Some words have a meaning; others have a history too. Let us retrace the words carved into one of the most painful pages in human history: the one bound to the Second World War and the Holocaust. From shoah to shalom, all the words to keep alive the chain of memory.

Arbeit Macht Frei

"Work sets you free" — the sign that hung at the entrance to Auschwitz.

Gestapo

The Nazis' secret state police. The power of the Gestapo most frequently abused was Schutzhaft, or protective custody — in practice, the power to imprison anyone without judicial proceedings, typically in concentration camps. Those imprisoned were even required to sign their own "Schutzhaftbefehl" (the document declaring that the person was being imprisoned): the signature was normally extracted through torture. The Gestapo helped control occupied areas of Europe and was responsible for identifying Jews, socialists, homosexuals and others for deportation to concentration camps. At the Nuremberg Trials the entire organisation was indicted and convicted of crimes against humanity.

Kapò

The term refers to the role of a prisoner to whom the management of the Nazi concentration or extermination camp to which they had been deported assigned supervisory functions over the other deportees. In women's camps the role of kapo was performed by Blokove (the only difference between Kapo and Blokova was gender).

Lager

The main extermination and concentration camps were Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor. The only Italian lager is the Risiera di San Sabba (Trieste).

Night of broken glass (Kristallnacht)

An emblematic starting date for the Shoah. On the night of 9–10 November 1938, in Germany, gangs of young Nazis incited by the Reich's antisemitic propaganda attacked shops, homes and synagogues in Jewish neighbourhoods, smashing windows, doors and storefronts.

Shalom

Peace.

Shoah

In Hebrew, it means "annihilation". It refers to the extermination of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. The Jewish community prefers this term to "Holocaust" — which could suggest the idea of a religious sacrifice. It was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews centrally organised by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. In 1933, approximately 9 million Jews lived in the 21 European countries that would subsequently be occupied by Germany. By 1945, at least two thirds had been killed. Among the victims of the genocide are also one and a half million Roma, at least 250,000 people with disabilities or illness, homosexuals and "undesirables".

Final solution (Endloesung der Judenfrage)

After "the night of broken glass", Goering convened a Nazi summit on 12 November 1938. Under discussion: the introduction of discriminatory measures against Jews. During the meeting, Goering announced: "I have received a letter written by the Fuehrer. The order is: the Jewish question is now to be coordinated and settled once and for all, one way or another." The path to the "Final Solution of the Jewish question" had been chosen. Extermination. And the cultural, organisational, bureaucratic machinery to carry it out was swiftly set in motion.

SS

Literally "SchutzStaffeln" (Protection Squads), it was Hitler's brutal party police. The Nuremberg Tribunal declared the SS "a criminal organisation", guilty of war crimes including the persecution and extermination of Jews, brutality and executions in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war.

T-4 (Euthanasia Programme)

Autumn 1939. The German government launched the "Euthanasie Programme" under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr Karl Brandt. The operational headquarters was in Berlin, at Tiergartenstrasse 4, from whose address the programme's code name derived: T-4. Between December 1939 and August 1941, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Germans — children and adults — terminally ill patients, people with disabilities, those with mental impairments and Jews were secretly killed after being taken from hospitals. The racial question was of the highest priority for the Nazis, and welfare provision for vulnerable individuals had to cease in order to make way for the protection of the health of the able-bodied population: "asumerzen" was the term used for the elimination of the weak, which was carried out by persuading trusted individuals and family doctors of the existence of an experimental system for treating people with disabilities (including severe ones).

Special treatment (Sonderbehandlung)

In the cruel language, darkly ironic, employed by the Nazis, the practice of killing their victims in the gas chambers.

Zyklon B

It was the trade name for hydrocyanic acid (or prussic acid), a pesticide used as a toxic agent in the gas chambers of certain Nazi concentration and extermination camps.