PARTISANS: Name given to Resistance fighters in eastern Europe, the Balkans (especially Yugoslavia) and Italy who waged guerrilla warfare on Germany’s rear troops. Many were encouraged by Stalin and supervised by Red Army officers.

PATRIOTIC FRONT: Party of Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg, who was deposed after the Anschluss in March 1938.

POL: Politisch. Nazi category of classification in the camps: political.

POLITISCHE ABTEILUNG: Political section of the camp. This is where deportees’ files and dossiers based on information provided by the Gestapo were located. When deportees arrived cards were made with their measurements, photos, fingerprints, etc. The PA conducted interrogations, torture and sometimes executions.

PPF: Parti Populaire Français. Party created before the war by Jacques Doriot. Closely associated with the collaboration, and in particular with recruiting the Légion des Volontaires Français contre le bolchevisme (Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism, LVF), whch fought with the Nazis on the Russian front.

PROMINENTE: name given in the camps to deportees with a “different status”. Most were political figures, members of royal families, relatives of heads of State and Hitler’s “personal prisoners”. At the end of the war some were used for prisoner exchanges.

PURGE: The CFLN set up a purge commission with the ordinance of 18 August 1943. The legal experts on the General Review Board, which answered to the CNR, drafted the texts. After the Liberation, des  courts and civic chambers were set up in each department. The ordinance of 26 August 1944 created a sentence of national indignity. The boards tried 350,000 people, of whom 7,037 were sentenced to death and 791 executed. At the same time, the Resistance summarily executed 8,000 to 9,000 people. In many towns and villages, women accused of collaboration were shaved and paraded naked through the streets.