrück for women. During the war a number of further camps were constructed: Neuengamme (previously a subsidiary camp of Sachsenhausen), Natzweiler, Auschwitz, Groß-Rosen, Hinzert, Stutthof, Lublin-Maidanek, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Dora-Mittelbau, and Bergen-Belsen. In addition several forced labor camps in the East were transformed into concentration camps during 1943 and 1944: Kauen (Kovno), Krakow-Plaszow, Riga-Kaiserwald, and Vaivara. The camp system was run by the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps in Oranienburg; the administrators and the guards were members of the SS Death Head Units. In 1942, the Inspectorate was absorbed as Office D by the SS Central Office for Economy and Administration (WVHA). During the war each of these main camps was surrounded by large numbers of subsidiary camps, usually located at factories and other work sites. Only two camps--Auschwitz and Lublin-Maidanek--were also extermination camps; Auschwitz was eventually divided into three camps: the main camp as Auschwitz I, the extermination camp Birkenau as Auschwitz II, and the labor camp Monowitz (BUNA) as Auschwitz III. The four other extermination camps -- Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka -- were not part of the Inspectorate but were established by local SS and Police Leaders. Each concentration camp was headed by a commandant, who was assisted by an adjutant. Below the commandant, SS officers headed various departments: the administration, the guard units, the office of the SS Physician, and an office of the Gestapo known as the Political Department. The actual camp holding the prisoners was called Protective Custody Camp (Schutzhaftlager), headed by an SS officer designated Protective Custody Camp Leader (Schutzhaftlagerführer).

Death March

Forced evacuation marches from concentration camps. Prisoners were usually driven westward or southward toward Germany as they were about to be liberated by the advancing Soviet or Allied armies.

Dora-Mittelbau

Established in August 1943 as a subsidiary of the Buchenwald concentration camp, it was originally named Dora. The camp for men, located near Nordhausen in the Harz mountains, provided labor for the production of V-2 rockets in underground factories. Renamed Mittelbau, this concentration camp became independent in November 1944. Of 60,000 prisoners from 40 countries used for forced labor at Dora-Mittelbau, more than 20,000 were killed because of brutal conditions.

Drancy

Assembly center located in an unfinished housing project near the Paris suburb of Drancy. Opened in December 1940, it became the largest transit camp for the deportation of Jews from France. Sixty-two deportation trains containing about 61,000 Jews left Drancy between July 1942 and August 1944; most of these deportees perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Effektenlager

German term, also known as "Kanada"/"Canada." The area of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where warehouses containing objects taken from prisoners upon their arrival at the camp. This was known as camp BIIg.

Gestapo

The contraction of the words Geheime Staatspolizei, or the German (non-uniformed) political police; popularly called the Secret State Police. It was created by Hermann Göring in Prussia in 1933 and consolidated by Heinrich Himmler in 1934; by 1936 its authority extended throughout Germany. It formed one segment of the Security Police (Sipo). Gestapo regional offices (Stapoleitstellen) and Gestapo district offices (Stapostellen) were directed from Berlin by the Central Gestapo Office (Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, or Gestapa). In 1939, the Gestapa became Office IV of the Central Office for Reich Security (RSHA). It was headed by Heinrich Müller after 1936.

Holocaust

The definition of the Holocaust has been determined primarily by popular culture. Most broadly, the Holocaust can be identified as the crimes committed by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. At the Nuremberg Trials after World War II, those crimes were enumerated as the crime against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The list covered people victimized because of their national origin or political affiliation or activities; the series of unprovoked attacks on Germany's neighbors; the deportation of large numbers of foreign nationals, particularly from Eastern Europe, for forced labor in German industry; and the construction of concentration camps for the confinement of political opponents at home and members of the resistance abroad. Popular culture, however, has focused largely on only one aspect of the Holocaust: on the Nazi genocide of the European Jews, that is, the systematic killing of an entire group of human beings because of their heredity by means of modern, industrial, assembly-line methods of mass murder. Nevertheless, it is clear that Nazi genocide can be defined more correctly as the mass murder of human beings because they belonged to a biologically defined group.

