University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online
Theses and Dissertations
Summer 2015
What's metaphor got to do with it? Troping and
counter-troping in Holocaust victim language
Joseph Steinitz
University of Iowa
Copyright 2015 Joseph Steinitz
This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1910
Recommended Citation
Steinitz, Joseph. "What's metaphor got to do with it? Troping and counter-troping in Holocaust victim language." PhD (Doctor of
Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2015.
http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1910.
Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd
Part of the Communication Commons
WHAT’S METAPHOR GOT TO DO WITH IT?
TROPING AND COUNTER - TROPING IN HOLOCAUST VICTIM
LANGUAGE
by
Joseph Steinitz
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Communication Studies in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
August 2015
Thesis Supervisor: Professor Emeritus David Depew
Copyright by
JOSEPH STEINITZ
2015
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
__________________________
PH.D. THESIS
____________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Joseph Steinitz
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy
degree in Communication Studies at the August 2015 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ____________________________________
David Depew, Thesis Supervisor
____________________________________
David Hingstman
____________________________________
Takis Poulakos
____________________________________
Kristine Munoz
____________________________________
Timothy Havens
To My Mother and Father
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who have supported me
while I worked on this this project, both academically and personally.
I wish to thank my committee members for their contributions. Firstly,
David Depew, who stood by me throughout these years and embraced the project
as if it was his own. David guided me to take what I learned about Hannah
Arendt’s philosophy and the philosophy of rhetoric and apply it to my claim about
the role of metaphor in the Holocaust. His commitment is what made this happen.
David Hingstman showed me how to understand difficult concepts in rhetorical
studies and create a lexicon of my own that became the building block of the
theory chapter. Tim Havens’ interest in the Holocaust and the support he gave for
this project stressed for me that the project is in fact important. Kristine Fitch’s
help for this project includes building my ability to approach this project by
embracing the observational tools that an ethnographer uses and teaching me how
to read a text through a critical eye, and more importantly, be able to analyze
metaphor in an interdisciplinary manner. Takis Poulakos introduced me to the
splendor of classical rhetoric and taught me how to approach reading theories of
metaphor so that they can better my analysis of Holocaust metaphors.
Finally, I wish to extend a special thank you to my parents, Yona and
Rony, who proved to me time and time again their unconditional parental love.
Despite the hardships and doubts, they continued to motivate and support my
efforts to finish this project. I will be forever grateful to them.
iii
ABSTRACT
This project examines the rhetorical functionality of metaphors created
and used by victims of Nazi terror during the Holocaust. Exploring the link
between knowledge, thought and language, along with an examination of
metaphors used by Nazi victims, leads to the definition that metaphor is a vital
tool creator of meaning, not merely “ornamental.” The project first aims to stress
the importance of grounding theories that highlight the strong relationship
between metaphors and the culture they develop in. By defining metaphor as a
trope possible of not only describing, but also shaping the reality of its users, I
argue that studying metaphors used by victims in the camps can reveal how they
either retained or gained a certain degree agency through the performative use of
language. I claim that victims created and used language to their advantage in a
way that enabled their survival. Through this lens, victim power and agency can
be evaluated in terms of language from a specifically rhetorical theory that
stresses the always-active language user.
The research is a rhetorical-textual analysis of the discourse of the
Holocaust through an examination of metaphors used by the victims and collected
from survivor testimonies found in the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral
History Archive at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The theoretical
perspective from which I approach this archive draws on an interdisciplinary
theoretical background that includes the fields of communication, rhetoric,
philosophy, linguistics, and social-psychological cognitive research, as well as
Holocaust studies.
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The rhetorical analysis of testimonies in the first phase includes extracting
metaphors from Holocaust testimonies, identifying their vehicle terms, and
finally, determining their functions in camp discourse. The metaphors are then
grouped into five major metaphors that illustrate the functionality of victimcreated metaphors and then analyzed in an aim to illustrate both the troping of
new metaphors and the counter-troping of Nazi-created metaphors as a
perfromative form of gaining agency. The use of these metaphors also functions
as agency-gaining devices after the Holocaust among survivors making sense of
their past experiences. The subsequent conclusion is that for those seeking to
understand the Holocaust, metaphors are an important key necessary for
comprehending the horrific realities that survivors are trying to express.
The project aims to introduce a new rhetorical lens to uncovering
historical events such as the Holocaust. The twentieth century saw other regimes
of terror intended to eliminate groups of people creating situations in which
lexical voids are created, such as the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides. Since
those historical events involve violence in such extreme measures that speakers
turn to metaphor in order to both describe their horrific reality and gain agency
against their oppressors, it is vital that we identify and define a methodology to
uncover truths through metaphor.
v
PUBLIC ABSTRACT
The dissertation examines metaphors created and used by victims of Nazi
terror during the Holocaust and aims to prove that metaphors have a vital role as
linguistic tools that allowed the victims to, not only communicate, but also make
sense of a world of terror that cannot be described using available language. A
thorough historical definition of metaphor is explored to situate it as more than a
poetic tool used by authors to enhance text, but rather a creator of meaning,
specifically in extreme or rare situations in which communicators cannot find
words to describe emotions or their surroundings.
In order to examine the linguistic atmosphere in which victims created and
used, it was necessary to examine the place the Nazi-created metaphors and Nazi
language rules had on the ability of the victims to remain active human
communicators. Existing Holocaust research on victim use of language further
directed this research to stress the functions of metaphor creation and use.
The dissertation includes an examination of hundreds of existing
interviews from archives used to find mentions of metaphor in Holocaust survivor
testimony. The research chose to focus on five metaphors that illustrated the
creation and use of metaphors under Nazi rule. The results stressed the important
role that metaphors had for the victims in making sense of the horrors they
experienced. The research also concluded that survivors continue to use the
metaphors till this day, making the comprehension of these metaphors vital to any
attempt to fully understand the Holocaust.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
INTRODUCTION: WHY METAPHORS MATTER.
THE NEED FOR A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF METAPHORS
USED BY VICTIMS OF NAZI TERROR ..................................................1
Preview ........................................................................................................1
Sources and Rhetorical Analysis ...............................................................15
Project Overview .......................................................................................26
II.
DEFINING METAPHOR: EARLY DEFINITIONS AND WHY THE
ORNAMENTAL CONCEPTION FAILS…………………….…………31
Introduction: The Relevance of Metaphor Theory to the Language
of the Holocaust .........................................................................................31
Traditional Ideas about Metaphor ..............................................................33
Interpreting Aristotle’s Rhetoric Ornamentally .........................................35
The Ornamental Metaphor in Arendt’s Theory of Language ....................37
A Second Look at Aristotle........................................................................39
III.
TOWARDS A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF METAPHOR ............45
Introduction ................................................................................................45
Dismissing the Ornamental: A Non-God’s-eye-view to Metaphor ...........46
“Metaphorizing” it .....................................................................................49
Representation............................................................................................51
Contemporary Perspective on Metaphor ...................................................53
Initial Anthropological Approaches and New Human Experience
Classification..............................................................................................55
Saussure, Peirce and Semiotic Connections to Metaphor ..........................62
Metaphor as a Cognitive Process ...............................................................66
From Theory to Practice- Constructing a Metaphor Methodology ...........69
The Thought Behind the Metaphor ............................................................73
Towards a Contemporary Model of Metaphor ..........................................77
A Contemporary Metaphor Model.............................................................79
Conclusion .................................................................................................83
IV.
A DATABASE FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE
DURING THE HOLOCAUST ..................................................................84
Preview ......................................................................................................84
Perry’s Infestation Metaphors ....................................................................87
Arendt’s “Language Rules” .......................................................................89
Michael and Doerr’s Nazi-Deutsch ...........................................................92
Burke’s Origins of Hate and the Language of Trained Incapacity ............96
Friedlander’s Nazi Metaphors at Work and Victim-created Metaphors ....98
vii
Klemperer’s Diary- the Fine Line between Nazi
and Victim Language ...............................................................................102
Kershaw and a Structuralist Approach to Nazi Metaphor .......................104
Attia’s Victim-Created Metaphors and Understanding ...........................105
Performativity ..........................................................................................107
Primary Sources .......................................................................................109
Michael and Doerr’s Lexicon of Nazi- Nazi-Deutsch .............................110
Julio Szeferblum’s “Lager” Lexicon .......................................................111
The Yiddish “Lager” Journals .................................................................113
The Interviews- Voices/Vision and USHMM Archives ..........................115
Conclusion ...............................................................................................115
V.
METAPHORS IN HOLOCAUST SURVIOR TESTIMONIESMETHODS AND ANALYSIS ................................................................117
Introduction ..............................................................................................117
Methods....................................................................................................119
So They Speak: Survivor Testimonies, the Data .....................................120
Metaphor 1: Organize / Organizing Metaphor.........................................121
Interview 1: Simon Goldman - June 6, 2003 ...........................................121
Analysis....................................................................................................123
The Nazi-created “Organism” Metaphor- Projection Theory..................124
The Nazi-created Metaphor- Infestation Metaphor .................................125
Historical Background and Nazi Worldview ...........................................126
Nazi Volksgemeinschaft and the Organism Metaphors...........................129
Creating the Divide- The Theory of the Nazi
Worldview (Weltanschauung) .................................................................130
The “Organism” Metaphor: Ironic Reversal of the
Nazi ‘Weltanschauung’ ............................................................................132
From the Archives....................................................................................135
Interview 2: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982 .......................................135
Interview 3: Michael Opas - [n.d.] ...........................................................137
Interview 4: Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001 ..............................138
Interview 5: Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982.......................................141
Interview 6: Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999 .....................................142
Interview 7: Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982 ..............................................143
Interview 8: Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982 ........................................144
Interview 9: Edward Linson - November 10, 1981 ................................146
Metaphor 2: ‘Muselmann’ Metaphor .......................................................148
Primo Levi’s ‘Muselmann’ Distinction ...................................................149
The Musselman Metaphor –Additional Mentions ...................................151
From the Archives....................................................................................152
Interview 1: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982 .......................................152
Interview 2: Joseph Klaiman - May 4, 1982 ............................................153
viii
Interview 3: Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001 ..............................155
Interview 4: Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001...156
Metaphor 3: Kanada Metaphor ................................................................159
The Kanada Metaphor –Cultural Meaning ..............................................161
The Kanada Metaphor –Additional Mentions .........................................162
From the Archives....................................................................................163
Interview 1: Mrs. Roemerfeld – 1982 ......................................................164
Interview 2: Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999 ......................................166
Interview 3: Interview with Linda Breder, Holocaust Oral History
Project Dated June 26 1991 and February 1994 ......................................169
Interview 4: Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997 ............................................171
Metaphor 4: Kapo Metaphor ....................................................................173
The Kapo Metaphor –Additional Mentions .............................................177
From the Archives....................................................................................178
Interview 1: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982 .......................................179
Interview 2: Joseph Gringlas - January 14 & 22, March 18, 1993 ..........183
Interview 3: Paul Molnar - July 24, 2002 ................................................185
Metaphor 5: Liquidation Metaphors ........................................................188
Liquidation Metaphors- Additional Mentions .........................................191
From the Archives....................................................................................192
Interview 1- Josef Slaim - February 7, 1982............................................192
Interview 2- Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982 .......................................194
Interview 3- Nathan, Bernard, and Samuel Offen - September 3, 1987 ..197
Conclusion ...............................................................................................200
VI.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS…...…………………………207
Conditions of Survival and Suggestions for Further
Research.........................................................................………………..218
WORKS CITED………………………………….………………….………….224
ix
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: WHY METAPHORS MATTER:
THE NEED FOR A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF METAPHORS USED BY
VICTIMS OF NAZI TERROR
Preview
A few weeks after the Holocaust ended, author Victor Klemperer asked a
Jewish survivor of the camps why she believed the Nazis succeeded for so many
years. She replied: “’cos (sic) of certain expressions.” This would be a rather
obscure response for a non-survivor reader to understand. One would expect the
survivor to reply with the obvious response that would fit our historical
understanding of that dark period of our human existence: it was the Nazi
propaganda, the result of a deep hatred of the Jews, and so on. But Klemperer, a
philologist who witnessed the Holocaust, decided to document what he saw as
vital to the understanding of this tragic period- language. In his book Lingua
Tertii Imperii, Klemperer analyzed the role language played in aiding the Nazis
with their plans. But language was not only vital for the Nazis.
The vitality of language for the survival of the Nazi victims is stressed in
the works of Primo Levi, Auschwitz prisoner #174517. While it was metaphors
used in the camps that further assisted the Nazi goal of Jewish de-humanization
and demolition, Levi stresses that those metaphors also enabled their survival.
Levi’s memoir, Survival in Auschwitz, documents how Nazi language aimed to
silence the victims in the camps: “…we became aware that our language lacks
words to express this offense, the demolition of a man” (Levi 1958, 22). Whether
2
focused on the deficiency of language or on the effects of Nazi language on the
victims, Levi raises vital question on the role metaphors have in filling the void,
the inability to represent or function because of language, and the functional or
performative aspects of language that were used by the victims during the
Holocaust. Although research about Nazi language is plentiful, answers about the
role of language for the victims remain unanswered. In order to remedy this
deficiency, I recover and decipher metaphors and their use in the camps by
applying rhetorical-textual analysis to the study of the Holocaust. It is through
testimonies like Levi’s that we can learn about the functions of language in the
Lager. Through these we can also establish characteristics that may be of
importance in understanding complex historical periods that are not limited to the
Holocaust alone, as I will suggest in the conclusion.
I argue that studying metaphors used by victims in the camps can reveal
how they either retained or gained a certain degree agency through the
performative use of language. I claim that victims created and used language to
their advantage in a way that enabled their survival. It is specifically language
that enabled many like Primo Levi to survive. In particular, Levi claimed that
survival depended explicitly on understanding the meaning of these new words,
“…woe betide whoever fails to grasp the meaning” (Levi 1958, 38). Survival
depended on ones’ ability to adjust to the “Lager jargon” (camp jargon): “…you
find yourself in a void, and you understand at your own expense that
communication generates information and that without information you cannot
live” (Levi 1986, 93).
3
Language played an important role for Levi and other victims for two
reasons: First, the camps that Levi describes are a world in which you could not
find ordinary language to describe what you saw and how you felt, as there was
no equal or precedent in human history, at least not in recorded history. In order
to make order of this new world, they had to create new language. Secondly, they
had to find a way to battle with the Nazi language and metaphors that dehumanized and disabled them, even from human rights as basic as breathing.
Levi’s at times poetic evaluation of language will be supported, expanded, and
clarified but from a rhetorical rather than a poetic or social scientific perspective
in this dissertation. The goal is to situate the definition of metaphor in the
competing rhetorical theories in a way that will prove their performative and
functional value.
Levi was not the only one to note on how a rise in metaphors became
routine in the period following the rise of Nazism. Victor Klemperer for example,
shows how the word “collected” (geholt in German means to “pick up” or “take
away”) was used to describe Jews taken to their death at the camps (not the mere
imprisonment or detention). To “collect,” he explains was a word that had been
commonly and extensively used but now was no longer associated with collecting
waste or material, but rather, under the new Nazi semantics, was used for the Jews
and other Nazi victims to mean, “to dispose of something unobtrusively.”
Klemperer explains that the principal idea behind Nazi language was to hide the
crimes “behind bland, everyday names….and the fact that these events have
become so numbingly routine that they are referred to as everyday, common-place
4
processes [like geholt]” (Klemperer 1957,186-7). With carefully contrived
linguistic constructions like these, the Nazis could convince the German people
that their actions were both necessary and not of a criminal nature; they equated it
to the required chore of disposing garbage. Still, Klemperer’s and others works
about the Holocaust only briefly mention the role language played for those
persecuted, such as the survivor Klemperer interviewed after the war. Moreover,
they assume a particular interpretation that stresses the immorality of the
phenomena.
Understanding one of the most horrific periods in human history is a
difficult task. After reading a memoir written by a Holocaust survivor, we at
times find ourselves with more questions than answers. The role language played
in the implementation of the Nazi atrocities has been a focus of historical and
rhetorical inquires and has provided some answers into the mystery of how such a
thing could happen in a civilized society. Scholarly work included the early work
of Alex Bein from 1964, who identified the parasitical metaphors used against the
Nazis (Bein 1964, 3-40), as well as that of Henry Friedlander (Friedlander 1980,
103-113), who examined the manipulation of language by the Nazis. Saul Esh,
stressed the impact language had under Nazi rule (Esh 1963, 133-167). While
examining these Holocaust texts and others during a course in my Master’s
program, I began a journey focused on investigating the use of language not by
the perpetrators, as many scholars have done before, but rather by the victims of
Nazi terror. This dissertation is an examination of what appears in previous
research to be very preliminary.
5
First, how the perpetrators used metaphors shall be reviewed. Hannah
Arendt, an acclaimed philosopher who was sent to Israel to cover the Eichmann
trial in the 1960’s for the New Yorker, provided me with the foundations to my
work. Although her views are problematic in ways I will discuss, they directed
me to begin an academic journey that resulted in a Master’s thesis examining the
role language played for the victims in the camps. Arendt’s book, Eichmann in
Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which was published following the
trial, caused much controversy. It was more than a mere description of the event;
it made a philosophical claim about human nature and evil, explaining that
Eichmann was what any one of us could have been – a “technician,” a
“bureaucrat” who simply followed orders (Arendt, 1963). His “evil” was a result
of the technical, bureaucratic characteristics necessary in order for evil to prevail.
Amos Elon, in the introduction to the 2006 edition of Arendt’s book claims that:
[Arendt] insisted that only good had any depth. Good can be radical; evil
can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth
nor any demonic dimension yet — and this is its horror! — it can spread
like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world.
Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought
tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles
from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there.
That is the banality of evil. (Elon 2006, 3)
Arendt was not defending Eichmann, but rather indirectly pointing to the role and
power language had in blinding an ordinary man so that he conducted horrific
crimes against humanity, scarcely being aware of what he was doing.
Language, Arendt claims, played a large role in implementing the mass
murders. Nazi language served not only to disguise the Nazi terror from others,
but also to provide a “smoke screen” and maintain order among those who
6
implemented the crimes, namely the Nazi members and included the whole
German people. It was language that “proved of enormous help in the
maintenance of order and sanity in the various widely diversified services whose
cooperation was essential in the matter” (Arendt 1963, 85). The Nazis, she
argued, created new “language rules” that effectively prevented people from
equating what they were doing with “…their old, ‘normal’ knowledge of murder
and lies” (Arendt 1963, 86). Eichmann claimed in court that he could not take
responsibility because he was following orders: claiming he did not fully know
because he just “did his duty... he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed the law"
(Arendt 1963, 135). Arendt takes this seriously. She argues that Eichmann and
others like him were in fact unaware of what the new words meant, and thus we
might call into question whether they had any part in the implementation of the
“final solution” as such.
“Mercy death,” as the killing by gas was called, is one example of the
extent to which the Nazi’s used deceitful language. Arendt claims that the
replacement of ‘murder’ with the phrase “to grant a mercy death” had a “decisive
effect on the mentality of the killers…” During his interrogation, Eichmann
argued that his unforgivable sin was not killing people but causing “unnecessary
pain” (Arendt 1963, 108-9). This language provided him a “world” in which even
murder was acceptable. It was a “world” in which he continued to live after the
war and during his trial in Jerusalem. It guarded him from taking responsibility.
Arendt’s claim asserts that language created a situation in which Nazis like
7
Eichmann had in fact little or no agency and the language they used provided
“safeguards” from what might be the truth and reality:
The longer one listened to him [Eichmann], the more obvious it became
that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think,
namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No
communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he
was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words
and presence of others, and hence against reality as such. (Arendt 1963,
49)
While Arendt describes how language provided a safeguard for Nazis like
Eichmann, shielding them from the reality of their crimes, it was not the only
reason the Nazi party gained success among the German people. After the
Holocaust, scholars such as Klemperer tried to explain the popularity of the Nazis
as resulting from Nazi discourse, specifically the use of metaphor by the public.
Andreas Musolff argued, however, that such views of innocent civilians making
“category mistakes” because of language “is far too simplistic” (Musolff 2010,
13). The Nazi reality in which Eichmann committed his crimes was one that
already had stronger and deeper ideological roots in Nazi culture, making his
“passivity” even more questionable.
Still, for decades after the Holocaust, theories like Arendt’s and
Klemperer’s were the acceptable norm. It would be only in the 1990’s when
Musolff and other scholars began to “reject ‘literalness,’ ‘camouflage,’ or
‘misunderstanding’ as categories to characterize the cognitive import of Nazi
parasite imagery” (Musolff 2010, 71). Sidney Bolkosky, a Holocaust studies
scholar, points to this void, claiming that the character of Holocaust research
changed only “in the last ten to fifteen years” from being focused on “moralistic
8
or shocking, sentimental or uninformed courses of study…[to focus] on
administrative apparatus of the Nazi state, the ‘near ubiquitous complicity,’ as
Hannah Arendt put it” (Bolkosky 2004, 307). By its very nature, this inquiry
involved increased attention to language.
Two groundbreaking books published in the last decade of the twentieth
century made the case that language was not, in fact, the central enabling tool that
prompted Germans to become evil Nazi executers. Rather, it was cultural and
religious elements that were unique to the German nation and that included
traditional hatred towards the Jews. In what seems to be a new treatment of
Arendt’s concept of Nazi evil, scholars like Christopher Browning and Daniel
Goldhagen stressed the evil of banality rather than the banality of evil. In
Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution
in Poland, his microanalytic case study aimed to prove that the Nazi mass
murderers were “ordinary” Germans, not fanatical extremists. Browning
concluded that Nazi soldiers were not “evil,” but simply “ordinary men” who
performed their actions as a result of the social-psychological condition, rather
than a linguistic one. Browning’s study reveals that “ordinary” Germans were not
different than the German population as a whole, who were also driven by
“negative stereotypes” to commit murderous acts (Browning 2002, 14).
Browning stresses the fact that the soldiers he researched had little to no
background in the Nazi party but had a specific psychological profile that he does
not label and unlike Arendt and Klemperer, might not have been using the Nazi
language:
9
These were men who had known political standards and moral norms other
than those of the Nazi…Most came from Hamburg, by reputation one of the
least Nazified cities in Germany, and the majority came from a social class
that had been anti-Nazi in its political culture. These would not seem to have
been a very promising group from which to recruit mass murderers on
behalf on the Nazi vision of a racial utopia free of Jews. (Browning 1992,
48)
For Goldhagen, Browning’s thesis was problematic and incomplete
because it failed to find and name the reason ordinary men became executioners
with clear anti-Semitism as their motive. Goldhagen’s Hitler's Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, published in 1996,
expanded Browning’s battalion of soldiers on the Polish front to include all
Germans. For Goldhagen, the atrocities happened not because of propaganda and
manipulation of language that prevented ‘thinking,’ which could have happened
to any nation, but rather because the German nation specifically was culturally
and religiously conditioned to do so:
The beliefs that were already the common property of the German people
upon Hitler's assumption of power and which led the German people to
assent and contribute to the eliminationist measures of the 1930s were the
beliefs that prepared not just the Germans who by circumstances, chance,
or choice ended up as perpetrators but also the vast majority of the
German people to understand, assent to, and, when possible, do their part
to further the extermination, root and branch, of the Jewish people. The
inescapable truth is that, regarding Jews, German political culture had
evolved to the point where an enormous number of ordinary,
representative Germans became - and most of the rest of the fellow
Germans were fit to be - Hitler's willing executioners. (Goldhagen 1996,
197)
While Browning and Goldhagen engaged in research on the characteristics
of those who committed the crimes, other Holocaust research attempted to merge
Arendt’s theory of language with these new directions centered in particular on
the psychological character of Germany’s dominant culture. Newer research has
10
reaffirmed the stress on the importance of language and metaphors as used by the
perpetrators in the Nazi era. Among those, Steven Perry, Robert Michael, and
Karin Doerr emphasize the creation of metaphors as tools that provided a new
way to interpret reality.
Doerr explains the specific role of metaphors in Nazi ideology as:
…an admixture of medical and religious terms, in addition to the Darwinian
phraseology, was present in Nazi language…the Jews were perceived as
scourge (seuche) or bacteria (volksbasillen) that needed to be excised from
the body of the German nation (volkskröper).These convenient analogies
facilitated the acceptance by the general German public of the need for a
healthy and pure German race, Judenrein (literally “clean” or “cleansed”
of Jews). (Emphasis maintained from Michael and Doerr 2002, 53)
Perry shows how the use of disease metaphors to describe the Jews consciously
aided the Nazi propaganda against them. Contra Goldhagen, it was an intentional,
not a traditional reconstruction of the German conscience that gave legitimization
to their actions against the Jews. The use of infestation-disease metaphors to
describe the Jews and the body-organism metaphors to describe the German
nation were used to give the regime its strength as an embodiment of a great
German organism.
The use of infestation metaphors provided Hitler with the answer. Such
metaphors were suitably de-humanizing, and, even more import, they
provided a figurative explanation of the Jewish threat: The Jew was like
the disease-causing microbe, the internal parasite, or the secretly
administered poison, wreaking an invisible, but ultimately fatal havoc on
the national body. (Perry 1983, 222)
The roots of the state organism analogy in Nazi ideology had already been
traced by Kenneth Burke to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, where, Burke claims, the
dialectic of division and merger originated in Nazi ideology and eventually
enabled the Nazis to find legitimization to the exclusion and later extermination of
11
the Jews. Although Burke focused on the religious elements of ‘re-birth’ and ‘the
devil’ to explain the transference of meaning to legitimize the “purification’ of
Germany from Jews, his important essay provides a general framework for
explaining the use of linguistic manipulation in Nazi ideology (Burke 1939, 22).
Musloff traces the construction of another related set of metaphors to Hitler’s
book, where the German nation’s body is being “poisoned” by Jewish Blood and
creates more imagery to invoke “a whole conceptual domain [for the German
nation] as a frame of reference, namely that of the human body” (Musolff 2010,
26). “The Jews,” then, were anything that could threaten the German body. Using
the source cluster of body-illness-cure medical metaphors was essential in the
Nazi anti-Semitic master-plan to clean Gemany of Jews (Judenrein):
Source
Target
Body/Organism
Germany/German Nation
Illness/Disease
Death/destruction of Germany
Agent of illness/disease: virus,
Vermin, parasite
The “Jew,” Jewish People
Cure
Removal of all Jews from Germany
One example Perry analyzes closely is the “parasite” metaphor. It was used to
describe the Jews in Hitler’s writing and of his earlier speeches (Perry 1983, 232).
Perry’s research highlights the important role metaphors had in the
implementation of the Nazi plan and concludes that “the infestation metaphor
suggests that traditional moral categories of human social interaction are
inoperative in dealing with Jews” (Perry 1983, 231).
12
In an in-depth research conducted by Michael and Doer, who collected
hundreds of words that made up the Nazi language in order to explore the organic
metaphor “world” in which the Nazis operated. Their conclusion illuminates an
important aspect of the metaphors used by the German people, as stressed by
Goldhagen: most of the words, as used literally, they claim, described the deeprooted hate of Germans towards Jews (Michael and Doer 2002, 12). Perry claims
the infestation metaphors emphasized how widespread, deep, and literal antiSemitic dispositions in the population could easily be turned by language use into
actions (Perry 1983, 232).
The contrast with Arendt here is striking. Arendt emphasized that
metaphors concealed their actions and disabled Nazis like Eichmann from
thinking about the implications of their crimes. Perry claims that rather than being
blinded by language imposed on them by the regime, the German people were
empowered by this language to convert underlying tendencies into actual
behaviors. They took the new words as literal descriptions of something they
already held:
Nazi Germany employed language as an instrument of coercion and
indoctrination toward specific racial and spatial goals. The Third Reich
language reveals to us these intentions even when they were meant to be
concealed. (Michael and Doer 2002, 27)
We can already see from this research that Holocaust studies can and to
some extent, have already benefited greatly from taking “the linguistic turn.”
Such a turn enables us to elicit insights into the victims of the Nazis and not just
their persecutors. Our initial examination of the study of language during the
Holocaust indicates, however, that not enough research has been conducted
13
specifically on the functionality of language as used by the victims: both on how
the victims re-troped existing metaphors created by the Nazis, and also on how
they created their own.
I offer a third, even more linguistically- turned approach. The research I
offer in this study questions Arendt’s assumption of the passivity of language
users not by ascribing purpose to the Nazi use of metaphor and their meaning, but
rather by focusing on victim uses of metaphors. In the study, I will examine the
use of metaphor construction and use in the concentration camps, to stress
Klemperer’s point on how the use of metaphor not only facilitated the physical
survival but also, or more often, the moral survival of the camp inmates. I argue
that the victims used language to their advantage, specifically through the use of
metaphors, in a way that provided them with some agency in a world seemingly
in which they were totally deprived of it, what will call an extremely limited
lexical situation.
It is not the case that Holocaust studies have entirely failed to study
survival, coping, and even a certain amount of resistance. Holocaust survivors
Viktor Frankl and Elie Wiesel, for example, both produced detailed accounts of
their survival and provided insight into the concept of coping through language
and other methods. However, the phenomena of coping has not been studied
with an explicitly thorough inquiry into language use and an examination of the
performative conception of language use. Instead, this topic has been studied in
psychological terms and in terms of state-of-mind to which ethnographers
primarily have had access. I mean to develop an examination of language,
14
including metaphors, used during the Holocaust through a rhetorical lens,
focusing on how they were created and used by the victims, and to what effect.
Victim power and agency have never been evaluated in terms of language
from a specifically rhetorical theory that stresses the always-active language user
in the same way as Burke defined man as a : “. . .the symbol-using (symbolmaking, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the
negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own
making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order) and
rotten with perfection” (Burke 1966, 16). Holocaust research on victims has
rather focused mostly on the heroic acts of resistance and survival, which too
often puts the focus on exceptional individuals rather than on the collective and
the cultural aspects of survival (popular examples are Anne Frank, Janusz
Korczak, Mordechai Anielewicz). Whenever creative appropriation of language,
especially metaphors, has been invoked, the lens used seems to be either poetic or
social-scientific. Writings on language of the victims typically stress the
difficulties involved in survival and coping both during and after the Holocaust,
as the poet Paul Celan used language to describe the horrors. In fact, Celan’s
approach to language has been central to understanding post-Auschwitz poetry:
Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses:
language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against
loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying
silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went
through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it.
Went through and could resurface, 'enriched' by it all. (Celan 1990, 34)
This amounts to the poets’ fetishizing of language rather than its communicative
uses.
15
Sources and Rhetorical Analysis
The method chosen to examine these metaphors is a rhetorical-textual
analysis of the discourse of the Holocaust through the examination of metaphors
used by the victims, as documented from that period or used in later testimonies.
The testimonies I will use as an archive are part of Voice/Vision Holocaust
Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, headed
by historian Sidney Bolkosky. The archive includes transcribed interviews with
Holocaust survivors from around the world. I will also examine the provenance of
the metaphors found in the interviews as they appear in journals written
immediately after the Holocaust by survivors who wished to document camp
language. These journals are preserved in the Library of Congress Archives and
were found during my preliminary research stages for this project. In addition, the
metaphors will be examined in reference to current research on camp language
conducted by the Argentinian Holocaust scholar Julio Szeferblum (Szeferblum,
Julio e-mail message to author, March 25, 2009). The theoretical perspective from
which I approach this archive draws on an interdisciplinary theoretical
background that includes the fields of communication, rhetoric, philosophy,
linguistics, and social-psychological cognitive research, as well as Holocaust
studies.
The rhetorical analysis of testimonies in the first phase includes extracting
metaphors from Holocaust testimonies, identifying their vehicle terms, and
finally, determining their functions in camp discourse. These metaphors will then
be grouped and organized and aim to illustrate:
16
A) The role language played and specifically the metaphors used aid in
uncovering their place in general for victims and its importance as a tool
for survival during the Holocaust.
B) The several types of the metaphor created and used by the victims:
1) Counter-troping of metaphors- reversal of intended purpose of Nazi
created metaphor, either to ridicule the perpetrators’ intended meaning
(ironic metaphor) or to create new rules that reveal truth about
conditions and how to improve them.
2) Troping – Inventing metaphors created by victims in order to describe
or uncover truth of emotions or conditions.
C) The coping function of metaphors created and used by the victims:
Various forms of coping either through use of victim-created metaphor or Nazi
created metaphor used in its intended function to conceal truth.
The assumption is that coping by way of metaphor use reveals far more
than the literal meaning of an expression intended to help an individual survive in
a difficult situation. Although all language can function as a coping tool, the camp
language and metaphors go beyond expressions that are characterized by mere
intended coping such as the expression “Get well soon.” I will argue that although
so many perished under Nazi rule, the camp language allowed agency in a place
where it was explicitly prohibited. The persistent use, both during the Holocaust
and in the testimonies, signify that there was and still is agency in their use for the
victims in the camps. With these metaphors they created a new world that enabled
17
them to deal both with reality then, with post- war trauma, and with the memory
project that has been an important part of Jewish life for several decades.
The project, then, is aimed at conducting a comprehensive linguistic
research on camp metaphors. The goal is that through documentation and analysis
of their functions, we can not only widen our understanding of that period of time,
but provide an effective method to highlight the role metaphor can have in
communication and in understanding other periods in history by uncovering the
metaphors used in this extreme case of limited communication. In particular,
research can serve as an effective tool and evidence to further fight increasing
denials of the Shoah through the analysis of language, the semantic fields that are
involved in the metaphors, and their functionality will all aid in documenting the
events as having a weight and depth in their aim. The plan is for a research that
will further document and examine the uniqueness of the language created by the
victims in the camps.
Placing both the language of the victim and perpetrator in the Holocaust
side by side, using a specific method of categorizing the metaphors, shows the
role language has in both the exclusion of the Jews by language on the one hand
and the agency they gained from using language on the other hand. This contrast
highlights and exploits the irony that language of the Third Reich had for the
victims. The parodic relation that existed between the Nazi German language and
the victim language presumes a meticulous Nazi plan to use language to cast out
Jews, not only from German society, but from all of humanity as well. But it also
includes the ways the victims found to reverse that plan in their linguistically
18
constructed rules of communicative meaning. The distinction between the Nazi
use of metaphor and the victim use of metaphor thus stresses the dual role
metaphor can have: as agency reducing or agency producing.
In linguistics and communication studies in particular, I find the
theoretical grounding that establishes language as a tool to carry out my inquiry
about how the Nazis and victims used language. While previous research has
shown that Nazi metaphors were rooted in Nazi ideology and even German
culture, we have little to no information about victim-created metaphors and it has
been falsely assumed that we cannot collect that information in order to learn
about the culture of survival in the camps.
