concentration camps: Camps established for the imprisonment of Nazi "enemies." The first camps were built in 1933, the year in which Hitler came to power. Originally established for Nazi political opponents (communists, socialists), camps eventually held Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, the mentally handicapped, and criminals. The Nazis imprisoned Jews simply for being Jewish and others for their "deviant" lifestyles. Prisoners never received trials before their arrival at camps. Conditions were horribly harsh, and hundreds of thousands died from starvation, disease, and maltreatment.

ghetto: A quarter of a city in which Jews were forced to live. During World War II, Jews wee forced to live in isolated sections of certain European cities.. Nazis built large walls or strung barbed wire around ghetto boundaries to stop Jews from escaping. Jews living in ghettos needed special permission to leave. Inside ghetto walls, life was difficult and dangerous: overcrowding, malnutrition, manual labor, and violent treatment at the hands of Nazi soldiers were common.

Gypsy: A member of a race of nomadic people who are believed to have originally come from northern India and first arrived in Europe around the fifteenth century. Evidence of their persecution spans hundreds of years. The Nazis considered all Gypsies to be criminals, and hoped to rid Germany of these "deviants." As many as 500,000 Gypsies died in Nazi concentration and death camps. Other terms for Gypsy are Roma or Sinti.

Hitler, Adolph: The leader of the Nazi party and the master-mind behind the Holocaust. Hitler became chancellor, or chief, or Germany in 1933. Hitler also commanded the Nazi forces. He killed himself in 1945 when he realized that Germany would not win the war.

Holocaust: The systematic and planned murder of six million European Jews and millions of others by Nazis during the years 1941-1945. The term "Holocaust" is a Greek word meaning "fire which consumes all lives." The Hebrew word for Holocaust is Shoah.