The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive

Antisemitism is the belief that Jews are an inferior people and therefore undeserving of basic human rights. An individual holding such prejudices is termed an antisemite. Though antisemitism had a long history in Europe, it took on a newly pseudoscientific character in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, paving the way for Nazi propaganda when the party took power.

The term “Aryan” has a long and complex history and was initially a self-designation by early Indo-Iranian peoples. Because these peoples spoke languages related to most modern European languages, the term came to be associated with “Proto-Indo-Europeans”—i.e., a group of prehistoric people who presumably dispersed throughout Europe and parts of Asia, giving rise to today’s various Indo-European languages. After accruing racial supremacist associations, the term was ultimately co-opted by Adolf Hitler, who glorified Germans as members of a chosen Aryan race that excluded ethnic/racial groups such as Jewish, Black, Romani, and Slavic peoples.

Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in present-day northern Germany. It was originally established as a prisoner of war camp in 1943.