Maimonides (may mah nih deez) Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), a Spanish physician and philosopher who fled Muslim persecution by moving his family from Cordoba to Israel, then to Egypt, where he rose to the rank of royal physician. He codified Jewish law, formulated a Jewish creed, wrote scriptural commentary, and compiled a religious guide book.
meister (my stuhr) German for "master."
Metro (may troh) the Paris subway system.
mountebanks a phony, or fraud.
musulman (muh suhl m'n) Arabic for "one who surrenders." A synonym for Muslim or follower of Mohammedanism or Islam, the word becomes a prison term for a weak, despondent internee whom the selection committee is certain to relegate to the crematory.
Nazi (naht see) shortened form for a member of NSDAP (Nationalsozialische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), the German National Socialist party, which Anton Drexler, Dietrich Eckart, Karl Harrer, and Adolf Hitler inaugurated in 1920 as a racist, totalitarian oppressor of human rights. The shortened form of the party's title remained in use from 1930-1945 as a pejorative expressing the world's distaste for Hitler's thugs.
Nietzsche (nee chuh) Friedrich Nietzsche, a late nineteenth-century German philosopher who proclaimed "God is dead" and proposed the concept of the "superman," an idea that was misappropriated by the Nazis in order to justify their obsession with Aryan superiority.
Nyilas Hungary's fascist party.
Oberkapo (oh buhr kah poh) German for "overseer."