Kanada (in German, or usually Canada)

On arrival at the ramp in the East, all arriving prisoners were told to leave their larger pieces of luggage. In reality, the luggage they had so painstakingly packed was taken on arrival at Auschwitz to a series of special warehouses known collectively as "Kanada." Initially, all prisoner clothing and hand luggage was stored in a warehouse in block 26 in the main Auschwitz I camp. However, by mid-1942, there was so much looted property that storage was moved to six barracks near the main camp Auschwitz I for storage. As the mass of deportations arrived at Auschwitz during 1942, these warehouses were also too small. To accommodate the goods arriving with deportees, storage facilities (Effektenkammer) staffed by prisoner labor squads were created, as part of the Aufräumungskommando ("clean up crews"). Kanada storage facilities occupied several dozen barracks and other buildings. Kanada I was moved to the BIIg sector of Birkenau, consisting of six storage barracks near the main camp, in the vicinity of the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (DAW) plant and warehouses. Until December 1943, Kanada I served as the central facility for sorting material looted from arriving Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners and preparing this material for future reutilization. From 1942 to 1943, between 1,000 and 1,600 male and female prisoners worked in two shifts. Kanada I was run by a succession of SS men: Richard Wiegleb, Georg Hocher, and Emanuel Glumbik. Kanada II started operating in December 1943. It comprised 30 barracks, most of which served as storage and sorting facilities for plundered Jewish goods until the liquidation of Auschwitz. The clothing disinfection facility was located in an adjacent building. Kanada II quickly became larger than Kanada I and in late July 1944 had a total of 590 men assigned prisoner laborers. By October 1944, probably more than 1,500 to 2,000 men and women prisoners worked in Kanada II. The prisoners considered the labor squads in Kanada as better kommandos, since there they had the chance to obtain illegally food, clothing, and other valuables. Kanada, the Birkenau warehouses where the belongings of the newly arrived victims were sorted and stored by the SS, had a special meaning in Poland. In Poland, the name and country Kanada symbolized a place of great riches, and as such, it is still used as an idiom for wealth in contemporary Poland. At Kanada, prisoner labor would open and sort the contents of the luggage for reutilization in the German war economy. This included clothing, personal possessions like hair brushes and tooth brushes, and eventually also byproducts of the killing process: such as, dental gold and human hair (used as fleece linings in military jackets). Also known as Effektenlager.

Kapo

Although the origin of the term is not fully known, the word kapo probably came from the Latin capo, meaning "head." It was probably introduced into Dachau by Italian workers in the 1930s. During World War II, in popular language, kapo became a generic term for all inmate (prisoner) functionaries.

Kommando(Commando)

A work crew. There were ca. 300 work crews at Auschwitz, containing from 50 to 1,200 prisoners, but many were smaller in size.

Lagertischlerei

Carpentry workshop

Muselmann/Muselmänner

A term used by prisoners and perpetrators to refer to prisoners who had become so emaciated and weak that they had ceased fighting to survive, the "walking dead."

Ohrdruf

Located approximately 13 kilometers south of Gotha, Ohrdruf was technically a satellite of Buchenwald concentration camp. It was opened on November 6, 1944 and closed when an advance unit of the Fourth Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army discovered it by accident on April 4 or 5, 1945. Ohrdruf was also known by the code name "S III," since the nearly 10,000 prisoners transferred from other concentration camps were to build underground housing for the SS and senior government personnel. Unlike the other camps, Ohrdruf had no sophisticated tools of mass murder. The corpses of more than 4,000 prisoners were discovered by the Americans; "the Germans had starved, clubbed, and burned them to death." The Germans shot many of the prisoners at Ohrdruf as American units neared the camp. (quotation from the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, v. 30, pp. 463-64, Nuremberg document PS 2430]

