British/American English, French and Italian use the terms "euthanasia", "euthanasie" and "eutanasia" respectively, a word derived from the Classical Greek "euthanasía" which means a "good" or "light" death in the sense of a pain-free, quick and also dignified death, as opposed to a slow, tortuous or undignified death. The term "Euthanasie" as a synonym for the German word "Sterbehilfe" (literally : assisted dying) has not succeeded in becoming common parlance in Germany due to its use throughout the national-socialist era to denote racist and eugenically motivated mass killings of then so-called "life unworthy of life" - ill and disabled people - as part of the Nazis' "Euthanasia Programme". Concerns that allowing euthanasia, especially in its active form, could lead to such "forced euthanasia" play an important role in the German euthanasia debate (cf. section II of this text: Permissibility of active euthanasia).