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The Holocaust Survivor Who Deciphered Nazi Doublespeak
The personal papers of one of World War II’s earliest historians reveal an obsession with how Nazis distorted the German language
In August 1944, as soon as Soviet troops swept the Nazis out of eastern Poland, a group of Jewish intellectuals rushed to cities like Lublin and Lodz to begin collecting and recording, scouring for any trace of the still fresh horror that had taken their own loved ones. They wanted evidence. Among them was Nachman Blumental, a philologist obsessed with the uses and misuses of language
In every Nazi document he came across, he circled and underlined innocuous terms like “abgang” (exit) or “evakuierung” (evacuation). He knew what these words actually meant when they appeared in memos and bureaucratic forms: They were euphemisms for death. A mission of his own took shape: to reveal the ways the Nazis had used the German language to obscure the mechanics of mass murder and make genocide more palatable to themselves. We now have a glimpse into the mind of Blumental and his fellow survivor historians.
Unfortunately the cited article does not say exactly how he knew that it was doublespeak for death or extermination. I am sure that the Nazis did use coded language for the holocaust, but good scholarship requires more than "he knew".
I sometimes wonder why the Nazis tried to cover up the holocaust. If they really believed it was justified in their twisted logic then why cover it up? By covering it up they were essentially admitting that it was morally wrong. But if it was morally wrong, why do it? Apparently it was nation taken over by criminals.
I sometimes wonder why the Nazis tried to cover up the holocaust. If they really believed it was justified in their twisted logic then why cover it up? By covering it up they were essentially admitting that it was morally wrong. But if it was morally wrong, why do it? Apparently it was nation taken over by criminals.
You could do something which you considered morally correct, but believe it wise to conceal it because you recognize that the majority of others will disagree. President Bush might have believed that torturing suspected terrorists for information was morally correct, but tried to keep it secret because he was aware of the reaction revelation would (and did) cause.
And I shouldn't have to do this, but please note. None of this is me arguing on behalf of the Nazi's moral correctness, I am identifying their possible mindset, not advocating it.
Evacuation or resettlement. Keep the victims unaware. The band plays at Auschwitz to greet the new arrivals. Showers for the weary travelers. Only after the steel doors shut and the Zyklon B goes down the chute does the horror begin.
It's really not news that official Nazi documents used precise circumlocutions for most of their actions, even beyond those of the Holocaust.
All oppressive governments develop their own language. Some even have official propaganda outlets to pound the euphemisms and doubletalk into the public mind.
All of the above but also the "plausable deniability" insurance factor. Many German generals and Nazi Leadership knew the war was lost as early as 1942 and 1943, and they were preparing for that time when they would be held accountable for their crimes, or else they were hedging their bets. Signing a document called "final solution" would make it much easier to deny knowledge of what it actually was - mass murder.
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