Radom

Radom is a city in central Poland, about 62 miles south of Warsaw. The German army occupied Radom on September 8, 1939. During the first months of occupation, several thousand Jews were expelled from Poznan and Lodz provinces to Radom and consequently, ca. 1,840 Jews from Radom were expelled to smaller nearby towns. With the creation of the General Government in October 1939, Radom became the capital of one of its four districts. After August 1940, about 2,000 young Jewish men and women were deported from Radom to forced labor camps in the Lublin district, where most perished. A ghetto was later established in Radom in March 1941. It consisted of two sections: a large ghetto in the center of the city and a small ghetto in the suburb Glinice. German raids on the ghettos began in 1942, including so-called "Bloody Thursday," when on February 19, 1942, the Gestapo seized 40-50 men in the large ghetto and executed them; about 100 others were deported to Auschwitz. Such raids continued throughout the spring of 1942. The small ghetto in Radom was liquidated on August 5, 1942. More than 6,000 Jews were then deported to Treblinka; 600 elderly and children were executed at the assembly center; and 820 chosen for forced labor. From August 16-18, 1942, the large ghetto was liquidated and most inhabitants deported to Majdanek. Some Jews fled to nearby forests and subsequently established resistance groups. Several dozen people who had escaped from Radom participated in the Warsaw Polish uprising of August and September 1944.

Raisko in Rajsko

A satellite containing two sub-camps of Auschwitz, existing from June 1943 to January 1945, where about 300 female prisoners were employed in a research station for plants. Most research focused on cultivating the plant "kok-saghyz," whose roots yielded a substance that could be used to produce rubber. The horticultural facilities at Rajsko produced flowers and vegetables cultivated on a large scale. Farm work, mainly by women prisoners, was not an easy task. Once sowing and harvesting were over, women had to work in fall and winter at removing stones from the fields, digging ditches, draining fields and meadows, deepening and cleaning ponds, and building dikes. During Himmler's second visit to Auschwitz on July 17-19, 1942, he also visited the plant cultivation station at Rajsko. Rajsko was also the site of an SS Hygiene Institute and a meteorological research station.

Ravensbrück

Concentration camp for women opened near Fürstenberg, 56 miles north of Berlin, in May 1939. It was constructed on reclaimed swamp land and built by male prisoners from Sachsenhausen during the winter of 1938-1939. Designed to hold 15,000 prisoners, it eventually held more than 120,000 women from twenty-three 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.

Sauna

The German term for the camp showers in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Shoah

"Shoah" is the Hebrew term for the mass murder of European Jews and was used already by late 1940. Shoah means a sacrificial offering wholly consumed by fire (I Samuel VII: 9). The term Shoah is distinct from the English language word Holocaust, first used in the American Hebrew in late 1940.

SS

Acronym for Schutzstaffel, German for "protection squad". Formed in 1925 as Hitler's personal body guard; later became the elite units of the Nazi party after 1929. Heinrich Himmler built the SS into a giant organization that, among other tasks, provided staff for the police, camp guards, and military fighting units (Waffen SS). These paramilitary, black-shirted troops used a symbol copied from Teutonic runes, a parallel jagged double S, also used as a warning for high-tension wires or lightning.

SS Central Offices

Heinrich Himmler as Reich Leader SS (RFSS) and Chief of the German Police administered the SS and police through central offices (Hauptämter). In 1944 there were 12 central offices: Personal Staff of the Reich Leader SS, headed by Karl Wolff; SS Central Office (SS Hauptamt), headed by Gottlob Berger, for Waffen SS reinforcements; Central Office for Operations (Führungshauptamt), headed by Hans Jüttner, to administer the General SS and command the Waffen SS; Central Office for Race and Settlement (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, or RuSHA), headed by Richard Hildebrandt, to watch over the racial purity of the SS; Central Office SS Court Hauptamt SS-Gericht), headed by Franz Breithaupt, to administer military justice in the SS and police; Central Office for Personnel (Personalhauptamt), headed by Maximilian von Herff; Central Office for Reich Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), headed by Reinhard Heydrich and later Ernst Kaltenbrunner; Central Office of the Order Police (Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei), headed by Kurt Daluege; Central Office for Economy and Administration (Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, or WVHA), headed by Oswald Pohl; Heißmeyer Office, headed by August Heißmeyer, for political education; Ethnic German Aid Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, or VOMI), headed by Werner Lorenz, to organize aid for ethnic Germans; and Central Office of the Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Ethnicity (Reichskommissar für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums), headed by Ulrich Greifelt, for the resettlement of ethnic Germans.