Let me though say a few things about the linguistic turn in communication
studies. The early linguistic approach to language, stemming from philosophy,
stressed that we are never passive in our use of language and that language both
influences our adaptation to reality and functions as tool to ease our performance
in difficult realities. The idea was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s three claims about
language: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world; "The subject
does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world"; "About what one can
not speak, one must remain silent" (Wittgenstein 1999, 10).
Rhetorical theory built on philosophical insights that stressed the
constitutive aspects of human condition offered by twentieth century philosopher
Kenneth Burke who was re-read in this light by rhetorical theorists such as Max
Black, Michael Mcgee, Maurice Charland, and Phillip Wander leading in turn to
constitutive, “emotive rhetoric.” These studies focus on how leaving things unsaid
19
or unsayable by a third persona beyond the sender and receiver of the message is
an action of exclusion in a communication situation that represents a loss of
power.
Rhetoricians’ examinations of how knowledge is processed and agency
produced by language can thus aid not only in further situating language as a tool
to illuminate how victims encountered exclusion and never before experienced
horrific conditions, but can also serve as a method for re-examining the themes of
“power” and “truth” in the camps. A Nazi metaphor functioned to conceal the real
meaning and aid the soldiers in the implementation of the “Final Solution.” It
also functioned as agency-reducing for the victims (these include all metaphors
that were used to conceal murder: geholt, action, disinfect, shower, ‘sick list,’
verreist- gone away). But, the reversal of Nazi-created metaphors had a different
meaning for the victims: victims re-appropriated Nazi metaphors so that they
become agency-producing even in their agency-denying linguistic conditions
under Nazi rule.
An example of a complex metaphor that is both invented (troped) and
serves as a counter-trope, illustrating the concept of victim re-appropriation is the
metaphor “Kapo” (possibly originating from the Italian word for ‘head’ –Kapo).
This term was given to the one chosen among the prisoners by the Germans to
head a work force. The taking of a word from Italian, used to describe a body part
(in Nazi language human body- organic metaphors were reserved only for
Germans). The initial Nazi intent was to use an inmate to perform tasks the Nazis
would typically do (keep order in lines, barracks). The appointment was meant to
20
make that inmate even more subordinate to Nazis by creating his dependency on
life on taking their orders. Calling these inmates Kapos is an ironic turning
because in fact, the prisoners assigned as Kapos were destined to the same fate of
death as all the prisoners. Still, it was a term that was organic in its connotations
and terms like these were claimed by the Nazis and meant to be reserved only for
Aryans. By its appropriation, it enabled victims to create a kind of logical order to
their world that would otherwise be missing (Friedlander 1980, 111). “Kapo”
became a term in a constructed discourse that, even though it had elements of a
collective fantasy, emphasized the performative agency-creating aspect of the
camp language. The victims are creating functional order (head) in a world that
lacked order as they knew it. Friedlander explains that the Nazi intention of
assigning Kapos among the prisoners was to manipulate these inmates into
thinking they would be spared life, when in reality, they simply would be killed
last. The victims, by using the metaphor reverse the Nazi intent to one that instead
of subordinating the Kapo inmate, gives them a leadership title that empowers
(Friedlander 1980, 111). Arendt’s tendency to condemn the Kappos as
collaborators fails to take this fact into account.
The interviews and data found in the archives and used for my research
contain other metaphors used by the victims and created by the Nazis, yet
ironically counter-troped and their meaning reversed. As mentioned previously,
the metaphor “organized” was commonly used in the camps and is found
repeatedly in the interviews. It is a complex conceptual metaphor, meaning that a
metaphor becomes pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought
21
and action. This conceptual metaphor is also traceable to the “organic” metaphor
system used by the Nazis to describe the Germans and Germany. Perry explains
that the noun organ (organ) and the verb organisieiren (to organize) were part of
the Nazi language rules intended to create the division between Jews and
Germans, a division that would reach the extremity of murdering all Jews. The
process of legitimizing Nazi militant anti-Semitism by use of metaphors was dualstaged. First, Hitler uses “…natural, organic imagery to characterize the German
nation…” (Perry 1983, 221). Then, the Jews are described in terms of metaphors
of organism infestation. But the victims, as Klemperer has illustrated, countertrope this metaphor, turning the biological natural order associated with the source
to mean a distraction to the order of things. For the victims, the metaphor of
organizing came to mean in fact “stealing”- a way of “doing” something which
under the circumstances was life-preserving and agency-producing.
The following is a passage an interview with a camp survivor from the
UM archives:
Simon Cymerath:….If you [are]constant hungry you
always look, you know, how to organize an extra soup, an
extra piece of bread. I risked my life...
Interviewer: By organizing, you mean...
Simon Cymerath :Organized, that means
Interviewer: Steal.
Simon Cymerath :Yeah. That, this was the word...
Interviewer: Yeah.
Simon Cymerath:…in the camp, organization. That means
stealing.
22
Previous research has not uncovered the functions that are performed by
these camp-created metaphors. In order to see the functional meaning of this as
well as other examples, one must utilize an appropriate theory of tropology. In the
second chapter I will show that some theories of the metaphorical theory are
unable to identify the trope of metaphor and the functions that they have in
practice as in the case of Holocaust victim-used metaphors. In Chapter III and IV,
I will show the other theories of metaphor that remove the barriers that stand in
the way of understanding. I will distinguish between the following theoretical
perspectives on metaphor: ornamental, substitutive, and interactionist of various
stripes (I.A. Richards, Max Black, Paul Ricoeur, and Lakoff and Johnson). It is
interactionist theories of metaphor, both in Continental and analytical philosophy
that focus on a functional, cognitivist, action-centered, conception of metaphor,
and are therefore able to address the camp phenomenon I have pointed out.
Discussion of interaction- or cognitive-oriented metaphor theories require
a deal of detailed analysis and comparison. In the third chapter, I will talk about
the evolution of a different view that enables viewing metaphor as functional and
affirming the life-giving role of metaphor. The focus of the research will be an
understanding of metaphor, then, not as a mere ornament, nor following a simple
formula or equation, but as Kenneth Burke defines as one of four “master tropes”
especially in that gives us a world in which we find ourselves acting or acted
upon. Burke’s definitions and work are especially significant for this project as he
himself discusses the early Nazi period in his work, along with the use of
language as we saw earlier in the examples from “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s
23
Battle.” In Burke’s overview metaphors are “…device[s] for seeing something in
terms of something else” in order to reveal truth it is at times necessary to use
metaphor as they aid in the “…discovery and description of ‘the truth’” (Burke
1945, 503-17).
Rhetorical scholar Max Black and Paul Ricoeur developed this approach,
which since then has become more strongly performative (Black 1962; Richards
1965). The emphasis is that the creation and use of a metaphor in the traditional
sense (source and target) results in a rhetorical utterance in which both attributes
and structures are utilized by a cognitive agent that now uses the metaphor to
conceptualize or re-conceptualize its environment. Black explains that both
semantic fields of the source and the target used to create a metaphor (subject
terms) interact in order to create new meaning. This new meaning, stresses Black,
is not only one in which we describe reality (we ‘say’), but also one in which we
are creating new meaning (Black 1962, 28-9). Ricoeur too concludes that a
metaphor viewed through this lens is one that allows us to “…experience the
metamorphosis of both language and reality" (Ricoeur 2003, 85). Furmuzachi
explains that the direction these scholars take is one that stresses how “…the use
of metaphorical language which, complemented by emotions in the imaginative
state, have the ability to open up new dimensions in our interaction with the
world.” It is this orientation on which my specifically rhetorical analysis will
depend. It is from the perspective of interactionism that we are able to explain
several other aspects of the history of metaphorical theory. One of these is the role
24
in finding or creating meanings where there are lexical gaps (Furmuzachi 2002,
121).
This theme is traced back to Aristotle, who in Rhetoric, concluded that
metaphors enable new meaning, stressing that a metaphor “conveys learning and
knowledge through the medium of genus” (1410 b 13). In De Partibus
Animalium and De Anima, Aristotle makes use of metaphor in his biological
treaties about the human body and the animal kingdom. His work is rich with
metaphors to describe nameless animals and animal parts as well. Examples
include: “The elephant's trunk is likened to a diver's breathing tube; The
[human]blood vessels and heart are compared to vases; The neck and beak of
certain long-legged birds are seen as a fishing-rod with line and hook” (Marcos
1997, 4-5). Aristotle makes use of the familiar everyday language used by the
Greeks to name and explain either new or unnamed concepts or even whole new
categories and animals. Some examples include “crustaceans” which are
potsherd-canned, insects are divided up (in-secta, ent-tona), and finally jellyfish,
squid, and octopus are all “softies.”
Giambattista Vico, in the eighteenth century, further developed a theory of
metaphoric analysis that stresses the role metaphor has in the categorization of
new human knowledge and experiences. Vico was the first to write explicitly
about the importance of metaphor in the classification of experiences,
emphasizing the “thought as metaphor” concept, both in its creation and in
conceptual thought processes. Metaphors are not merely decorative, nor do they
simply reflect a reality; they make meaning. Vico stressed the role of metaphor in
25
improving communication and claims it to be an integral part of humanity, a
distinguishing feature that makes them higher than the animal:
The first men, the children, as it were of the human race, were not able to
form intelligible class concepts of things, had a natural need to create
poetic characters; that is imaginative class concepts or universals, to which
as to certain models or ideal portraits, to reduce all particular species
which resembled them. (Vico 1988, 32)
According to Vico, metaphors enable communication since they are based
on shared mental imagery. The human mind is characterized by its ability to be
creative and to use poetic imagination. This enables combining images and
concepts into an endless number of new metaphors that describe our
surroundings. Vico describes the role metaphors had in acquiring of knowledge
and emphasizes how “early humans of the Divine Age rely on metaphor to
compare, and thus comprehend, human and natural phenomena” (Vico 1988,
105). In essence, Vico places metaphors above all linguistic tools as he claims
that all “word formation must be traced through metaphors” (Bryan 1986, 260).
For those looking at historical texts, such as those in my archive, an
examination of testimonies from that period through their metaphorical content
can allow us to uncover and preserve a dimension of human experience
previously somewhat left in the shadows. Since metaphors used in the interviews
cannot be comprehended by a non-survivor, creating a “map” for the metaphors
the victims used could help us understand the significance metaphors had in their
survival in the camps.
In order to create an understanding of metaphor for this purpose, I will
review a wide range of scholars beginning with Aristotle’s foundational writing
26
on metaphor, in order to stress the functionalities as they occur in the context of
the Holocaust metaphors. Rhetoricians such as I.A Richards, will be reviewed to
extend the discussion on metaphor in the conceptual thought processes. Such
approaches to metaphor have only in the past two decades sparked the interest of
scholars from different fields, who now wish to use rhetoric to examine thought
processes by acknowledging that thinking is an internal mode of the
argumentation that rhetoricians have mastered in teaching for thousands of years.
This dissertation will be framed based on the work of Lakoff and Johnson, authors
of the most extensive book examining contemporary metaphors, Metaphors We
Live By. Thus, the categorization of the Holocaust metaphors by concept is made
possible, but only by building on the more inclusive sources I have outlined.
Project Overview
In Chapter II I will begin searching for a definition of metaphor that will
best assist in a new interpretation of Holocaust testimonies and texts. I will
discuss here theories of metaphor from various disciplines and periods that
assume metaphor to be merely ornamental and by that fact limit the rhetorical
functionality of metaphor. The chapter attempts to trace the root of the
ornamental theory of metaphor to a “God’s-eye” view that has theological roots.
In particular, I argue that Arendt’s implicit view on metaphor is implicitly
ornamental in so far as she thinks Nazi metaphorical language provided a smoke
screen that prevented Nazis like Eichmann from realizing the truth of their
murderous actions, on the one hand.
27
Chapter III follows developments in metaphorical theory that resulted
from the disappearance of the “God’s-eye view,” and as a result of events that
defied existing language, like the Holocaust. Franke claims this view on language
in the twentieth century is like a “Metaphor Renaissance,” claiming it has given
metaphor “a new lease on life.” (Franke 2000, 23). The various theories on
metaphor that are the focus of Chapter III on metaphor all share one commonality.
They all lead to the development of an epistemological analytical tool that is
essential for the understanding of the unique experience of the Holocaust. In a
way this is an old idea. Aristotle, who was misinterpreted by ornamental poetics
theories, provides the foundational definitions for a cognitive view of metaphor.
Vico emphasizes how metaphor works as a classifier of new experiences.
Richards grounds us in the cognitive approach to metaphor and its social
implications and, finally, Lakoff and Johnson and the cognitive social psychology
that follow stress the conceptual metaphor that can be uncovered socially and
culturally by using rhetoric and rhetorical argumentation theory to analyze
metaphor creation and use. Billig puts these developments into not just a
communicative but a rhetorical framework. The research directions discussed in
this chapter will be important in examining the tools that were fundamental for
survival in the camps.
Chapter IV introduces Holocaust scholarly work and archives that involve
language and the Holocaust. Most of this work is about the Nazi use of language
and its relationship to the entire German population. Were they “Hitler’s willing
executioners,” or misled by him? In order to understand the metaphors created or
28
used by victims during the Holocaust, it is vital to gain knowledge on the
influences that impacted their creation and use. Thus, a review of the role
language had for the perpetrators during the Nazi regime will be presented,
mainly to establish the categories for those metaphors created by Nazis yet used
by victims. Two examples include infestation or dehumanizing metaphors (like
“to organize,” “liquidate,” “disinfect,” “fressen”) and concealing metaphor (like
“Shower,” “sick list,” and the expression “work makes you free”). In both cases,
victims counter-troped the Nazi-created metaphors. The cultural background in
which Nazi metaphors were created will not only explain the meaning behind
those metaphors, but also allows us a glimpse of the settings in which those
metaphors were turned upside-down by the victims. It will also provide some
insight into new metaphors created by the victims.
The research illustrates how the Holocaust testimonies and Holocaust
literature correlate to metaphor. I question whether the existing Holocaust work
views metaphor in the “old,” “ornamental” view or if it enables the view of
language I propose. The chapter will review both scholarly work written on
language in general during the Holocaust, the manipulation of language by the
Nazis, and finally, the language used by the victims. The majority of texts
originate with historians. The work of Arendt, Perry, Klemperer, and Michael and
Doerr who examined metaphor specifically as used by the Nazis, combined with
works by Levi, Friedlander, Attia who examined the metaphor creation and use of
the victims will be reviewed.
29
Chapter V will be an analysis of data. I present research of oral and written
survivor testimonies in order to identify trends and occurrences of metaphor use
when survivors describe the Holocaust. In an exploratory sampling, I examined
memoires and diaries written by survivors and found a recurrence in the same
family of metaphors. Interviews and testimonials with Holocaust survivors
showed that the same metaphors appeared, thus allowing this research to further
delineate with wider samples. This chapter follows up on this lead. I search for an
underlying consistency and thematic unity that may (or may not) be an indicator
that words used (or not used) provide meaning that otherwise we might not find.
This research method, when used with Holocaust testimonials can provide
conclusions to questions of rhetorical construction of the physical and mental
conditions in the camps. A story of survival that on the surface seems descriptive
can now be viewed as an indicator of a shared world experience of existence
through the distinctions that rhetoric emphasizes. There are mere descriptions of
survival, but the same words are also an attempt to evaluate, and finally, to
possibly explain. This approach makes the testimony much more substantial for
one who seeks to prove how language provided and continues to provide a tool
for the victims of Nazi terror to cope with and survive the horrors.
The concluding Chapter VI suggests how illuminating the role of metaphor
can be for increasing our understanding of the Holocaust. But my aim is also to
draw out suggestions for an examination of vernacular language of the oppressed
or victimized in other extreme situations. The research will not only highlight the
role of language as a tool for survival, but will propose a new way to understand
30
an analysis of metaphor with rhetorical tools that emphasize agency and
performance. In addition to the academic contribution to the Holocaust I intend
that the conclusions provide tools to better understand the process of metaphor
itself and its significance to increasing our understanding of the Holocaust. Other
situations in which humans experienced extreme conditions of genocide such as
Bosnia and Rwanda will be mentioned and suggestions will be made on how
further understanding of these historical periods and events can be made by using
metaphorical analysis.
My overall point is that coping in the camps and after the Holocaust is not
simply acquiring a certain psychological resilience. You cannot cope unless you
have “a world.” But, you cannot have a world without a language for describing
and getting around in it. Examination of the uses of metaphors in the camps can
enable us to uncover the ways in which people in the camps were able to use
language in order to cope with the harsh realities created by the Nazi terror. In
creating an upside-side-down language, they conferred on themselves and each
other a world in which they could survive-- even if they actually didn’t.
31
CHAPTER II
DEFINING METAPHOR: EARLY DEFINITIONS AND WHY THE
ORNAMENTAL CONCEPTION FAILS
Introduction: The Relevance of Metaphor Theory to the Language of the
Holocaust
During a graduate seminar on role of language on language, thought and
culture, I began to inquire about language in the Holocaust, focusing specifically
on the Nazi manipulation of language. This seminar stressed contemporary
theories I will be recounting on metaphor and began with anthropologicallinguistic questions of the nature of the relationship between culture and language.
I struggled with the question of linguistic determinism: Does language shape our
reality?
In particular, I was interested in the argument Hannah Arendt made about
the nature of language created by the Nazis and its effect on the “Banality of Evil”
(Arendt 1963, 85). Was Arendt’s theory, in which language is a “smoke screen,”
simply an extension of the early linguistic anthropologists’ theories of the
twentieth century? Arendt’s positioning of metaphor began my inquiry into the
characteristics of metaphor and their role in human communication. This chapter
will examine whether Arendt’s view was an implicit extension of ornamental
theories of metaphor as well as of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which stresses
how language determines the way we think. Is it be possible that Nazis like
Eichmann could simply be “programmed” by language to think a certain way? On
a conception of metaphor explored in this chapter the answer would be “yes.”
32
In the following chapters, I will explore whether a different conception of
metaphor will give a different answer. I will say something about how
perpetrators of the Holocaust used or were affected by metaphor, but my focus
will be on metaphor uses by its victims. My research question will be: Does what
I will call an interactionist view of metaphor help explain how victims used
metaphor in ways that Arendt’s view cannot explain? Is her “smoke screen
theory” limited due to a deficient theory of language that supports her argument
but also shows what is wrong with it?
These questions are in this way part of a greater debate that spans
centuries over the nature and function of metaphor; between assumptions that
Arendt seems to voice in her writings that imply that metaphors are concealing
and are thus mere ornamental linguistic tools the can lead their producers and
consumers to camouflage true and, on the other hand, theories that emphasize the
cognitive and performative value of metaphor. This chapter will focus on the
ornament theory, evolving from this idea to the idea that Arendt presents in the
smoke screen theory. The following chapter will outline a more complete and
more acceptable so-called interactionist theory of metaphor.
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Traditional Ideas about Metaphor
Let us begin with classical Greek philosophy of language. Plato believed
metaphors to be merely figurative or decorative and argued that viewing metaphor
otherwise and more seriously raises “an old quarrel between philosophy and
poetry” (Republic 607b5–6). This view is extended to the functionality of
rhetoric, viewed as fancy “cookery” (Plato, Republic 464b-465d).
Plato’s tendency to see the world as divided between a literal truth our
senses can’t see and figurative analogies to that truth that affect our emotions or at
most give us only false analogues of truth had a tremendous effect on Christian
theology and on linguistic-philosophical thought long afterward. The gap
between metaphors and the truth is made wider by the Christian assumption that
only God, who made it, sees the world correctly, thus the only real truth is the
thought of God or its stand in, the word of God (God’s-eye view). But the fact
that God’s definitions are the literal ones is not the only reason why we are
restricted to metaphors in discussing sublime things. Christian theologians were
very aware going back to the Jewish scriptures that we cannot properly name God
at all. In effect, all of our language is in some sense ornamental. Humans try in
accordance with our various abilities or disabilities to capture the truth, but only
grasp weak analogies. This approach to metaphor dominated Medieval
Neoplatonism and stressed that metaphors are meant to provide for the harmony
and unity that stems from the religious belief that only God can bear complete
truth. Philosophers of the school of thought like Plotinus, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and
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Thomas Aquinas often used metaphors to describe the holy, or God-like terms.
They thought there is no other way.
Although Neo-classical rhetorical theorists were secular the theological
assumptions about literal and metaphorical outlined remain in their work. By
Neo-Classical rhetorical theorists, I am referring to theorists of poetry in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who took the world to be literally described
by mechanistic science and thought and metaphors as at best suggesting analogies
to ordinary people in terms of what they couldn’t understand literally, or tried to
get the audiences to react and achieve an almost physiologically reaction of
emotions. A good example of this approach appears in the works of seventeenthcentury rhetorician Bernard Lamy and his work on “The Art of Speaking” (1676).
His contribution was in that he saw metaphorical invention as not restricted to the
few talented poets or writers, but as a form of communication everyone could
learn and improve their practice of (Quoted in Warnick 1993, 21). As scientists
slowly succeeded theologians as guides to the “Truth” but even under the reign of
science, which we are still in, ordinary people, it is assumed, have to be helped by
ornamental language to get closer to the “Truth” and further away from ordinary
life. Thus ornamental language provides both an ability to both gain relief from
hardships of life through metaphor and also enlightens about concepts that
otherwise regular language cannot describe. English professors share the
ornamental view of metaphor with scientists, using figurative perspective to
discuss literary and artistic works, but in imaginative and emotional way rather
than as a substitute for physical truths.
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Interpreting Aristotle’s Rhetoric Ornamentally
This approach to metaphor was used in Neo-Classical times as a way to
interpret Aristotle and to use his authority. I t is not hard to see why they read it
that way. As theorists of poetry they read mostly the Poetics, and in Poetics,
Aristotle defines metaphor as follows:
Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something
else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from species
to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy. (Poetics,
21.7.1457b)
He discusses metaphor in length in chapters 20-22 of Poetics, where he provides
the above formal definition in two forms: “Metaphor is the transfer (epiphora) to
one thing of a name (onoma) that belongs to something else (to something else)”
(Poetics, 21.1457b6) and metaphor is “the application of an alien name by
transference either from genus to species or from species to genus, or from
species to species, or by analogy, that is, proportion” (Poetics, 21.1457b6-8).
Let us look at his four types:
1) A noun is a genus to species relationship. In this situation a general term
typically used for other purposes is used instead of a specific technical
term. Aristotle illustrates this with the sentence "Here stands my ship.” In
this situation, "stand" is more generic way of saying "is anchored."
2) A noun describing a species is used to describe a genus. A more detailed
word is used instead of a general term: "Truly ten thousand good deeds
has Ulysses wrought." In this example, Aristotle uses "ten thousand" as a
specific term representing the more general "much” or “many.”
3) From species to species:
Example: “With blade of bronze drew away the life.” ‘Draw away,' is used
as a species of taking away. Simple replacement.
4) Proportional analogy: a: b :: c : d
Example: “To call the wine cup “the shield of Dionysus” and to call the
shield “the wine cup of Ares” (the wine cup is to Dionysus what the shield
is for Ares).
36
It is clear that Aristotle had a broader concept of metaphor than we do today, as
the first three would not be considered metaphors but rather metonymies or
synecdoches. Aristotle did not, however, choose to focus on the first three; he
rather emphasized the importance of the analogical metaphor, the one that
consists of substitutions between "x is to y"-type relationships and claimed those
to be “the most taking” (meaning captivating and convincing) (Rhetoric, 9.1410b
36).
Why does Aristotle claim this form to be the most taking? The following
chapter will stress that even though Aristotle’s initial definitions of metaphor
might seems ornamental in nature, his detailed explanation encompasses a far
more complex theory on the links between metaphor, thought, and function. For
now, however, let us look as how this initial definition of metaphor as “giving the
name of something else” might have influenced theorists of poetry who took him
to have an ornamental view. Neglecting other statements they used this idea to
draw a contrast between the literal and the figurative and interpreted figurative.
Stemming from a one-dimensional reading of these texts, or from simply relying
on the above quote, some have concluded that Aristotle has a ornamental view of
metaphor, in other words, metaphor is a mere technique used to create a greater
effect on emotions and action “…both in poetry and speeches…” (Rhetoric,
2.7.1405a3-6). From this perspective we can interpret Arendt’s ideas about
Eichmann, the Germans, and life in the camps.
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The Ornamental Metaphor in Arendt’s Theory of Language
The idea that metaphor is used for non-literal representation is one that
dominated pre-WWII philosophy of language, namely one that emphasized a
secular version of the “God’s-eye” point-of-view. This contrast is not always
meant to clarify. It is sometimes meant to obscure. At times metaphors were used
to conceal a good thought about the world under a cloud of misleading metaphors,
much like the Nazis used metaphors to conceal the truth of the actions they asked
of their soldiers to commit against the Jewish people.
Such was Eichmann’s use of metaphor as providing a smoke screen. It
stems from the idea that people only have partial views that are subjective.
Kantian philosophy, which Arendt relies on, represented this approach to
language in which subjectivity defined human communication as well because
humanity according to Kant “was no more than a regulative idea” (not a literal
truth) (Arendt 1973, 269). In the definition of metaphor taken from Aristotle’s
Poetics, metaphors are exactly that – they are tools used by the talented orators to
manipulate language in order to persuade, or to clarify something that the orator
believes the masses cannot (or should not) understand. This tradition is heavily
linked to Arendt’s discourse of the elite versus the mob in her Origins of
Totalitarianism, where she defines the mob as not being “the people,” who she
respects, rather those who are thinking subjectively, who are always excluded
from society, who are individuals collected into a mob. It is this mob, she argues,
that feeds into to the anti-Semitism following the Dryfuss affair and from which
the Nazi leaders as well as their followers came. “An almost magic formula was
38
discovered for reconciling the masses to the existent state of government and
society” (Arendt 1973, 106). It was under the slogans “Death to the Jews” that
actual violence and killings took place but also emergence of “language of high
society that made real, passionate violence look like harmless child’s play ”
(Arendt 1973, 107).
Although Arendt never theorized language, we can conclude through her
works that like the subjective mob in the Dryfuss affair, Eichmann acts as a
representative of the mob. Language, for him, functioned in the same manner it
did for the masses in France as it created a collective that believed their existence
can only be ensured through the elimination of the Jew. For Arendt, language is
thus such a tool that manipulates and conceals, in order to control the mob to act
under the collective killing machine. It is thus exactly like the metaphor in early
Aristotelian definitions- one that serves subjectivity, not objectively, that either
decorates or by decorating conceals. This idea is also at work in her interpretation
of Adolf Eichmann in Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt 1962). Metaphors
functioning as tools that prevent thought explain what she means when she says
Eichmann was incapable of thinking. But this is also why she cannot capture the
complexity of what goes on for the victims in the camps and their empowerment
through metaphor. They are for her just victims. Theories that do emphasize the
agency-producing metaphor creation and use are thus vital for our understanding
of how Arendt’s approach is thus just ornamental and not agency-producing.
There is a fairly large amount of literature about the effects mobs on
publics that can be traced back to French critics of popular revolutions, among
39
them are Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, and later elitist conservative thinkers of
the twentieth-century such as Miguel de Unamuno in Spain and Elias Canetti in
Switzerland. What is unique about Arendt in this group of scholars is that she is
in favor of popular revolution. She does not see them as mobs but rather she sees
them as “a people,” similarly to Kenneth Burke in asserting temporarily their
freedom before falling again into dictatorships of the social as distinct from the
political.
For Arendt, it is individuals who are parts of mobs that are thoughtless and
that is why she argues Eichmann is an example of German individual
thoughtlessness under Nazi rule and spends much time discussing how it is
possible for individuals who are part of the masses to act morally. For her this is
a probem for her theory. It is therefore, the individual who are “mass-men,
representative of mass mentality. The collective is always inclusive. The smoke
screen assumes a perspective of metaphor that is a construction of language
intended to create a collective, a mob. It is this way that she uses the smoke screen
metaphor to analyze language use in Nazi Germany. Smoke screen theory
assumes the same kind of difference that exists between literal and figurative,
masses versus the elite.
A Second Look at Aristotle
I have mentioned that Aristotle’s theory of metaphor is more complicated
than the my purpose is not to conduct a thorough inquiry into the theory of
metaphor from Aristotle to this day, tracing some of the misconceptions of the
40
deciphering of Aristotle’s metaphor can lead to a better understanding on the
process in which it is created and its functionalities. Aristotle did not invent the
concept of metaphor, nor was he the first to use this form. Still, rhetorical
scholars tend to begin discussion of metaphor with this formal definition in the
form as it appears in either Poetics. In Rhetoric it appears slightly differently.
There he says that to examine how characters in a play advance the plot by
speaking to each other we should consult his Poetics. This means that there is a
communicative function implied even in what looks like mere ornamentation in
Poetics, as the work of a few “geniuses,” On the one hand, there is the appearance
of metaphors in the poetic realm; Aristotle even claims creators of metaphor to be
“geniuses” (Poetics, 22.3.1459a8) as Neo-classical writers took it. We can see
distinctions and types of metaphor that are created anonymously and used in daily
life (Rhetoric, 9.9.1410b36). This suggests metaphors play a fundamental role in
human communication. A communicative function can easily turn into a
cognitive function, one that reveals missing facts rather than just concealing them
or giving an inkling of them. The conclusions reached after the inquiry into
definitions of metaphor in the next chapter will help create the foundations of an
epistemological project that will highlight why metaphors in the case of
Holocaust victims were created and for what purpose. Uncovering the use of
metaphors by the victims, both during and after the Holocaust, can explain
difficulties in communication that occurs when others struggle to comprehend
metaphoric language of the Holocaust. In the following chapter I will give a
detailed explanation of how twentieth century theorists of metaphor used
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Aristotle’s communicative and cognitive ideas a as a clue to find richer and
deeper idea of metaphor than I have explained in this chapter. The idea is
important for my overall purpose so I will go into it in detail.
While my previous research examined theories of metaphor to counter
Arendt’s argument that Nazi language provided a “smoke screen” that prevented
them from reality of the crimes they were committing, the focus of this research
will center on the role language played in the lives and survival of Holocaust
victims and how it can help illuminate facts about that period. Chapter IV will
provide a summary of previous Holocaust research that focused more or less
exclusively on the Nazi language and its impact on the functionality of the Nazi
regime. Post-WWII scholars tried to answer questions about this dark period by
examining how language allowed the perpetrators to achieve their goals but they
rarely focused on the victims. Although Holocaust language used and created by
victims is documented and explored, it is limited to scholarly works that do not
typically examine it through a rhetorical lens. In particular, list of words and
accounts of language used by Nazi victims fail to inquire on the agency
metaphors provided to the victims who used them, nor does it examine the
functionality they had or void they filled.
The theories that emphasize language as a classifier of experiences that
will be reviewed were stressed in my critique on Arendt’s thesis of Eichmann’s
passivity. These theories, by neglecting the communicative functions of metaphor,
adhere to the ornamental view on metaphor. They thus support my argument that
we should dismiss the probability to the claim that Nazi language was serving as a
42
smoke screen as they linked users of metaphor to knowledge of both semantic
fields constructing it. Nazi language did not form a dissociated sphere of meaning.
It was linked in important ways to German culture and language that existed
before the Nazi regime.
Second, it is not merely enough to show through metaphors that there are
common cultural bearings to both the perpetrators and the victims, but also
important to utilize findings about metaphor use to give evidence to the claim that
metaphors do not distort reality but rather give access to reality with particular
emphasis and significance. Even if culture determines to a large extent the
possibilities available to the speakers of a language, there is a remnant of
invention that allows speakers to utilize linguistic devices to their own
appropriated use. Metaphors were used by members of the same culture, yet in
different ways. The metaphors supplied particular emotive functions for the two
groups, the victims and the perpetrators. Let us first define metaphor as presented
initially by Aristotle.
In this chapter, the focus will be an examination of Aristotle’s metaphor in
a lens that will enable us to answer why the creation and use of metaphors seems
to be a common, and important practice in the Holocaust. The next chapter will
follow the common style of a literary review of scholarly work to focus on
Aristotelian and post- Aristotelian theories that will support the assumptions on
the role metaphor had for the victims and still has in the life of the survivors. The
project will not provide a thorough account of the ongoing academic debate on
defining Aristotle’s metaphor, as covered by, for example, Samuel Levin (Levin
43
1982, 25). The review will not attempt to uncover or summarize the different
approaches or theories on metaphor since Aristotle. Rather, the works reviewed
will provide the reader with an adequate amount of background information and
theory, as seen from a variety of fields to highlight the perspective of rhetoricians,
communication scholars and linguists, among others, on the nature and uses of
metaphor The goal is to stress not the creation process, but mainly the
functionality of metaphors for the victims of the Holocaust, whether during the
events or after them, we will aim to better understand the several types of the
metaphor created and used by the victim. These are, in general, two:
1) Counter-troping - reversal of intended purpose of Nazi created
metaphor, either to ridicule the perpetrators’ intended meaning (ironic
metaphor) or to create new rules that reveal truth about conditions and
how to improve them.
2) Invention – New metaphors created by victims in order to describe or
uncover truth of emotions or conditions that were difficult to name
with existing language.
Despite common misconceptions leading from a partial examination and
evolution of Aristotle’s definition of metaphors, they should not simply be viewed
as a rhetorical tool that serves only to “decorate.” Literalist theories of language
and approaches to metaphor that stress their ornamental functionalities will not be
the focus of this study, but a few will be mentioned in this chapter.
In conclusion, when Aristotle defined metaphor in Poetics, it was an
ornamental component of creative writing, limited to the few talented. The
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differences between this definition of metaphor and the one found in On Rhetoric
that will be further explored in Chapter III, have been a topic of debate for
scholars throughout the years. This project does not aim to take sides in the neverending debate on the role of rhetoric and metaphor in human communication. The
goal of this chapter was to provide the historical basis for the upcoming
interdisciplinary review of definitions of metaphor that in order to construct a
model for my analysis of metaphors in the Holocaust. The fourth chapter will
return to the ornamental definition of metaphor and aim to counter that through
the lens of the Holocaust in two ways: first, it will question and sum the objection
to Arendt’s approach to the role metaphors had for the Nazis. Next, it will
illustrate how for the victims, metaphors were constitutive rather than just mere
descriptors of reality.
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CHAPTER III
TOWARDS A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF METAPHOR
Introduction
The road to a richer interpretation of metaphor, and thus to a deeper
understanding of the use of metaphor by victims of Nazi terror, begins with more
accurate interpretations of Aristotle’s concept of metaphor than the Neo-Classical
approach, which tends to view metaphor through a severe contrast between the
literal and figurative. In Aristotle’s writings we can find a major claim about
metaphor that can help us further understand how it functioned during the
Holocaust.
The word “metaphor” in Greek, μεταφορά (metaphorá), means ‘transfer.’
Accordingly, Aristotle stresses the element of transference in metaphors: genus to
species, species to genus, etc. Aristotle’s claim is that any idea expressed through
metaphor is in its own categorical system. Paul Henle suggests that there is no
single analogy or parallel characteristic to all metaphors. In practice, all
metaphors serve to extend language whenever new situations need to be dealt
with or when something cannot be said in existing terms (Henle 1965, 173). In
this chapter, I first review the scholarly work that stresses that in fact Aristotle’s
so-called “ornamental” definition for metaphor in the Poetics has cognitive
elements and is important for understanding the true function of metaphor.
Following this review, I explore theories that focus on the non-ornamental view
on metaphor.
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Dismissing the Ornamental: A Non God’s-eye-view to Metaphor
Any review of metaphor must begin by looking back to Aristotle, who,
according to Ricoeur, was the first to define metaphor “for the entire subsequent
history of Western thought…” by challenging Plato’s decorative interpretation
(Ricoeur 2003, 2). Ricoeur claims that initial attempts to use Aristotle’s work for
the purpose of understanding how metaphor produces meaning were confusing.
Therefore, Ricoeur stresses, Aristotle has been neglected by modern rhetoric
scholars due to problems categorizing and positioning the concept in his major
works. Ricoeur concludes that this tendency in modern scholarship is the result of
Aristotle’s own misleading discussion of metaphor under the rubric of lexis
(style). This has led to it being misconceptualized as a stylistic poetic trope that
substitutes ornamental language for a literally meaningful word; “…if there is no
information conveyed, the metaphor has only an ornamental, decorative value”
(Ricoeur 2003, 21). Ricoeur implies by this that although Aristole’s definition of
metaphor in Poetics is primarily ornamental, it still has communicative function.
Re-examining Aristotle’s metaphor in both Rhetoric and Poetics, it
becomes evident that metaphor, even in Poetics, is not simply a decoration or
stylistic choice. Ricoeur and other scholars’ reject the notion that Aristotle had
only a “God’s-eye view” of metaphor, but argue instead that Aristotle’s concept
of metaphor is more than just a theory of substitution of a non-literal character for
a literal one, but also a concept which helps construct meaning. This new
evaluation of Aristotle’s concept may help us understand the functions that
47
metaphors had for the victims of Nazi terror, who were in a constrained
communicative situation.
But this new position has not been fully accepted. Several scholars have
proposed what amounts to a middle-ground perspective. John Kirby suggests that
20th century scholars have discussed Aristotle’s interpretation of metaphor in a
manner that stresses only its poetic value because they assumed that Aristotle was
working in a framework in which language was either literal or figurative (Kirby
1997, 517-554). However, Alfredo Marcos’s examination of Aristotle’s biological
metaphors, in his work on zoology, leads him to the tentative conclusion that
Aristotle does deny the “cognitive functions of metaphor” (Marcos 1997, 4). In
one example, Marcos illustrates how Aristotle compares the heart and blood
vessels to a vase in order to explain human physiology. He explains that the
figurative character of Aristotle’s metaphors, along with the fact that he does not,
at this point, theorize the cognitive value of these metaphors, makes it seem as if
Aristotle only uses metaphors to make concepts that already exist clearer to the
common Greek speaker (Marcos 1997, 5). Despite these initial findings, both
Kirby and Marcos continued to search Aristotle’s texts for more evidence of a
conception of metaphor that recognizes its cognitive dimensions.
Richards concluded that the Aristotelian idea of metaphor held it to be a
stylistic choice (“one word is used rather than the other”). Aristotle claimed “that
the source of the metaphor should be something beautiful” (Rhetoric, 2.1405b13),
Kirby uses this definition to attack modernists who abuse this to claim that
Aristotle is referring to metaphor as an ornament. He argues they do so by relying
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on the earlier passage that discusses beauty as “connected both with
appropriateness and with the vivid evocation of interpretanats in the audience”
(Kirby 1997, 543). Kirby’s conclusion takes a semiotic approach to Aristotle’s
metaphor, one that both considers the ornamental beauty of the metaphor and
stresses the complex role it has in human communication. In relation to
Aristotle’s fourth form of metaphor described in the previous chapter, he claims
that:
To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify
something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest.
Glosses are unintelligible, but we know words in their prevailing meaning
[kyria].Metaphor most brings about learning: for when he calls old age
‘stubble,’ he creates understanding and knowledge through the genus,
since both old age and stubble are [species of the genus of] things that
have lost their bloom. (Rhetoric, 10.1410b2)
It is this example that stresses the cognitive functions that Aristotle sees in
metaphors, those that enable us to construct our knowledge of old age through the
use of “stubble.” It is much more than merely a stylistic choice, because of the
proportional exchange.
If examples that stress the cognitive character of metaphor exist in
Aristotle’s texts, why are these overlooked? Ricoeur sheds light on some of the
confusion that led to the understanding of Aristotle’s metaphor as a mere stylistic
choice (Ricoeur 2003, 15). When Aristotle defines metaphor in Poetics, it appears
following his discussion of lexis or style and nouns. In Poetics, Aristotle’s
definition of noun is one that also includes the possibility of addition of verbal
inflection as “or the like,” resulting in a metaphor (Poetics, 20.1457b3). The
establishment of metaphor as a noun is the link made to lexis and therefore
49
Ricoeur concludes that this has resulted in the ’high price’ of misunderstanding
because it “ignores the difference between word and discourse and operates at all
the strategic levels of language- words, sentences, discourse, texts, styles (Ricoeur
2003, 17). In fact, later in the text (1459), Aristotle speaks of the “mastering of
metaphor,” and uses metaphor in verb form (to metaphorize) implying that this is
in fact a process that entails thought and knowledge and cannot be seen as static.
“Metaphorizing” it
What is the process of metaphor creation? Is the conscious transference of
meaning to something using a term from a semantic field that is “alien” to it
something we do more often and more spontaneously? What is this action we take
in the creation of meaning? Is it confined to only a few individuals that master it?
In the next section, we will focus on I.A. Richards and Max Black, twentieth
century theorists, who positioned their inquiry into metaphor on the cognitive
features of thought. But, we need first to explore the seeds of this view as seen in
the work of Aristotle correctly interpreted. Despite recent claims that attribute
Richards and his followers with a “metaphor Renaissance,” (Franke 2000) certain
elements of the ideological, cognitive and functional view of metaphor that
surfaced in the 20th century were in fact already prevalent in Aristotle’s work.
It is the chapter that Ricoeur dedicates to Aristotle in his “Rule of
Metaphor” where we can find an interpretation that supports my claim. Ricoeur’s
aim, to eradicate ornamental, substitution, and structuralist theories of metaphor,
is grounded in Aristotle, who according to Ricoeur, cannot be a philosopher these
50
theorists rely on because he actually saw the significance metaphor had in the
cognitive process of acquiring new knowledge (Ricoeur 2003, 33;308). In
Poetics, Aristotle does in fact stress the heuristic process that the use of metaphor
entails, as they force an interpretative task in which they trigger thought and
interpretation: “Good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in
dissimilars” (Poetics, 22.1459a 9). Ricoeur uses this as a starting point to prove
that Aristotle’s metaphor is one that fills lexical gaps and can thus provide a
“luminous clearing.” Metaphor, he claims, enriches and allows us to better
describe the world around us (Ricoeur 2003, 41). A metaphor requires that we
make active interpretations of our surroundings and discover relationships
between dissimilar concepts. Marcos concludes, “This heuristic task yields the
poetic discovery of new analogic relationships. Every good metaphor is followed
by what might be called a heuristic inertia” (Marcos 1997, 136).
Ricoeur points to the fact that Aristotle claims that we all talk in metaphor,
described as a simple task of finding similarities between two things. He
emphasizes that Aristotle’s notion of metaphor is one that can function in the
invention of creating a “new order,” because the medium of genus is the source
for new knowledge to be acquired. The need for the creation of metaphor through
use of similarities, results in an ability to describe something that was impossible
to describe before its creation. Ricoeur stresses that this is precisely the power that
Aristotle saw in metaphor to re-describe reality:
…we can say that the metaphor holds together within one simple meaning
two different missing parts of different contexts of this meaning. Thus, we
are not dealing any longer with a simple transfer of words, but with a
commerce between thoughts, that is, a transaction between contexts. If
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metaphor is a competence, a talent, then it is a talent of thinking. Rhetoric
is just the reflection and the translation of this talent into a distinct body of
knowledge. (Ricoeur 2003, 92)
Representation
In Aristotle’s metaphor there is always a subject that is defined by one
main characteristic. It is an attempt to relate one item, being, or thing in a specific
semantic field another domain solely on the basis of a single common property or
attribute they share. In Poetics, Aristotle reaches a conclusion about the uses of
metaphor, claiming that it is best suited for ordinary speech (Poetics, 21.1457b1).
Metaphors are considered a gift that cannot be learned, they depend on the ability
to see the “likeness in things” (Poetics, 22.1459a7). Kirby claims that Aristotle
lays the foundations here for a modern semantic model of metaphors, because his
“likeness” is similar to “representation” as we know it today. “The observation of
likeness is a crucial cognitive step in the process of reasoning about the worldand also in the practice of articulating one’s perceptions” (Kirby 1987, 537). The
observation of “likeness” is taken from Topics, where Aristotle is referring to
logical principles of dialectical discourse and states in reference to a syllogism
that it is a situation of “reasoning in which something is being posited, something
other than what has been posited, necessarily occurs from that which has been
posited” (Topics 1.14.100a25-27). Kirby claims this same analysis holds true for
any discourse: “The articulation of a likeness is a kind of representation and
representation is itself quintessentially semiotic insofar as one thing signifies
another” (Kirby 1987, 537). Kirby concludes that the Saussurean model, while
focusing on the language, neglects the focus on thought.
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This brings us to an examination of possibility of the metaphorical
element in conceptual thought. Although Aristotle does not specifically discuss
metaphor as a “thought process,” Marcos finds that Aristotle’s conception of
metaphor is connected to the creation and conveying of new ideas more than
simply the mere transference of words from one field to another: “Showing that
two entities are similar in some way, that they belong to the same kind, enables us
to transfer our knowledge of a more familiar one to the other, thus affording us a
better understanding of the new or inexperienced” (Marcos 1997, 132). Aristotle
therefore, does not limit metaphor to artistic or poetic use. Rather, he claims that
“Everyone converses by using metaphors” (Rhetoric 10.1410b1-3). From this we
are to assume that Aristotle recognizes the role of metaphor, not as a mere tool of
language, but as a cognitive everyday process, one that is heuristic and involves
making connections between signified and signifiers. Kirby further examines the
possibility of reframing Aristotle’s concept of metaphor to semiotic models of
language:
A semiotic model of metaphor, in which signs are connected to objects by
interpretants, would have the following virtues. [1] It would steer clear of
arguments over comparison (or substitution) versus interaction, because it
incorporates the crucial assertions and the strengths of all these models.
[2] It would highlight the quintessentially cognitive nature of Aristotelian
formulation. And [3] with very little adjustment for the context in
question. (Kirby 1997, 540)
Ricoeur stresses Aristotle’s metaphor in Rhetoric 10.1410 b13 that
“conveys learning and knowledge through the medium of genus” to suggest that
metaphor can function in the invention of creating a “new order.” A metaphor
conveys information that was not available before its creation, and therefore
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describes reality: “This transgression is interesting only because it creates
meaning; as it is put in the Rhetoric, metaphor ‘conveys learning and knowledge
through the medium of the genus’ (Rhetoric 9.9.1410 b 13). Ricouer stresses the
point of Aristotle’s metaphor not as a replacement by evaluation the “new order”
that results from it: “Metaphor does not produce a new order except by creating
rifts in an old order. Nevertheless, could we not imagine that the order itself is
born in the same way that it changes?” (Ricoeur 2003, 24). He concludes by
suggesting that metaphoric processes could possibly be the root of all
classification.
Contemporary Perspectives on Metaphor
Twentieth-century rhetoricians sought to define and position the role
metaphor has in human communication. I.A. Richards, for example, extends
Henle’s previously mentioned argument about the need for metaphor in certain
conditions to the connection between metaphors and our conceptual system.
Richards stresses that metaphors are more than just “an extra trick with words…”
(Richards 1965, 90). For Richards, all language is metaphorical because it
involves interpretation of pictures (what we see) into words or thoughts.
Metaphors, therefore, are the essence of all thought, because they involve “two
thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word or
phrase whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction” (Richards 1965, 93).
Richards stresses that new metaphors are formed when one thought is transformed
to form another. Thus, metaphors cannot be objective word that simply represent
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because, like thoughts, they are influenced by speakers’ feelings, mood, and
various other factors. According to this interpretation, new metaphors are created
as a result of expressing with language the interaction and transference of
thoughts that express something new.
Kenneth Burke also views metaphors as tools we use in order to describe
one thing in language used to describe something else, and thus bring thoughts
and knowledge to being. Metaphors, according to Burke, are “…device[s] for
seeing something in terms of something else.” Burke assumes speakers to be
active in the creation of their reality. Metaphors, in his view, are necessary for
speakers to structure reality, but unlike other words, metaphors can help in
discovery of a speaker’s true feeling or thought on a topic. According to Burke,
metaphors aid in the “…discovery and description of ‘the truth.’” This perspective
on metaphors, which I already mentioned in the writings of scholars reviewed
above, stresses the approach to metaphors not as functional tools to our discovery
of facts. Burke’s metaphors, in particular, are the key to encoding the perspective
of a speaker (Burke 1945, 503).
For Burke, humans are symbol creators and users. Burke discusses
metaphor use and its link to the formation of “orientation” (Burke 1954, 29), a
worldview. A metaphor is not a passive embellishment, but rather, according to
Burke, creates a “perspective by incongruity” (Burke 1954, 118). Burke, like
Aristotle, suggests that the use of metaphor provides the connection to reality in
instances where vocabulary is missing. By comparing scientific analogies to the
poetic or daily use of metaphor, he highlights that through metaphorical analysis
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it is possible to better understand a new concept because a metaphor entails the
use of facts applied to one setting to describe the fact of another setting, similarly
to the introduction of a new concept in science.
For these reasons, Richards and Burke both link metaphors to thought
processes, not mere external communication. Users of metaphors, they claim,
cannot be passive as those metaphors are basically a reflection of the thought used
to express them. Discovering the thought process that led to the creation of certain
metaphors can, therefore, help in understanding their true meaning. This “true
meaning,” if not reached in the communication process, can result in one of two
options- either the receiver will not understand the message sent or will
understand it differently than the sender intended. Since metaphors involve two
semantic fields, it is likely to cause confusion if the receivers are not familiar with
those fields as both Richards and Burke note (Richards 1965, 93; Burke 1945,
503). Recovering the thought process that led to the creation of these metaphors is
thus crucial to the uncovering of truth about our world. This type of process was
particularly useful for anthropologists who aimed to better understand the cultures
in our world.
Initial Anthropological Approaches and New Human Experience Classification
Ernst Cassirer’s exploration of the constitutive role of metaphorical
language in thought in the beginning of the twentieth century triggered a vast
amount of research focusing on the role of metaphor in language. Cassirer
claimed that understanding a culture means stressing the ontological role that
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metaphors have in language. Metaphors, he claimed, are a necessary linguistic
process that allows us to categorize and particularize new human experiences
(Cassirer 1946, 6). Anthropologist Franz Boas argues that language reflects the
culture in which it is spoke and creates the bonds of cultural meaning. He
maintains that “in every culture the vocabulary reflects the relation of man to his
natural environment and gives testimony of the kind of life he leads” (Boas 1942,
179). While studying the Eskimo culture, Boas sought to demonstrate that
language is a reflex of culture. Using his now famous example, Boas claimed that
the many terms for snow used by Eskimos reflect the climate in which they live.
Furthermore, Boas speaks of “linguistic devices” (Boas 1942, 181) that enable
language to follow the demands of the culture. Although Boas does not
specifically mention metaphors as such devices, he stresses that “although words
are merely tokens of concepts, their structure may direct thought in certain
directions” (Boas 1942, 183). In such cases, when changes of culture demand new
needs, language follows those needs. The assumption is that culture controls
language more than the opposite. We can include metaphors as one of these
“devices” or “words” used by language to describe change in a culture.
Boas’s changes in culture can apply to situations described by victims of
the Holocaust but he stresses that certain linguistic classifications reflect culture
but don’t dictate thought (Boas 1942, 185). Although he speaks of the
unconscious nature of language production, he claims we can never expect that
the non-reflective nature of language can cause a whole culture to follow a
deception. Language does not prevent us from the truth or from thought, which
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Boas conceived as process of generalization. Boas stressed that “…language
alone would not prevent a people from advancing to more generalized forms of
thinking if the general state of their culture should require expression of such
thought” (Boas 1942, 63). Knowledge, according to this position, is linked in
important ways to the culture in which its language is produced, but is not wholly
determined by it. Boas also points to the fact that while language can aid in
creation of new thoughts, it can also be a source of error. When expressing
thought in words, language could aid in creating and maintaining error: “It may be
also that the word expresses only part of the idea. So that owing to its use the full
range of the subject-matter discussed may not be recognized” (Boas 1942, 67).
Boas’s attempt to show that language classifies experiences of a group endorses
the claim that linguistic constructions are shaped and influenced by culture, but
his account does not exclude the possibility of independent thought and the
accumulation of knowledge. This classification supports the argument against the
Arendtian “smoke screen,” but also provides a basis for the understanding of
metaphor creation and use by the victims. The assumption is that culture controls
language more than the opposite.
Edward Sapir, Boas’s student, further explored the links between culture
and language, moving toward a more inclusive view of language and thought than
Boas. While his research focused on American Indian languages, he emphasized
the social aspect of language that will serve as a tool in the interpretation of
metaphors used by the victims who created and used them to shape their reality.
Sapir’s contribution to the linguistic relativity theories was in the stressing of how
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language sets the way we see reality and linking the symbolic nature of language
to culture (Sapir 1949, 433). These assumptions serve as the basis to what later
becomes a linguistic foundation to the discussion of metaphor and meaning, the
“Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.”
In the 1950’s, Sapir and his pupil Benjamin Lee Whorf proposed the
“Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,” a now fundamental claim that combines two main
principles. The first states that language does determine the way we think,
regardless of what Boas claimed. The second states that the distinctions found in
one language will not be found in others. According to Whorf, we understand our
world along the lines of our language. The way we organize nature and our view
of the world is due to a tacit agreement between members of a culture and is
codified in patterns of language (Whorf 1956, 229). The hypothesis led to much
debate when conducting cross-cultural comparisons. However, it is largely still
accepted due to the fact that it centralizes the place language has in influencing
the way we perceive our world and eases our performance of certain tasks
(describing the micro-world in which we live in). For example, immigrants
arriving to a new country are often introduced to the new concepts they encounter
with sets of words that are taken from other semantic fields in order to make it
easier for them to adjust (Whorf 1956, 34). This will connect once again with the
metaphor creation of the victims for their experiences later in this chapter and the
upcoming chapters.
Whorf’s research adds support to most of the arguments made by Sapir,
backed by specific and detailed case studies comparing the Hopi and English
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language (Whorf 1956, 134-59). Whorf too believed language to be a
classification of experience that influenced thought and varies between cultures.
…Users of markedly different grammars are pointed by the grammars toward
different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar
acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive
at somewhat different views of the world. (Whorf 1956, 38)
Whorf’s observation about language use strengthens Sapir’s assumption that
language determines thought. First, a speaker observes a situation, and then the
uses language to describe the situation, but that language already determines how
the observation is described and interpreted. This is an especially important point
for the analysis of metaphor because according to Whorf, “grammatical
classifications” (Whorf 1956, 158), meaning, existing systematic patterns, define
the different languages and the effects they might have on thought among its
speakers. Metaphors are part of that systematic pattern of meaning creation in
language.
According to Whorf, “we are able to distinguish thinking as the function
which is to the large extent linguistic… [but] it is not words mumbled but
RAPPORT between words…that constitutes the real essence of thought…”
(Whorf 1956, 66-7). Whorf’s description helped us better understand the
complexity of metaphor and the thought process involved in its construction. The
process is “passive” if it involves an automatic classification in thought. Whorf’s
example of this “silent thinking” is the word ‘gender’ in English that is a
systematic use and is the source of sexual classification in the thought process of
members of the society it is being used in. “Gender” entails a sexual classification
of our thought before we actually speak, so that many words are actually
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characterized as a “…linguistic RAPPORT distinguished from a linguistic
UTTERANCE” (Whorf 1956, 69). In the Hopi language there is no sex gender, so
there is no thinking in terms of sex classifications. Rather different and various
classifications (based on other physical or personality attributes). In a social
encounter in which we meet a new person, we classify them in terms of gender,
but encounter a problem when we meet a person whose gender cannot be
determined. Although many languages supply the word “androgynous,” most
language speakers still seek to classify our experience with either the male or
female gender in a pattern with which we are familiar.
Whorf’s study of the relation between language, culture, and thought
focused on linguistic patterns and the influence they have on the culture and
thought. These linguistic classifications, as described by Whorf, guide speakers of
a language providing them the tools to interpret their reality. The ‘gender’
example shows how words form a pattern of thoughts along its system. Whorf
calls this linguistic classification a ‘central exchange’ (Whorf 1956, 69) of linkage
bonds that works in an invisible way, and is determined by the culture in which it
is created. Whorf calls this a ‘covert concept,’ that is not named but can be
identified and helps identify the reality in which a language speaker is operating.
This process described by Whorf in the case of gender applies to metaphor
creation and use, the difference being that in the gender encounter with the new
person in Whorf’s example, we will still use our classification from within the
same semantic fields. In a situation in which metaphor is created and used we will
use more than one semantic field. So, while the gender example results in a
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classification that includes the labeling of an individual with a word that is in the
semantic field of human biology, a situation in which metaphor is created does
not limit us to human attributed words. Metaphor allows the speaker to expand
beyond the acceptable and expected semantic fields that are used when meeting a
new person. While the body signifies gender, that limits to the established sexclassification system and metaphors free us from those.
Although Whorf’s patterns and examples never resulted in an explicit
classification of metaphor, he describes a process of a “…transfer of elements of
meaning within linguistic analogies for the individual interpretation of experience
which, in turn, shapes specific cultural patterns of behavior” (quoted in Lucy
1992, 67). Metaphors are precisely such a transfer of elements of meaning, as
Aristotle had suspected.
Findings by cultural anthropologists strengthen the interpretation of
language as reflecting culture. Despite minor differences, their work illuminates
the process of how language functions as a classifier for human experiences and
positions metaphors as one of the many grammatical tools used in order to
specifically classify a new reality. Sapir stressed language as a tool necessary to
conduct thought. He stressed that investigating language can reveal more than
simply what society thinks; it reveals how a society thinks (Sapir 1949, 453).
Linguistic patterns and symbols are therefore as important as the words
themselves, because they can teach us more than just about reality, but the
thought that lies behind the creation of the words and how they are used as a
result. The "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis and Whorf's later writings greatly
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emphasized the effect language has on thought. Whorf's conclusions on the
influence of "grammatical classifications" on thought is an important step towards
the later work that will discuss metaphors and their link to thought (Whorf 1956,
151).
Saussure, Peirce and Semiotic Connections to Metaphor
Linguistic classifications in the sense of Whorf and Sapir are also echoed
in the semiotic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce,
who attempt to “map out” and create laws of language, thereby changing the
study of linguistics. Semiotics, a field of study developed by linguistic
anthropologists, focused on the structure and meaning of language, including
looking at metaphor in terms of signified and signifier. An examination of
Saussure and Peirce’s work reinforces an Aristotelian description of metaphor in
action. As shown, “likeness” in Aristotle is described specifically in semiotic
terms: a metaphor involves one signified acting as a signifier referring to a
different signified. Whether we focus on Saussurean theories of the system of the
sign or the Peircean laws of language, we will reach an evaluation of metaphor
very close to that of Aristotle and modernist rhetoricians like Burke and Richards
as well.
Returning to Aristotle’s “thing” (“giving the thing a name that belongs to
something else”) enables us to make connections to semiotics. Henle, as
mentioned earlier, modified Aristotle’s “thing” so that it is not limited to only to
the physical but also includes an idea or topic of thought and “name” to be taken
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“…as any sign whatever” (Henle 1966, 173). Henle’s description further extends
Whorf’s “grammatical classifications” and implies that certain thought might find
a specific grammatical pattern, one of which might be the common use of
metaphors. The Nazis and the victims used metaphors to classify thoughts and
experiences. The result is that certain thoughts and concepts that might not be
expressible, are made accessible by metaphors.
For Saussure, “a linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but
between a concept [signified] and a sound pattern [signifier]…a sound pattern is
the hearer’s physiological impression of a sound” (Saussure 1983, 66). Saussure
also stresses that this connection is not random as there are patterns that make the
interpretations of the signified similar among groups of hearers for “…language is
not completely arbitrary, for the system has a certain rationality” (Saussure 1983,
73). He means that the relationship between the signifier and signified consists of
and is dependent of social and cultural norms. A word has a certain meaning to us
only because we allow it to have that meaning (collectively among the users of
the language). Furthermore, Sausssure strengthens the connection between
language and thought, claiming that for a language to exist it requires thought as
much as it requires sound or text (Saussure 1983, 68). Therefore, human users of
language are never passive. If he were responding to Arendt, who thinks of people
as being ‘captured’ by language, he would dismiss her argument that the Nazis
and Eichmann could not think because language created a “smoke screen”
between their actions and their cognitive state-of-mind.
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The signifier and the signified are interconnected and linked in our minds by
an “associative link {so that} each triggers the other (Saussure 1983, 66). If
Eichmann and other Nazis used certain metaphors it was never arbitrary, but
rather stressed the relationship between signifier and signified to be conventional,
or in social terms, agreed upon among speakers and hearers to have the same
meaning: “…Any means of expression accepted in society rests in principle on
collective habit, or on convention – which comes to the same thing” (Saussure
1983, 68).
Peirce’s theory of signs relies on logical “laws” that consist of a three-part
relational model ("triadic" theory of the sign) to which the sign (representamen)
relates to ground, object, and interpretant. The interpretant is what is represented
by the (original) sign. Although the concept is complex in Peirce’s theory, we can
conclude it to be a second signifier of the object. The three are the forms of
relationships between the signifier and signified. We will turn to the second
trichotomy that touches upon the relationship between the sign and the object, as
it is closer related to metaphor theory. Peirce claims there are three modes of
relationships, symbolic, iconic, and indexical. The iconic mode, that which can
correlate to the process in which metaphor is understood, is where the icon is
described as “a sign which refers to the object that it denotes merely by virtue of
characters of its own, and which it possesses just the same, whether any object
actually exists or not” (Peirce 1934, 2.247). So, the icon is only physically
resembles what it `stands for' when it is in its simplest form. This means that the
icon does not have to have a physical similarity, but rather maintain some kind of
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analogous resemblance, that could be in the form of an analogy. Peirce’s later
writings on icon make a direct link to a thought process because he stresses that it
is the mind that is responsible for making this connection, regardless of the
existence of the object or not. A no-smoking sign includes the picture of cigarette
which is a simple icon, but also the diagonal bar across it which is only iconic in
the appropriate cultural setting.
Before detailing the types of icons, Peirce mentions that the iconic process of
analogy takes effect as a result of an “emotional interpretant” (Peirce 1934, 5.475)
that could be stirred by any one of our senses. This type of iconic representamen
is termed a Hypoicon. Hypoicons are divided into three:
Hypoicons may be roughly divided according to the mode of Firstness of
which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or First
Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or
so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts,
are diagrams; those which represent the representative character of a
representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are
metaphors.” (Peirce 1934, 2.277)
Peirce’s hypoicons come to provide and understanding of visual icons (such as a
diagram or image) that are not simply iconic, while the metaphors, representing
the ‘character’ is considered the most general of the hypoicons, have the same
coherence in which they depend on the recognition of what is symbolized or in
other words, what is transferred from another semantic field. All diagrams and
images can be metaphorical after their recognition becomes a habit (Peirce 1934,
2.277; 2.643).
Peirce supports the claim that metaphor is not merely figurative, but
rather entails a thought process because metaphor is a relationship that structures
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the object and the interpertant. The parallelism between the object and the
interpertant must be the same in order for the sign to be interpreted accurately, or
in other words, have meaning. The metaphor according to Peirce points out
similarities in a lawless method (Peirce 1934, 1.482), leaving it as one of the only
forms of icon that operates without rule, so that not every parallel can evolve into
metaphor. Yet metaphors gain a classification of form that enables us to classify
them as “grammatical classifications” in the Whorfean sense so that speakers are
active and knowledgeable of the parallelisms.
Metaphor as a Cognitive Process
The Saussurian and Piercian models of the sign and their classifications
became the topic of interest for contemporary scholars in the late twentieth
century, when the theme of metaphor and knowledge production became more
intense, bringing us closer to the classification of language use during the
Holocaust, a period in which we can find many examples for language and
production of new knowledge. Michael Billig’s Arguing and Thinking we are
introduced to the possibility of turning Saussurean and Peircean semiotic attempts
to “map out” and create laws for language into a more scientific inquiry. Billig’s
method can make more coherent our understanding of metaphor and thought in
relation to the world that surrounds us. The rhetorical approach to social
psychology that he offers touches on the differences and similarities between
scholars who discuss thought in a rhetorical manner and those who discuss it in
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the pure socio-psychological manner. It is the former we are more interested in
than the latter.
Billig suggests that the link between rhetoric and socio-psychological
theories about thinking is made by equating argumentation in oratory to thinking.
It is an internalization of the argumentation. He begins by using Roland Barthes to
stress not only is language a part of the human condition, but so just as deeply is
arguing (Billig 1989 3, 41). The inner deliberations that one has are actually silent
arguments conducted within a single self. This, he suggests, should be observed
by psychologists who should use rhetoric to uncover the intra-communication by
which we argue within ourselves. Billig explains how social-psychology was able
to use rhetoric by using game or theater metaphors in making the unfamiliar –
familiar. Billig raises the valid point that this performative approach is an
incomplete picture of our lives because if the world is a stage (as Burke also
holds) what happens backstage is excluded (Billig 1989, 47).
Billig traces how both Protagoras sees the variety in human thought and
Aristotle discusses the methods of “rhetoric,” to point out the need for socialpsychological studies to identify the functions that language has in the human
thought processes. Social psychology should thus be interested in “new rhetoric”
that is more scientific, yet Billig proves the notion that “Aristotle [too]
acknowledges the importance of social influence” (Billig 1989, 47). He agrees
with modern rhetoricians and ideological turn scholars on the functionality of
rhetoric that stressed what meaning is behind words, utterances- words in context
only have meaning and that it is important to know context (what images in the
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speakers head) to include counter-positions. Billig also argues against seeing
rhetoric as logical. What doesn’t make sense is actually an indicator to intracommunication in action (Billig 1989, 69).
In the argumentative aspect, Billing identifies a flaw that has been ignored
in finding meaning because it has focused on only the RHETORS construction of
meaning, without the inclusion of the counter-positions the rhetor had to think
about when formulating his discourse to understand meaning. This leads him to
conclude that thinking is inherently dialogic, not monologic, and that learning to
argue allows us to learn to think. He brings ideas from Piaget, who found that
quarreling leads for the need to develop verbal arguments and it is that way that
the child develops the ability to construct verbal arguments to think in a logical
way (Billig 1989, 111).
The discussion raised by Billig and the merging of rhetorical concepts
with the field of social-psychology and semantics further strengthen the position
of metaphor that this project aims to embrace. As mentioned earlier in the chapter,
a definition of metaphor can take two directions; the ornamental and the
figurative, on the one hand, and the literal and cognitive on the other hand. Billig
provides the background to this distinction as he explains that much of the refusal
to use rhetoric in other fields stems from the historical Platonic charge of rhetoric
“being [more] a knack” (Billig 1989, 141). Metaphor was thus regarded as
ornamental and never valued for its cognitive importance – even after Aristotle’s
very slight movement in this direction. Billig stresses the process of rhetoric that
was ignored: when we attempt to understand the term “deliberation” in the realm
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of thought, we can see that humans are internally in a state of uncertainty that
includes imagining future consequences and possible outcomes and in most cases
an urge to delay the decision. Billig quotes psychologists Janis and Mann, who
claim, “We all have the tendency for procrastination” (Billig 1989 145), implying
that before speech, the mind moves from and between alternatives – calculations
are always happening – reasoning- just like in a public speech- thus,
psychological descriptions of individual deliberation resemble the rhetorical
deliberation of public debate. Deliberation is a form of internalized debate.
From Theory to Practice- Constructing a Metaphor Methodology
The cognitive social psychology Billig introduces, integrated with the
rhetorical tools, make the uncovering of the survival in the camps through
language a task that has more direction and method. Cognitive social psychology
scholars aim to understand how speakers make sense of their worlds and how
emotion too is driven by the means of categorization, all of which were
fundamental for survival in the camps. The semantic fields to which we are
accustomed in explaining metaphor through a rhetorical or linguistic lens are
described in cognitive social psychology a bit differently. These descriptions can
further assist us in positioning metaphor as a tool, because the deliberative force
of argumentation is more overtly agency-producing. The particular instance of
thought in which metaphor is created is explained in the more general framework
of cognitive information storing. This categorization process the biological
importance of reducing infinite possibilities and storing information. Billig
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reminds us that categorization can simplify but also distort reality two of the
metaphoric functions I set for Holocaust metaphors (Billig 1989, 151).
To understand cognitive social psychology method of defining metaphor,
we must understand how categories are distorting simplification and emphasize
key terms (in CAPS):
LANGUAGE is a repository of categories and functions that impoverish the
richness of the outside world. It serves to protect the stability of the perceiver and
helps in the task of processing information. While cognitive theories are onesided, the argumentative aspect of thought is two sided. Those who described
cognitive theory thinking strengthen the bureaucratic metaphor – all in order to
get a mechanized efficiency (Billig 1989, 158). Billig adds that the categorization
theories may be incomplete as they exclude individuals who cannot or
intentionally do not follow the system (Billig 1989, 160). Categorization in that
case is not void, but reversed. He thus introduces:
PARTICULARIZATION- bringing rhetorical approaches to thought and to social
psychological theories. When stimulus has been particularized, a thinker will
differentiate a stimulus when is relevant to purposes at hand (Billig 1989, 164).
