1. Do Now:
Read through the vocab sheet. Star every word you know, and put a question mark next to those you do not.

2. Holocaust Vocabulary
Not all of these terms are in the book, but all are essential if you are to entirely understand the Holocaust and its effect on the world

3. Aryan:
Term used by the Nazis to describe northern European physical characteristics (such as blonde hair and blue eyes) as racially “superior”

4. Concentration Camp:
Camps in which Jews were imprisoned by the Nazis, located in Germany and Nazi- occupied Europe. There were three different kinds of camps: transit, labor and extermination. Many prisoners in concentration camps died within months of arriving from violence or starvation.

5. Final Solution:
Term used by the Nazis to describe their plan to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.

6. Fuhrer:
German word for “leader”; adopted by Adolf Hitler during his rise to power.

7. Gas Chambers:
Large, sealed rooms (usually with shower nozzles) used for murdering prisoners of concentration camps; many people were led into gas chambers with the belief they were going in to take a shower.

8. Gestapo:
The secret state police of the German army, organized to stamp out any political opposition.

9. Ghetto:
A section of a city where Jews were forced to live, usually with several families living in one house, separated from the rest of the city by walls or wire fences, and used primarily as a station for gathering Jews for deportation to concentration camps.

10. Holocaust:
Term first used in the late 1950s to describe the systematic torture and murder of approximately six million European Jews and millions of other "undesirables" by the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945.

11. Mein Kampf:
Hitler’s autobiography in which he outlined his ideas, beliefs and plans for the future of Germany.

12. Nazi:
Name for members of the NSDAP, National Socialist Democratic Workers Party, who believed in the idea of Aryan supremacy

13. Socialism:  
a social system or theory in which the government owns and controls the means of production (as factories) and distribution of goods.

14. Third Reich:
The Third Empire; name given to the Nazi regime in Germany; Hitler boasted that the Third Reich would reign for 1,000 years.

15. Antisemitism:
dislike or hatred of the Jews

16. Communism:
 a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property

17. Fascism:
a political system headed by a dictator in which the government controls business and labor and opposition is not permitted.

18. The Book Thief

19. Who is the Narrator?

20. Discuss with your table Group:
Why would Zusak cast death as the narrator of this story?
What can this narrator do that an average human narrator could not?

21. The Path to Nazi Genocide
Watch the clip and take notes: