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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall, memorial to the victims of the Holocaust . Designed by architect James Ingo Freed, it opened in 1993. Using a stark, harsh architectural vocabulary of industrial forms and unadorned materials, the building itself ser...
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Holocaust
Holocaust , name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany. Although anti-Semitism in Europe has a long history, persecution of German Jews began with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Jews were disenfranchised, then terrorized in anti-Jewish riots (such a...
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Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann , 1906-62, German National Socialist official. A member of the Austrian Nazi party, he headed the Austrian office for Jewish emigration (1938). His zeal in deporting Jews brought him promotion (1939) to chief of the Gestapo's Jewish section. Eichmann promoted the use of gas chambers f...
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Diaspora
Diaspora [Gr.,=dispersion], term used today to denote the Jewish communities living outside the Holy Land. It was originally used to designate the dispersal of the Jews at the time of the destruction of the first Temple (586 BC) and the forced exile [Heb.,=Galut] to Babylonia (see Babylonian capti...
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eugenics
eugenics , study of human genetics and of methods to improve the inherited characteristics, physical and mental, of the human race. Efforts to improve the human race through bettering housing facilities and other environmental conditions are known as euthenics.
Sir Francis Galton , who intro...
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Judaism
Judaism A monotheistic world religion with origins in the prophetic activities of the Jews in relation to the God Yahweh. It is important to distinguish early biblical Judaism, before the fall of the Temple in 70CE, and later Judaism which was focused on the synagogue. Judaism was organized around r...
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chemical warfare
chemical warfare employment in war of incendiaries, poison gases , and other chemical substances. Ancient armies attacking or defending fortified cities threw burning oil and fireballs. A primitive type of flamethrower was employed as early as the 5th cent. BC; modern types are still in use. In ...
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reparations
reparations payments or other compensation offered as an indemnity for loss or damage. Although the term is used to cover payments made to Holocaust survivors and to Japanese Americans interned during World War II in so-called relocation camps (and used as well to describe compensation sought by ...
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Paul Adolph Volcker
Paul Adolph Volcker 1927-, American economist, government official, and banker, b. Cape May, N.J. After working as an under secretary in the Treasury Department (1969-74) and as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank (1975-79), he was appointed the chairman of the Board of Governors of the ...
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John Paul II
John Paul II 1920-2005, pope (1978-2005), a Pole (b. Wadowice) named Karol Józef Wojtyła; successor of John Paul I . He was the first non-Italian pope elected since the Dutch Adrian VI (1522-23) and the first Polish and Slavic pope. Ordained a priest in 1946, he earned doctorates in ...
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