TerminologyScholars of the Shoah often find that familiarity with a glossary of the Holocaust is helpful when studying it. For example the Nazis used euphemisms such as "sonderbehandlung fuer die MentschenStuffen" (special treatment of Human materials) to refer to management of the logistics of deportation to murder camps for exterminations. Also terms such as Die Juedenfrage (Jewish Question) and its soluiton (Endloesung zu die Judenfrage) had historical precedent in the lexicon of the Catholic (encyclicals) Church to the Jew Bill in 1753 in England, to the Tzars to Karl Marx. While St Augestine forecasted 1/3 of Jews would convert, 1/3 would be murdered in pogroms, and 1/3 would remain to witness the 2nd coming, the Nazis sought to end this question, and murder all Jews (Vernichtung alles die Jueden in die ganzen Welt) without remainder (ohne rest). Terms such as Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) also carried a whole ideology as Himmler told, the Einsatzgruppen ""You know what it is to see millions of Jewish corpses before your eyes, and not to feel compassion, that is our highest virtue." [Sie wissen, was es ist, Millionen von Leichen/Kropsen zu sehen vor Deinen Augen, und nicht die mitleiden haben und auf die Barmherzigkeit fühlen. Das ist unsere höchste Tugend] Thus in Nazi ideology it was a virtue (Tugend) to murder Jews and remain unmoved, unfeeling, & stoical to the scene of the bloodbath. The term Gestapo was more than a police unit. the German state secret police during the Nazi regime, organized in 1933 were notorious for its brutal methods and operations of torture to illicit confession or just for inflicting mindless pain and suffering on their victims, in historical trajectory with the Romans who tortured the 10 martyrs, the Inquisition, and the violence of Tach veTat (1648) where about 100,000 Jews were murdered along the Dnieper river, Rabbi Nathan of Hanover in the Scroll of Agnony noting how pregnant women were cut open and their children burned and eaten. Jean Amery in his memoir, "One who has been overcome" [Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten.] describes how the Gestapo beat him into a coma with a shovel almost killing him, and foreever causing him to loose trust in human beings, the mitmensch (fellow man) now a gegenmentsch.
