Glossary

State employment offices were established during the Weimar Republic with the task of placing people in work. From 1933 they became an instrument of National Socialist labour policy. Employment offices played a role in the persecution of people who for various reasons refused to take up work; they withdrew their welfare benefits and reported them to the police. In World War Two, German employment offices were involved in the deportation of forced labourers and in the Holocaust. 

The Nazis used the term »euthanasia« (from the Ancient Greek for »good death«) to describe the murder of people with mental or physical disabilities. In the framework of »Operation T4«, in 1940–1941 doctors and nursing staff killed more than 70,000 patients with mental and physical disabilities living in institutional settings.  Following public protests, the programme was officially terminated, but it continued in secret. By 1945 around 300,000 patients across Europe had been murdered in killing institutions through lethal doses of medication or deliberate starvation.

Extermination camps (»Vernichtungslager«) were established by the National Socialists to systematically murder Jews, Sinti and Roma, and other targeted groups deemed undesirable. Between 1941 and 1945, the SS established eight death camps in occupied Poland and Belarus. These camps were designed for the rapid and mass murder of people without first exploiting their labour. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered, around 2.7 million perished in the extermination camps.