1. Knowledge Organiser: Holocaust
Key terms
Death Camps
The death camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau were constructed to murder as many human beings as quickly as possible, within hours of their arrival.
Concentration camp
A prison where there was ill treatment and beatings but not murder on the scale of the death camps.
Prejudice
An unreasonable dislike and distrust of people who are different from you in some way, especially because of their race, sex, religion etc
Anti-Semitism
The hatred and persecution of the Jews
Ghetto
A small sealed-off section of a town or city in which Jews were forced to live.
Synagogue
The Jewish place of worship
Final solution
the complete extermination of all Jews under German control.
Partisans
Groups of civilians fighting against an enemy who has occupied their country;
Genocide
The destruction of a particular race.
Aryan
Hitler spread his beliefs in racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic race"—what he called an Aryan "master race." He pronounced that his race must remain pure in order to one day take over the world. For Hitler, the ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
Resistance
The action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with.
Boycott
To refuse to but from, or use the services of a particular group – in this case Germany’s Jews.
Perpetrator
Are the people who played a specific role in the formulation or implementation of anti-Jewish measure.
Collaborator
Used in reference to those who cooperated with the Nazis in the extermination of Europe’s Jews and other racial polices.
Bystander
people who ‘saw or heard something of the event’, but took no action. SS
the Nazis military police force, responsible for intelligence, central security, policing and the extermination of those people the Nazis considered to be ‘undesirable’.
Key Dates
1933
The Nazis called on Germans to boycott Jewish businesses and professionals such as dentists and doctors.
1935
Nuremburg Laws – Hitler passed a number of laws that meant that Jewish people were no longer German citizens and no longer had any rights in Germany. For example Jews were banned from marrying non Jews and could no longer use public facilities such as swimming pools and resturants.
1938
Kristallnacht - the Night of Broken Glass
On 7th November 1938 over 8,000 Jewish businesses and 200 synagogues were destroyed. Over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps
Key Topics
Holocaust
The mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–5. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz.
Auschwitz
Located in German-occupied Poland, Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. It was a complex of camps, including a concentration, extermination, and forced-labour camp.
At least 1.3 million Jews were sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million died.
Located in German-occupied Poland, Auschwitz was the largest complex in this camp system and comprised three main sites:
Auschwitz I was a concentration camp, where victims were subjected to terrible medical experiments.
Buna-Monowitz was a factory system which used slave labour to produce synthetic oil and rubber for the German war effort.
Auschwitz II – Birkenau served as a concentration camp and as a death camp.
Key People
Heinrich Himmler
Head of the SS,,was in overall charge of the ‘Final Solution’.
Adolf Hitler
(1889–1945) was the German leader of the Nazis during World War II. He was responsible for the Holocaust as well as starting World War II by invading Poland in Born in Austria, Hitler served in the German army during World War I. He was shocked by Germany's defeat.
Winston Churchill
( ) served as the prime minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to He led Britain's fight against Nazi Germany in World War II. Churchill was a talented orator, giving many stirring speeches to boost national morale during the war.

2. GCSE Key Skill focus: