The Language of Nazi Genocide: Linguistic Violence and the Struggle of Germans of Jewish Ancestry

by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan

• ISBN13: 9780521888660
• ISBN10: 0521888662
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-08-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the Nazi genocide of European Jews, words preceded, accompanied, and made mass murder possible. Using a multilayered approach to connect official language to everyday life, historian Thomas Pegelow Kaplan analyzes the role of language in genocide. This study seeks to comprehend how the perpetrators constructed difference, race, and their perceived enemies; how Nazi agencies communicated to the public through the nation's press; and how Germans of Jewish ancestry received, contested, and struggled for survival and self against remarkable odds. The Language of Nazi Genocide covers the historical periods of the late Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, and early postwar Germany. However, by addressing the architecture of conceptual separation between groups and the means by which social aggression is disseminated, this study offers a model for comparative studies of linguistic violence, hate speech, and genocide in the modern world.

Table of Contents

Introduction

'We are all Germans why then ask for religion âÇ ': cultural identity, language, and Weimar pluralism, 1928-1932

Towards the 'racial and social boundaries between Germans and Jews are to be strictly drawn âÇ ': dictatorship building and the process of Nazifying language, 1933

Towards the eradication of the 'impossible, untenable category of 'German Jews'': enforcing and contesting racial difference, 1935-1938

'The Jewess' attempted to 'state a case on her decent': linguistic violence as part of genocide, 1941-1945

'We are not bad Jews, because we believe we are good and true Germans âÇ ': another beginning and persisting difference, 1945-1948

Conclusion

Appendix

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.