In order to distinguish between categorization and particularization, Billig
quotes what Protagoras says to Socrates: “Everything resembles everything else
only up to a point” (Protagoras, 330; quoted in Billing 1989, 162). Billig stresses
that the possibilities of similarity and difference are endless:
If there are infinite ways of distinguishing between objects, then there
must be infinite ways of finding them similar. At the very least, any two
objects must resemble each other in infinite was: there will be an infinite
number of characteristics which neither possesses, and therefore the two
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objects are similarly non-possesses of these infinite characteristics. (Billig
1989, 162)
We should thus examine cognition in terms of two opposing processes:
CATEGORIZATIONPARTICULARIZATION
Categorization presupposes particularization and vice versa.
A selection is made and is akin to particularization. In order to categorize
we must place “something” into a category. Categorization and particularization
are interrelated as far as linguistic terms are concerned and in order to use
categories, we must particularize. The paradox, however, is that they pull in
opposite directions—toward the general as well as the specific. These “pulls” are
the seeds of argumentation and deliberation. LANGUAGE, according to Billig, is
distinctive of humans. If they are unable to provide ready-made suitable
categories for expression it can provide the raw materials to invent such a
category (Billig 1989, 165). These “raw materials,” or categories, are the building
blocks for metaphors, the bridging of semantic fields.
In order to better understand metaphor, we need to define what thought
means rhetorically. Cognitive social psychology theory of argumentation can
assist us in doing so. Thought, according to the model, is, as we have seen, a
continual movement that oscillates between particularization and categorization
and becomes more of a dilemma where language comes in –the words used in an
argument. Then, we can turn to semantics. The choice of words implies a position
so a particularity can slide into a familiar category. This is the rhetorical power
that social psychology does not address. It is possible that a particular can be
caught between categories and in arguments the oscillation between
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categorization and particularization can be endless, depending on the players.
Internal deliberation, explains Billig, is a sign that a situation of argument is
caught between categorization and particularization. This is precisely an instant,
or occasion, of metaphor creation. Billig stresses this as he shows the connection
of how any thinking resembles an argument: the thinker is actually many
contesting orators including the certain and uncertain orator where the certain
orator is the advocator (Billig 1989, 182-3).
To improve this interdisciplinary definition of metaphor, we must return to
Saussure, who although he uses a different set of terms, reaches the same
conclusions. The advantage of Saussurean definitions is that the relationships he
describes can be both rhetorical and psychological. They view the linguistic sign
as a link between a concept (signified) and a sound pattern (signifier) and this
sound pattern is the hearers’ psychological impression of a sound These patterns
are rigid. He stresses they have rationality, social and cultural dependencies
(Saussure 1983, 74). This improved model of understanding the creation of
metaphor views speakers as agents of our use of language (langue), which is rigid.
The speaker, however, can chose to use or not use the linguistic sign in speech
(parole). The next step is to try to explain the cognitive deliberation that occurs
before constructing or using a metaphor. What thoughts occur when a metaphor is
created?
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The Thought behind the Metaphor
When I.A Richards wrote “Philosophy of Rhetoric” in the 1930’s, he
started of a shift in the approach to metaphor that scholars today are still seeing as
a starting point for discussions of the “new rhetoric” and the role metaphors have
in language. Richards is a pioneer in the mission to close the circle on what was
called the discrepancies of the definition of metaphor in Aristotelian texts. While
many viewed Aristotle’s metaphor as being the ornamental additive to language,
others argued that it is cognitive and enables us to understand human thought. As
exemplified earlier in the chapter, for Aristotle a metaphor created or used as
decorative word also has a psychological meaning, either for its creator or its
receiver. Richards’ attack on classical rhetoric allows us to go back to Aristotle to
find that the description we give today for the cognitive effect of metaphor
actually exists in those texts (Richards 1965, 44).
Definitions of metaphor and the role though has in the production and use
it have varied throughout history. As stressed earlier in this chapter, philosophical
thought in this realm was based on Aristotle’s definitions on metaphor in either or
both Rhetoric and Poetics. While one would assume that the two books would
represent an approach to metaphor that would differ, I argued that they actually
compliment and strengthen the cognitive feature and make the statement that
“although it might be ornamental to language – it allows a production of
knowledge.” Ricoeur’s support of this notion is evident in his discussion on this
difference in “The Rule of Metaphor,” where he claims that modern scholars see
Aristotle’s metaphor as being dispensable due to the fact that Aristotle discusses it
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under the same rubric of style (lexis) and thus is a tool for poets only and does not
hold a cognitive feature to it (Ricoeur 2003, 23). But Ricoeur does more than
simply stress the “more than ornamental” character of metaphor in his work, as
we will uncover.
In treating metaphor as dispensable, we risk losing the deeper
understanding of the role language has in our ability to construct and organize our
knowledge about the world. In reality, it was Aristotle who pointed to the fact that
metaphors have far more functions than Richards recognized. The definition of
metaphor should, based on the thorough analysis of the Aristotelian mention of
metaphor, not only stress that metaphors create new meaning, but that they also
serve to fill in a lexical gap that enriches our knowledge and ability to describe
the world around us (Richards 1965, 44). For example, if Aristotle finds a
category of shellfish previously unrecognized as such, he uses a metaphor to
identify it. Such things as lobsters and crabs are called “the potsherd-like ones.”
Octopi and squid are “the squishy ones.”
Let us return to Ricoeur, who looks to On Poetics, where Aristotle defines
metaphor and its “replacing” function –giving one thing a name that belongs to
something else. Then, he describes the four types in detail, the fourth being
analogy. It is the attempt to find a logical pattern that cannot be found that
contributes to the treatment of Aristotle’s metaphor as ornamental. What is said to
be the determining cause for treating metaphor as such is when Aristotle
recommends that the source of a metaphor be something beautiful. Ricoeur
stresses the advantage to such an approach is that indeed Aristotle wishes to
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enrich language and encourage poets to engage in metaphor creation as a
linguistic device and because it can add color to writing (Ricoeur 2003, 41). It is
this placement of metaphor under the one canon of style that dominated the
interpretation of metaphor for thousands of years to follow. But acknowledging
only this view would be to miss on watering a seed planted by Aristotle that can
develop into a tree of knowledge on the link between language and thought and
the expansion of knowledge.
Ricoeur develops this idea to help us connect it to our knowledge of the
link between language and thought. He discusses both the reasons for the
misunderstanding of Aristotle and the disadvantage seeing only the stylistic side
can have on our understanding of metaphor. By not recognizing the relationship
between the word (metaphor), the discourse and all the other strategic levels of
language (sentence, text, etc.), it creates a high stake for the academic world. It is
viewing “metaphor” as a noun, not a verb that divides the two approaches to
metaphor. Since Aristotle uses the term “metaphorize,” we know there is a
process that entails thought and effort by its creator (Ricoeur 2003, 45).
Another philosophical interpretation about the nature of metaphor gives an
even more prominent place to cognition and argumentation. Donald Davidson
does not deny the cognitive aspect of metaphor creation, yet he argues that the
emphasis scholars have placed on the importance of viewing metaphor as having
more than its literal meaning is flawed. Instead, Davidson stresses that the
emphasis should be not on what a metaphor means, but in what it does. Davidson
explains that although, like others before him, he defines metaphor as something
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that “makes us attend to some likeness, between two or more things” (Davidson
1978, 33), the conclusion that should be drawn is an emphasis “extended
meanings.” (Davidson 1978, 33). Extended meaning, one that we “allow that the
primary or original meanings of words remain active in their metaphorical
setting” (Davidson 1978, 34). The example he gives, “Tolstoy was a great
moralizing infant,” highlights the necessity for the need to capture the
characteristic in the word “infant.” In this example, Davison illustrates that by
using the metaphor, we are forced to notice something about Tolstoy that we
otherwise might not have noticed –the quality of his character resembling traits of
infants. In this sense, Davidson’s theory stresses what a metaphor DOES to its
user- makes them think of the connections between Tolstoy’s work and the
characteristics of an infant. In this, the sense of keeping the conversational
interaction flowing as for Davidson, metaphors are just as central as literal
meanings and play just as an important role in preserving validity in
argumentation. Since a valid argument can preserve the same meaning at every
point, Davidson claims that metaphor can be an effective tool to keep a
conversation from ending. Therefore, it would follow that language is actually a
graveyard for metaphors as they become their literal sense. Following Davidson’s
theory, we can conclude that metaphors have an extremely important role in
cognition, especially in situations that cannot be assimilated to ordinary life.
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Towards a Contemporary Model of Metaphor
We will not find cognitive and /or psychological terminology in
Aristotle’s work on metaphor as in contemporary works by scholars like Lakoff
and Johnson, but a return to the classical texts of Aristotle reveals the grounds to
these links: the basis for the idea of the conceptual metaphor and conceptual
thought. The Lakoff and Johnson “Metaphors We Live By” that concludes this
chapter is an idea we found earlier in Rhetoric when Aristotle claims that we all
talk in metaphors…it’s a simple task of finding what is the same between two
things, and we all do it (Aristotle 1984 On Rhetoric, 1403 b 14). Thus, “we live
by” and is opposed to the idea that metaphor creation and use is limited to
talented individuals (as seen in Poetics). Ricoeur emphasizes that Aristotle’s
metaphor shows how it can function in the invention of creating a “new order,”
because the medium of genus is the source for new knowledge to be acquired.
The metaphor created, although through similarities, results in an ability to
describe something that was impossible to describe before its creation. Ricoeur
stresses that this is the power that Aristotle saw in metaphor to re-describe reality.
(Ricoeur 2003, 45).
Ricoeur wonders how scholars like Richards failed to find this connection
about metaphor from Rhetoric. His goal to prove that metaphors are more than a
trick with words by showing that metaphors are created when one thought is
transformed to form another could be already seen in the process of the “order”
that Aristotle explains happens to the orator when he or she create a metaphor.
Scholars who trace this and compared the contributions of Richards and others
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(such as Dascal and Gross) claim that a great error has been made by scholars
who fail to acknowledge the basis of Aristotle to all cognitive discussions of
metaphor (Ricoeur 2003, 48).
Ricoeur emphasizes a specific quote from the Rhetoric where Aristotle
stresses that metaphor conveys knowledge and learning by the medium of genus.
This alone, he claims, was overlooked by scholars who claimed to be
groundbreaking metaphor theorists and it happened at least twice in the 20th
century (Richards and Lakoff/Johnson). The heuristic quality of metaphor is to
disturb a static frozen moment in language – is it a moment of the unknown? The
material covered up till now illuminates that not only do metaphors fill a lexical
gap, they help us make logical order and sense (as implied by the ideological turn,
the role rhetoricians should have). Aristotle had already discussed the scheme of
ordering the build of metaphor (the same scheme or schema that socialpsychology will embrace so many years later), but, it is the grounds for semantic
understanding as well because this classification is also the interest of the study of
signs Ricoeur stresses that new signs are created for new concepts by a
metaphorical constitution of semantic fields (Ricoeur 2003, 55). And these
situations can be poetic, used as an ornament – but evoke more thought –or can be
dialogical- to aid in the communication process. The “thing” we describe by
metaphor can be poetic as the example Aristotle gives for “stubble” as a metaphor
for old age, if we were to dismiss it as a mere ornament, we would miss the
possibility of understanding the old age in the way the author intended and
possibly gain knowledge on old age that we might not have acquired otherwise. It
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is impossible to view metaphor in the simple ornamental – even if a metaphor was
used a “trick with words” as Richards claimed – this project looks at the trick is
and its rules during one period in history (Ricoeur 2003, 169).
A Contemporary Metaphor Model
This chapter will conclude with the work of Lakoff and Johnson in
“Metaphors We Live By.” This contemporary analysis of metaphors in everyday
life sheds light on the unconscious character of metaphor use. The book will also
provide the framework in which chapter 4 will take form. The structure of the
authors’ work in organizing the metaphors discussed and the breakdown of
analysis for each metaphor will also be replicated.
Lakoff and Johnson’s work is the most comprehensive collection of
metaphor use in recent history. After analyzing many examples of everyday use
of metaphors during the 1970’s, they conclude that most of our conceptual system
is metaphorically structured. Thus, there is a strong relationship between
metaphor use and our conceptual classifications of reality. Lakoff and Johnson
demonstrate that in order to fully comprehend the use of a metaphor we need to
understand the daily cultural experience and context of those who put metaphors
to use (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 33). Metaphor is not only grounded in our
culture, but also influences the way we act. Thus, it becomes significant to the
analysis of metaphors during the Holocaust as the analysis of metaphors can
reveal how the coping mechanisms of the victims in the camps worked by linking
metaphor use to the conceptual classifications made in the camps.
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Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate the cultural construction of metaphors
through a categorization of metaphors according to their conceptual character.
Two examples are “Love is a journey” and “Time is money” – metaphorical
expressions that reflect a cultural experiencing of reality. In order to prove the
claim that “…most of our normal conceptual system is metaphorically
structured…” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 56), they illustrate how metaphorical
categorizations of concepts like love, and time, control how we think and live.
Another example, “Rational argument is war,” shows how metaphors are
embedded in our basic human conceptual system. Lakoff and Johnson call such
metaphors “structural metaphors” (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 61). The
transference discussed earlier in this chapter in terms of genus and species or in
terms of semantic fields is explained by the authors in a practical, cultural
manner.
In the last example, Lakoff and Johnson explain how the metaphor causes
us to conceptualize a rational argument by using terms of physical conflict, a
practice the rational human has institutionalized in war. They explain how
arguments are conducted using tactics found originally in the semantic field of
physical combat (fear, threat, authority) and exist even in academic arguments
(…”Boas concluded” –authority; “clearly, you don not mean that…”intimidation). These metaphors are characterized as being grounded in
“systematic correlations within our experience” (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003, 61).
These metaphors emerged naturally in western culture due to their
correspondence to human experience.
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An analysis of each of these structural metaphors demonstrates how
metaphors can be both grounded in our cultural experience and also how they
control and guide our behavior and our interpretation of reality. Lakoff and
Johnson add that using metaphors to describe a concept implies that we disengage
from other aspects of that concept. They define this as part of the systematic
nature of metaphors; they highlight one aspect of the concept, while hiding or
downplaying another. The “argument is war” example can highlight this point.
When we view arguing only in terms of battle, “We may lose sight of the
cooperative aspects of arguing” (Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 10). This leads to the
conclusion that when a concept, such as an argument is structured by a metaphor
it is always only partially structured. It only includes highlighted aspects, but
hides others; this is similar to observations made by most scholars in this chapter,
including Aristotle. In chapter 4, we shall see this as we explore metaphors that
functioned to conceal the truth.
Metaphors describe a certain reality affect our view of the concept and our
behavior towards it and lead to action. Analyzing metaphors in the same manner
Lakoff and Johnson analyze contemporary metaphors can reveal not only the
assumptions and points of view of those who created them, but explain why those
and others acted in a certain way.
Davidson’s theory is foundational for the work of Lakoff and Johnson as it
provided the focus on the maintenance of communication that maintain the links
also by securing the ability for language users to share what they know about the
world and maintain those links amongst themselves. They show that without
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metaphors this cannot happen and therefore Lakoff and Johnson are concerned
about metaphors in highly threatening situations like politics and relationships.
Because Davidson and Lakoff and Johnson are all influenced by substitution
theories of metaphor, they underestimate the role of meaning in very complex and
contested situations, one of which I will study in the specific historical setting of
the Holocaust. For this research, a rhetorical approach is recommended. Thus, this
a perfect test case as this a situation where there is no shared meaning in the new
circumstances of the Nazi concentration camps (a creation of a ‘new world).
Conclusion
The differences between how Aristotle defined metaphor in Poetics, as an
ornamental component of creative writing, limited to the few talented and the
ones presented here represent two lenses of examining metaphor used in the
Holocaust. Arendt’s “smoke screen” theory is closer to the initial Aristotelian
metaphor of Poetics, a metaphor that limits rather than enables. Understanding the
Holocaust through the metaphors of the victims must step out of that range of
metaphor to the one seen here, as being literal as opposed to imaginary. One that
functions as performative, allowing the speakers to gain agency through their use.
The goal of this chapter was to provide a historical and interdisciplinary review of
definitions of metaphor that emphasize the cognitive aspect of metaphor and it
functions in order to construct a model for my analysis of metaphors in the
Holocaust.
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Although the theories represent different periods of time and discuss a
wide range of issues, these works all lead us to a conclusion not only on the role
of language, but also on the process and use of metaphors within a culture. As
Boas argued, language cannot prevent thought, even while the culture in which it
is embedded demands its speakers not to think. The next chapter will start with
the example of this characteristic in Nazi culture that wished to hide the true
meaning of words behind a supposed smoke screen of language, one that even
Hannah Arendt was blinded by.
Metaphors, the essence of all thought according to Richards, although
unconsciously used, cannot be created without a platform, be it cultural or
psychological that enables its creation and acceptance. The cultural reality of the
Holocaust was for the victims what grounded their metaphorical thought. While
the Nazi language, created and used by the perpetrators, was grounded in NaziGerman culture, the victim language was grounded in the diverse culture from
which they came from, but also from Nazi language and the new culture they
created in the camps. The second part of the next chapter provides a review of the
works that focused on victim use of language and metaphor during the Holocaust.
