When the Doves Disappeared (46 page)

Organisation Todt

The Third Reich’s construction and engineering corps, composed of civilian and military labor. The Todts were responsible for large construction sites both in Germany and in occupied and conquered areas, and they used slave labor.

Ostland

The Reichskommissariat Ostland was the German occupation authority for the parts of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Northern Poland that fell outside of combat areas from 1941 to 1944.

Reich Security Forces

The Reichssicherheitshauptamt. The Third Reich’s main security agency from 1939 to 1945 under the authority of the SS. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt included the Gestapo (secret police), the Sicherheitsdienst (SS intelligence service), and the Kriminalpolizei (criminal police).

Reval

The German name for Tallinn, Estonia.

Sicherheitsdienst

German for Security Service. The SS’s intelligence service.

SS

Schutzstaffeln der NSDAP. The military arm of the National Socialist Party.

SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt

The SS’s economic and governmental authority.

Todt

See Organisation Todt,
on
this page
.

Waffen-SS

A wing of the SS military forces.

Wehrmacht

The German National Socialist Army (1935–1945).

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S
OFI
O
KSANEN
is a Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright.
Purge
was her first novel to appear in English. She has received numerous prizes for her work, including the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, the Prix Femina, the Budapest Grand Prize, the European Book Prize, and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She lives in Helsinki.