Some definitions:

Appell:

Roll call. Roll call in a concentration camp served as a means of torturing prisoners by forcing them to endure hours of standing. Roll call occurred before dawn, when work crews were formed, and again at dusk, after prisoners returned from work.



Appellplatz:

A place in the camp where roll call was conducted.



Badeanstalt:

Bathhouse. Some concentration camps contained actual bathhouses where prisoners were given showers and issued uniforms. However, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, signs with the word "Badeanstalt"were posted at the camp's four crematoria as a means of deceiving prisoners.



Blockalteste:

A barrack supervisor, a prisoner responsible for roll call, food distribution and general order in the barrack.



Frauenskonzentrationslager (F.K.L.):

Women's camp. Two sections at Auschwitz-Birkenau (B1a and B1b) were set aside for female prisoners. Their intended combined capacity was 12,000; however, at the peak of operations in July 1944, the two sections held nearly 50,000 prisoners.



Gestapo:

German secret police. Formed in 1933 under Hermann Goering, the Gestapo was later combined with the SS under Heinrich Himmler. Together with the SS, the Gestapo implemented policies of terror and extermination in Poland and other occupied countries.



Kapo:

A male or female prisoner-functionary responsible for supervising a work crew or assisting a Blockalteste in maintaining order in the barracks.



Kinderlager:

Children's camp. Ordinarily, all children under the age of fifteen arriving at Auschwitz were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Because of a recurring shortage of Zyklon B gas, however, some were permitted to stay with their mothers in the F.K.L. until a section of the former Gypsy camp opened to children in August 1944 and there they awaited their fate. The Kinderlager initially consisted of several barracks in the south end of the Gypsy camp, next to Dr. Josef Mengele's medical camp. By January, 1945, when Auschwitz was liberated, it was reduced to one barrack for 600 children under eighteen years old, of whom 180 were under age fifteen.



Musulmann (singular) or Musulmanner (plural):

German for Muslim. The term carried no religious significance in the camp; it signified prisoners who were bent over as if in prayer, an advanced symptom of starvation.



Pogrom:

Russian for "devastation". An organized or government sanctioned mob attack on a racial or religious minority. Although originating in czarist Russia, such attacks against Jews occurred frequently in prewar Europe. An example is Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), that occurred on November 9, 1938. On Kristallnacht, thousands of Jewish-owned businesses and hundreds of synagogues in Germany and Austria were destroyed.



SS (abbreviation Schutzsaffel):

A unit of the Nazi party created originally to serve as bodyguards to Adolf Hitler. Later expanded under Himmler, the SS took charge of intelligence, central security, policing action, and the staffing of the concentration camps.



Sammlungsstelle:

Collection place. After liquidating the ghettos in Polish cities and towns, the Germans converted empty buildings into use for collecting personal belongings of the deported Jews for shipment

to the Third Reich.



Selection:

The choosing of people to live and die. Since only those that worked had the right to live, prisoner's barracks were regularly subjected to selections. Selections also took place at labor camps and at Auschwitz SS doctors selected prisoners to be gassed or injected with phenol.



Sonderkommando:

Prisoner work crew assigned to crematorium for the gassing and burning of bodies.



Transport:

A train or truck used to convey people to a concentration camp or other place of death or execution.



Wehrmacht:

The regular German army. Literally translates to "war maker".



Zigeunerlager:

Gypsy camp. At the peak of operations the camp (B11e at Auschwitz) held about 20,000 Gypsy prisoners. This camp was liquidated in July 1944 and it then became the Kinderlager.

Seventy years ago today...

Somber thought:
On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland and British and French troops were put on alert. Meanwhile, in Britain, Operation Pied Piper began, the largest mass movement of human beings in Britain's history. Operation Pied Piper evacuated 1.5million children, women, pensioners (senior citizens) and the chronically ill to places of safety, i.e. the country, in four days.