Nazi euphemistic language worked through concealment while drawing on long-standing German words

Evidence

In a later issue of Yad Vashem Studies, in Shaul Esh’s “Words and their Meaning: 25 Samples from the Nazi-Idiom,” this language, lashon, here translated as “idiom,” functions on many levels: renewal (these are new words or older words with a new meaning: blutlich, Eindeutschung, Entjudung, Vernichtungstelle, etc.), hiding and obscuring (these are the words that Hillberg also mentions: Abwanderung, Ausscheidung, etc.), and so on. Esh includes other functions that seem to come down to some form of other of concealment (Endlosung, Sonderbehandlung, etc.). Joining Blumenthal in emphasizing the novelty and even uniqueness of the Nazi language (e.g. Sterntrager, besternter), Esh nonetheless points out the continuity that exists between the “previous” German language and Nazi German (the word Untermensch, for example, was not only in usage long before the Nazis, but began its renewed career within Nazi circles as a word against “inner” enemies such as the SA. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 1189

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider Nazi-language literature (Klemperer’s LTI, Lang on language as genocide’s agent) that recurs through this chapter.