Nazisprache—“Nazispeak”—constitutes a particular branch of linguistics, the study of the language deployed by the bureaucracy of the Third Reich. Some like to say the German language was irreparably harmed, but language doesn’t harm itself any more than a persecuted minority spontaneously self-destructs. Nazisprache is active because it’s indispensable.
Take the noun Entfernung. It’s composed of the prefix ent-, whose main function is to convey completion, and the adjective fern, distance. Entfernen, then, in its verbal form, can simultaneously mean: “to remove, to expel,” and: “to keep at a distance.” Its Nazimeaning is: “exterminate,” a linguistic net so wide that Heinrich Himmler, on October 4, 1943, in his address to the SS, had to reach for the barbaric Judenevakuieren. Barbaric in the literary sense, I mean.
Entfernung. Meaning, simultaneously: “expelled” and: “barred from entry.” The first describes the people of Palestine in the Nakba; the second, refugees attempting to enter Europe and the US today; the two together describe those Jews who were simultaneously pushed out of Europe and refused entry everywhere; and Gazans today who are simultaneously threatened with removal and denied a destination. Every effort is made to encourage them to leave and every effort to discourage them from arriving, but:
WOID XXIII-47
April 7, 2024