SS Ranks

The Sturmstaffel (SS) of the Nazi party rejected the use of the traditional terminology to describe military units and ranks. A regiment was thus designated a Standarte. Ranks above private, who was simply called SS Man, just added the word leader (führer) to the name of the unit; the commander of regiment, a colonel in the army, was thus a Standartenführer. When additional distinctions were required, the terms chief (haupt), senior (ober), and junior (unter) were added. The SS ranks included only one without an exact equivalence, the Oberführer. This use of the term leader also represented the SS emphasis on the leadership qualities required for officers. The following is a list of equivalencies between the SS and the United States Army:

Noncommissioned Officers:   Rottenführer Private First Class Unterscharführer Corporal Scharführer Sergeant Oberscharführer Staff Sergeant Hauptscharführer Technical Sergeant Sturmscharführer Master Sergeant     Commissioned Officers:   Untersturmführer Second Lieutenant Obersturmführer First Lieutenant Hauptsturmführer Captain Sturmbannführer Major Obersturmbannführer Lieutenant Colonel Standartenführer Colonel Oberführer Senior Colonel     General Officers:   Brigadeführer Brigadier General Gruppenführer Major General Obergruppenführer Lieutenant General Oberstgruppenführer General (Four Star)

Heinrich Himmler's title, Reichsführer SS (RFSS), was equivalent to a Field Marshal in the German army and a Five Star General in the U.S. Army.

The following is a list of equivalencies between the names of SS units, from which the titles of the officers commanding them are derived, and unit names in the U.S. Army:

Rotte Squad Schar Platoon Sturm Company Sturmbann Battalion Standarte Regiment Brigade Brigade Gruppe Division

These SS ranks, which were similar to those in the SA, applied to the General SS as well as to the Waffen SS. But individuals transferred from the General SS to the Waffen SS did not necessarily retain their exact ranks. Usually, their rank in the Waffen SS was much lower than the one they had held in the General SS; this applied, for example, when the staffs of the concentration camps as a group received Waffen SS reserve status during the war. Thus, the ranks of individual SS officers listed in documents from the pre-war years, when they were members of the General SS, will often be higher than those listed for the same individual in documents from the war years, when they were members of the Waffen SS. General officers often held equivalent ranks in both the General SS and the Waffen SS or in both the General SS and the Police.

Theresienstadt

The German name for the Czech town of Terezin, located about 40 miles from Prague. In mid-October 1941, Theresienstadt was converted into a ghetto for Jewish deportees en route to killing centers in the East. More than 140,000 European Jews (73,000 from Bohemia and Moravia, 42,000 from Germany, 16,000 from Austria, 5,000 Dutch Jews, and a small number of Danish Jews) were imprisoned in Theresienstadt. Approximately 35,000 Jews died in the ghetto, and 88,000 were redeported to the East. Barely 2,000 of the 15,000 children survived. The Soviet Army liberated Theresienstadt on May 8, 1945.

Theresienstadt, Little Fortress

The Little Fortress was a police prison created by the Prague Gestapo in June 1940, located across the Ohre river from the Theresienstadt ghetto. More than 32,000 political prisoners were held there between 1940 and 1945. Jews held in the Theresienstadt ghetto were at times also transferred to the Little Fortress for infractions of ghetto rules.

Westerbork

Transit camp in northeast Holland, created by the Dutch Ministry of Interior in October 1939. Initially, Westerbork held 750 German Jews interned after arrest for illegal border crossings in 1939. From July 1942, when the Germans took command of the camp, to December 1943, more than ninety trains left Westerbork for Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and Theresienstadt. These trains carried 88,363 Dutch and German Jews, and approximately 500 Dutch Gypsies to their deaths in the killing centers of the east.

by Sybil Milton