The Tin Drum (89 page)

Kyffhäuser Bund:
a right-wing, monarchist, ex-servicemen's association of a paramilitary nature founded in 1900. Its merger with other servicemen's groups after World War I resulted in a combined membership of over four million.

Matka Boska Częstochowska (Black Madonna of Częstochowa):
an icon representing the Virgin Mother which hangs in a monastery church in Częstochowa and is traditionally believed to have been painted by Saint Luke. Its miraculous power is said to be responsible for the lifting of a Swedish siege in the seventeenth century. One of the most famous religious and national shrines in Poland, it is still visited annually by throngs of pilgrims.

Narses (478-573):
along with Belisarius, one of the great generals in the service of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I.

Niemöller, Pastor Martin (1882-1984):
a Protestant clergyman and the leading figure in the anti-Nazi Confessional Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.

Pan Kichot:
Polish for Don Quixote.

Pay book:
unlike American soldiers, who carried no identification but their dog tags, German soldiers carried a booklet containing full information as to their vital statistics, military history, and pay.

Peace of Oliva (1660):
a treaty that cost Poland considerable territory. Seven years later the Ukraine was ceded to Russia.

Persil:
a popular German brand of laundry detergent invented in 1907.

Poland is not yet lost, etc.:
in reference to the Polish national anthem ("Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginęła").

Prince Eugen:
François-Eugene, Prince of Savoy-Carignan (1663-1736), a famous military commander and patron of the arts who served three Hapsburg emperors with great distinction.

Prince Heinrich at the Helm (Prinz Heinrich steht am Steuerrad):
a well-known German song—"ein Volk, das solche Fürsten hat, das leidet keine Not" (a Volk that has such princes lacks for nothing).

Rauschning, Hermann (1887-1982):
the president of the Danzig Senate, 19331934. Rauschning ended his association with Hitler and the National Socialists in 1934 when he became opposed to the policies of the Danzig Gauleiter Forster. He fled from Germany in 1936 and subsequently wrote several books criticizing the Nazi regime.

Realm of the Mothers:
a reference to Goethe's
Faust II
(1832).

Rentenmark:
the temporary currency established in 1923 to stabilize money during the inflationary period in Germany following World War I.

Röhm putsch:
an alleged SA plot against Hitler in 1934 led by Ernst Röhm (1887-1934), used as an excuse for purging the SA on the "Night of the Long Knives."

Rommel's asparagus (Rommelspargel):
Early in 1944, under the direction of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), the Germans built a series of reinforced concrete pillboxes housing machine guns and light artillery along the beaches of Normandy to strengthen the Atlantic Wall. The beaches themselves were mined and provided with antitank obstacles, including slanted poles with sharpened tops, which the troops called "Rommelspargel."

Rydz-Śmigły, Edward (1886-1941):
a Polish political figure, the General Inspector of Poland's armed forces during the invasion of Poland in 1939.

SA (Sturmabteilung):
a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. These "stormtroopers" played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. They were often referred to as "brownshirts," from the color of their uniforms. The SA differed from the SS (Schutzstaffel), who were directly loyal to Hitler, by being seemingly more independent.

Sauerbruch, Professor Ferdinand (1875-1951):
a famous German surgeon.

Schwedensprung:
a site from which the Swedes launched a major attack against Poland in the seventeenth century.

Sea marker (Seezeichen):
a tall mast with nautical insignia marking the entrance to a harbor—here, the entrance from the Baltic into the Mottlau River.

Siegfried Line:
the defensive military line, called the West Wall by the Germans, built during the 1930s, opposite the French Maginot Line.

Speicherinsel:
an island formed by the Mottlau River in the middle of Danzig, so called because of its famous half-timbered grain warehouses.

Spinach shirts of the PX (Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ's name):
members of this religious movement wore green shirts.

SS (Schutzstaffel):
the SS ("Shield Squadron") grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force of almost a million men directly loyal to Hitler and the Nazi Party, with almost as much political influence as the German Army. Built upon Nazi racial ideology, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler's command, was responsible for most of the worst crimes of the Nazi Party, and was the primary organization that enacted the Holocaust.

Störtebeker:
the nickname of the leader of the Dusters. Klaus Störtebeker (ca. 1360-1401) led a group of privateers hired during a war between Denmark and Sweden to fight the Danish and supply the besieged Swedish capital, Stockholm, with provisions.

Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude):
a Nazi organization that provided regimented leisure for members of the German working class. It provided theater, sports, travel, and vacation opportunities at reduced prices. No organized social or recreational group was allowed to function in Germany except under the control of this official, all-embracing organization.

Sütterlin script:
the standard German script developed by Ludwig Sütterlin (1865-1917) and taught in schools from 1915 to 1945.

Swedish punch:
a form of torture in which peasants were forced to drink warm urine.

Todt Organization:
the organization directed by the engineer Fritz Todt (18911942) which conscripted forced labor—often children—for construction work, notably on the fortification of the West Wall (Siegfried Line) in 1938 and the Atlantic Wall in 1940.

Vyazma and Bryansk:
two important engagements in the Battle of Moscow (1941-1942).

Wessel, Horst (1907-1930):
a German Nazi activist who was made a posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent death in 1930. He was the author of the song usually known as the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" (Horst Wessel Song), which became the Nazi Party anthem and Germany's official co-national anthem from 1933 to 1945.

Wiechert, Ernst (1887-1950):
a German writer popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

Winter Aid (Winterhilfe):
the major Nazi charity, set up under the slogan "War on Hunger and Cold," to which the German people made compulsory contributions.

Women's Association (NS-Frauenschaft):
a Nazi organization for women. Gymnastics, including swinging Indian clubs, was a favorite form of exercise for such organizations.

Yellow cross:
another name for mustard gas, first used in World War I.

Young Volk (Jungvolk):
Nazi youth organization for ten- to fourteen-year-olds.

ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa):
"Jewish Combat Organization," an underground movement formed in the ghetto in 1942-1943.