Notes

The crime of genocide has been committed or attempted many times in recorded history. The best-known example in this century was the systematic effort carried on by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and '40s to destroy the Jewish population of Europe. By the end of World War II some 6 million Jews had been killed in Nazi concentration camps.
The preamble to the convention declares that in all periods of history “genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity,“ and that it is the aim of the contracting parties to eliminate genocide through international cooperation.
--Discovery Education, Genocide, Funk & Wagnalls
(Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police), common designation of the terrorist political police of the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945; technically, however, the term refers only to its executive branch.
The Gestapo was founded by Hermann Göring in April 1933.
Its new purpose was to persecute all political opponents of the Nazi regime (including dissenting Nazis), not only defensively, in cases of oppositional acts, but also preventively, in cases of suspected or potential opposition.
thus preparing it to serve as a nearly omnipotent tool for Hitler's racist and terrorist plans in Nazi-controlled Europe, including extermination policies against Jews and other “undesirables.“
--Discovery Education, Gestapo, Funk & Wagnalls
The security police had the authority to arrest anyone and to commit that person to a camp for an indefinite period. The political police, known as the Gestapo, imposed “protective custody” on a wide variety of political opponents: Communists, socialists, religious dissenters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Jews. During the 1930s six major camps were established: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and, for women, Ravensbrück. In 1939 these camps held about 25,000 prisoners. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Gross Rosen, Stutthof, Lublin-Majdanek, Hinzert, Vught, Dora, and Bergen-Belsen. Millions of prisoners entered these camps: Jews, partisans, Soviet prisoners of war, and impressed foreign laborers. More than 4 million persons, the majority of whom were Jews, perished in the Nazi camps. (Millions of Jews were also exterminated outside the camps.)
--Discovery Education, Concentration Camp, Funk & Wagnalls