This will complement and demonstrates what Burke and others claimed about
metaphors- that metaphors are functional tools we can use in exploring, accepting
and coping with new ideas and new realities.
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CHAPTER IV
A DATABASE FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE DURING THE
HOLOCAUST
Preview
The exploration of the functional dimensions of metaphors used during the
Holocaust has been enabled by the increasingly complex interactionist approaches
described in the previous chapter. The relationship between language and
metaphors as a structuring tool for regimes, particularly Fascist regimes of 20th
century Europe, has appealed to scholars who aim to prove that metaphors are
more than just decorations. For historians and social scientists, understanding the
metaphors used during the Second World War in order to further uncover and
better understand the events themselves also becomes a more relevant option.
As mentioned in Chapter III, the initial exploration of metaphors and what
initiated this dissertation is grounded in research conducted on the character of
Nazi language and speech control laws (Sprachregelung), and the role metaphors
played in the Nazi regime, not only in concealing truth, but also in creating what
passed for new truths. Though my interest in Nazi language began before this
inquiry, it was the 40th anniversary of the Eichmann trial in 2001 that directed
those previous research questions towards their current formation. While
researching for a seminar topic, I sought answers to the character of Nazi
language and German-Nazi culture, specifically questioning whether Nazis like
Adolf Eichmann had full knowledge of the crimes they were committing or,
alternatively, were “blinded” by language. In addition, a second question raised
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about which there is less significant work – how those placed in the concentration
camps by the Nazis themselves appropriated or invented metaphors and language
in order to survive. The second topic is relatively unexplored.
This chapter will include a detailed overview of the sources I use in my
inquiry into the language of the Holocaust, both the Nazi-created and the victimcreated and used. In this respect it is a literature review, or what art historians call
“catalogue raisonné.” It is preparatory in that the next chapter contains my
interpretations of the source material. The first part of the chapter details the
secondary literature that provided some of the answers to the questions about the
link between language, thought, and culture during that period. These texts
include an overview of the character and functionality of Nazi language,
explaining the cultural origins of the metaphors used to enhance the “smoke
screen effect,” as well as the secondary sources illustrating both how victims
either accepted or rejected the Nazi metaphors and how they created new
metaphors. The sources provide the basis for the metaphors as they will be
categorized in the analysis in Chapter V.
In addition to the secondary sources, the last part of this chapter will
review my primary sources, those that will guide my systematic research with the
goal of framing the metaphors in their categories and collecting data that might
detail the victims’ use of metaphor. These sources include establishing a database
of language, whether Nazi-created or victim-created with the goal being
compiling a list of language used by the victims during that period. The first of
the sources to be examined is the “Nazi-Deutsch” (Nazi-German) lexicon by
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Michael and Doerr (2002) that appears in the second part of their book. This is a
collection of ALL language that the researchers found to be unique to the Nazi
period. This section will also include a lexicon of words accumulated by
Argentinian Holocaust scholar Julio Szeferblum. This work focuses on “lager”
(camp) language specifically, whether metaphorical or not. It is this body of texts,
most built on recollections and interviews, will assist in my project to illustrate
the victim-perspective of language use in the concentration camps.
One of the most significant findings that will be reviewed is my discovery
of academic and semi-academic journals and periodicals in the Library of
Congress during my research there. These rare journals were all written in
Yiddish after the war by language scholars and survivors who wanted to
document this lager language and managed to fill hundreds of pages with words
that were unique to the camp experience. In these texts, we will find not only the
same words that often appear in the testimonies I will analyze in Chapter IV, but
also an explanation into the emotional world of the victims. The journals both
translate and explain the words, but often add the connotative or emotional
meaning of the words used when explaining them. These will provide further
insight for the interpretation of the metaphors in the interviews and will enable
further understanding of the words in their own context.
Finally, the most important source used in this study is based on
interviews collected from the Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn. Research was also collected at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum international database of oral history
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testimonies. The goal was not to collect as many testimonies as possible but rather
to acquire testimonies in which survivors use or describe metaphors. Both these
archives are available both in the actual archives but also as an online resource.
Perry’s Infestation Metaphors
One of the first interpretive texts on which to focus when examining Nazi
language and its functionality is Steven Perry’s (1983) examination of infestation
metaphors used by Hitler during the Nazi era. As mentioned in earlier chapters,
Perry focused on the argumentative nature of metaphors and concluded that they
gave Hitler and his regime the legitimacy it needed to implement his plan to
eliminate the Jews. Perry emphasized that the figurative language used by Hitler
was not supplementary to a wider argument, but was itself the argument. As he
explained, “Hitler’s critique of the Jew’s status as a cultural being…is not
illustrated by the metaphor of parasitism; it is constituted by this metaphor and the
figurative entailments it carries” (Perry 1983, 219). Perry examined the language
Nazis created and used in order to illustrate how infestation-disease metaphors
reconstructed the German conscience both to give the regime its strength
(describing anything German as a great organism) and to legitimize the acts
against Jews (by using de-humanizing metaphors).
Perry details how the process of legitimizing Nazi militant anti-Semitism
by use of metaphors was dual-staged. First, Hitler used “…natural, organic
imagery to characterize the German nation…” Then, the Jews were described in
terms of organic infestation metaphors (as “parasites”), harming and posing a
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threat to the survival of the German “body.” The metaphors used to describe the
Jews created a new “moral universe,” where the elimination of Jews was
necessary for the German’s existence. The metaphors Perry found in both Hitler’s
“Mein Kampf” and his public speeches included such terms as “incurable tumors”
and “inner decay.” These de-humanizing metaphors used to describe Jews are the
first stage of metaphors during WWII. Perry suggests that understanding how
Nazis used metaphors helps our understanding of how the Holocaust could have
occurred. This claim strengthens the assumption that metaphors have more power
than imagined. But Perry does not believe they have the power to change our
thought or at least prevent it. Though he has more than a merely strategic
approach to metaphor, he has less than a constitutive one. Instead, he quotes Max
Black’s conclusion that metaphor “usages are mere windowpanes on the moral
universe of those who traffic in them” (Perry 1983, 221-224). According to Perry,
an inquiry into metaphors created and used during that period can help us better
understand the Nazi worldview. Metaphors, concluded Perry, are much more than
decorations of language; they rather reveal attitudes and values of those who use
them (Perry 1983, 224). Despite the detailed account of the importance metaphors
had for the Nazis, however, does not detail the role they had in enabling the
actions against the Jews.
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Arendt’s “Language Rules”
Despite Perry’s conclusion, the intersection between language, thought,
and culture in the Holocaust remained vague and unexplained. Hannah Arendt,
covering the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, reached her own conclusions and
claimed that language played a large role in the implementation of the Final
Solution (Arendt 1963). Similar to the new “moral universe” described by Perry,
Arendt stressed the significance of “language rules” created by the Nazis and used
by Eichmann and others. This new Nazi language was a systematic technique of
“…talking about concentration camps in terms of ‘administration’ and about
extermination camps in terms of ‘economy…” (Arendt 1963, 69). According to
Arendt, the terminology that made up this new language of economies, and not
just the organic language, provided a “smoke screen” that served two purposes.
First, it served to hide the crimes from the world, and second, it was to help
maintain order and sanity among those who were to implement the crimes. The
new language was part of the advanced “oath of secrecy” taken by the Nazis
which ordered them not to reveal the true meaning of the words.
In Chapter III, I found Arendt’s argument problematic in two senses. First,
if the Nazis were bearers of secrets, it necessarily meant that they knew what the
words really meant but were forced to keep their knowledge about the truth
because of the strict language rules. Second, Arendt contradicts herself by
claiming that the “net effect” (Arendt 1963, 86) that this language system had was
“not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing…but [to prevent]
them from equating it with their old, normal knowledge of murder and lies”
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(Arendt 1963, 52). This statement about moral norms is in contrast to her earlier
comment that language was a smoke screen because it actually has the power to
control minds. Arendt in this respect even agrees with Eichmann’s line of defense
and proposes that there is no direct link between knowledge, thought, and
language. The idea is what Arendt calls thoughtlessness. The “smoke screen”
provided by the new “language rules” created, according to Arendt, a setting in
which Eichmann did not actually think about the meaning of the words he used
even though he theoretically might have if he were brighter:
The longer one listened to him [Eichmann], the more obvious it became
that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think,
namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No
communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he
was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words
and presence of others, and hence against reality as such. (Arendt 1963,
69)
I have concluded that Arendt’s effort to find a quick answer to the burning
“why?” question so common when dealing with the Holocaust, was a rushed
effort to solve not only the question of Eichmann’s conduct during WWII, but of
the conduct of the whole German nation. Arendt’s own German identity, I have
claimed, also played a role in her answer (Steinitz 2003, 41). According to
Arendt, the mechanism in which the Nazi machine operated involved the selfdeception of all Germans: “…eighty million people had been shielded against
reality and factuality by exactly the same means, the same self-deception, lies,
and stupidity that had now been ingrained in Eichmann’s mentality” (Arendt
1963, 52). Perhaps this conclusion is Arendt's personal distancing from a culture
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she once adored, yet it leaves any discussion about language with unanswered
questions.
My inquiry regarding Arendt’s position on language failed to find any
conclusive linguistic theory in her work. Nor does she further explore the link
between language, thought, and knowledge. Her answer implies that selfdeception was made by choice and was “…almost a moral prerequisite for
survival” (Arendt 1963, 52).
Arendt’s inquiry into the language of the Nazis not only did not fully
capture the linguistic role language had during that period, she also made no
mention of how the victims used language. Arendt was focused on the world of
the Nazis and tried to explain how so many of her fellow Germans ended up
performing evil acts (Steinitz 2003, 71). While she saw language as necessary for
the survival of Nazis, this was not always the case for the survival of the Jews.
Since the reality was imposed on the victims, Nazi language functioned
differently for them, it seems, compared to the perpetrators and supporters of the
Nazi terror. My initial research pointed to the fact that Nazi victims did at times
use the same Nazi language. While it was sometimes used as a tool for survival, it
also served as a coping mechanism designed to make life more manageable and
create the hope for survival. My previous research only mentioned the metaphors
used by the victims to highlight the errors in Arendt’s perception of how language
functioned for Nazis like Eichmann, proving that use of metaphors for the victims
entailed specific knowledge of both their semantic fields of origin allowed the
dismissal of Arendt’s “smoke screen” theory for Nazis like Eichmann. This
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chapter will continue to examine these same metaphors for the purpose of
revealing more systematically and deeply their functionality and role in the
survival of the victims.
Michael and Doerr’s Nazi-Deutsch
Before focusing on the metaphors created and used by victims of the
Holocaust, more emphasis should be given to Nazi language, as much of it was
the basis of the victim-used language that will be detailed in the next chapter. The
following pages will offer a review of the findings from the previous research that
informed my thesis, as well as additional material focusing on the cultural
background relating to metaphors and the Holocaust in general. This information
will give structure to the categorization of the victim-created metaphors during
this period that will be the focus of Chapter V.
Perry’s findings on the biological metaphors used by the Nazis was one of
the more detailed academic works to focus only on metaphor in the Holocaust. It
was nearly two decades later that Michael and Doerr (2002) provided a
comprehensive illustration of Nazi language, its meaning and use. They aimed,
through the collection of thousands of words, to explain why Nazi metaphors
were blindly accepted, used, and so easily assimilated into German culture
(Michael and Doerr 2002, 14). Nazi metaphors, they claimed, were meticulously
chosen to reflect cultural facts, specifically the existing anti-Semitism in
Germany. Their findings echo Perry’s conclusion that metaphors used by the
Nazis emphasized the psyche of the German people. After tracing the origin of all
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the collected words, Michael and Doerr claim that most of the words have a long
history in German culture and describe a deep-rooted hatred of Germans towards
Jews that resurfaced in the harsh economic times of the pre-Nazi era. The Nazi
language that was created based on the reservoir of influence was more than an
accelerated attempt to help implement the ‘final solution;’ it “…followed
traditional vocabulary in creating a fictitious Jew” (Michael and Doerr 2002, 16).
The new metaphors were based on the descriptions of the mythical Jew in preNazi anti-Semitism.
Metaphors and language of the victims developed in the shadow of
another language tool employed by the Nazis themselves. Michael and Doerr call
this an officially constructed “Nazi-Deutsch” (Nazi-German), a language
controlled by speech control laws (Sprachregelung) and intended to help regulate
language use. The Sprachregelung, literally meaning “regulations” or
“conventions” of speech, were a central part of the Nazi regime. As early as 1933,
the Nazis began incorporating the vocabulary that would dominate the regime’s
rule until the end of WWII. These speech rules “interposed a linguistic barrier
before the reality of atrocity; Nazi jargon galvanized a nation, often overriding
personal conscience” (Horowitz 1997, 157). According to Shaul Esh, the rules
made up what would become the “simulated innocence of Nazi language” (Esh
1963, 134). Esh illustrates through twenty five code words, clichés, and slogans
how the Nazis masked their criminal actions to a point that “effectively blocked
critical thinking and inner accountability” (Horowitz 1997, 158).
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This strict linguistically patrolled environment is important to mention, as
it is the cultural atmosphere in which victim language also operated. Doerr (2002)
stresses that research on “Nazi-Deutsch” is vital to any other research or
understanding of how victims coped during that period of time, simply because
“familiarizing oneself with this language means recognizing how pervasive it was
and how totalitarian German National Socialist ideology was” ((Michael and
Doerr 2002, 28). While not affecting all of its victims across Europe in the years
before the start of WWII, Nazi-Deutsch was a central part of the Nazi propaganda
since Hitler’s rise. The language and the Sprachregelung penetrated all levels of
life in Germany and annexed Austria. These impacted all levels of
communication, including revised dictionaries and textbooks. According to Doerr,
the new language at first only reflected political coordination but later helped hide
the Nazis’ murders. Nazi-Deutsch was not a hard language to construct. The
Nazis merely developed and based it on “anti-Jewish beliefs already embedded
into the cultures and languages of European Christendom” (Michael and Doerr
2002, 14). The Nazi language included both old and familiar words as well as new
linguistic manipulations. Doerr claims that this linguistic combination is what
paved the way to the murderous actions, for it provided a disguise for Nazi crimes
and eventually the mass murders which by the time they occurred had an almost
linguistically-facilitated autonomy.
Doerr’s research on Nazi language sheds light on the links between
metaphors and the culture in which they were created and illustrates how they
created the smoke screen that Arendt mentioned. Interestingly, some metaphors
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were changed after their murderous connotation became too well known. One
example is the word Auswanderung (emigration) replaced by Evakuierung
(evacuation). Both refer to the forced deportation of Jews to camps. The word was
changed once too many people learned the connotations of “emigration.” The use
of words, usually associated with other figures of speech, helped the Nazis
succeed in disguising their crimes, but, as Doerr explains, even if Germans knew
what these words meant, they chose to hide behind the meaning provided by Nazi
government to these words “…for they actually saw their Jewish citizens [as]
being deported” (Michael and Doerr 2002, 37). While most Germans knew the
truth that in fact the Jews were being evacuated to camps in the east, they opted to
adopt the Nazi implied meaning to the metaphors that made it look like a harmless
deportation. This can serve as confirmation of Arendt’s smoke screen theory,
where the functionality of the metaphors was to conceal the true meaning of the
atrocities from the masses, by choice.
Doerr’s findings raise a question: Did the users of this new language
actually know what the words meant? Doerr cites David Bankier who argues, in
accord with the principle of cognitive dissonance, that “knowledge generated guilt
since it entailed responsibility, and many believed they could preserve their
dignity by avoiding the horrible truth” (Bankier 1992, 37). Doerr claims that use
of the metaphors of the new language is then a willed act intended to assist Nazis
in the implementation of their crimes. Doerr concluded that this self-deception is
mirrored in victim usage of the same metaphors, intended to assist in the struggle
to survive.
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Burke’s Origins of Hate and the Language of Trained Incapacity
Michael (2002) asks two important questions as to the nature of Nazi
language. My analysis penetrates these questions further. First, he asks how this
new language is different than other languages. Secondly, he asks what the basis
was for the hate that it entailed. To answer the first question, he uses Sapir’s
argument that language sets our parameters for perception and concludes that
Nazi-Deutsch is not different than any other language; it has as its sole purpose to
enable the ideology and policies of the Nazi party. The answer to the second
question –the basis for hatred – is much more complex. He emphasizes that antiSemitic language was not exclusive to political Nazism or German nationalism
but rather was rooted in religion: “Finally there came a man [Hitler] who
articulated these feelings- already long established in his Christian audience…”
(Michael and Doerr 2002, 15). He argues what Kenneth Burke did in the early
years of Nazi persecution of Jews: that the new Nazi language followed a
traditional pattern in Europe of constructing a fictitious Jew who could be blamed
for all. This image would extend the anti-Semitic claim that Jews are Christkillers to blaming them as the cause for all the problems. Nazi language defined
Jews as “Parasiten” and “Schädlinge,” (parasites and vermin) something that had
to be destroyed. This fictitious image would eventually lead to the murder of real
Jews: “If you call a man a bug, it means you propose to treat him as a bug”
(Aldous Huxley, Cited in Michael, 16).
For Kenneth Burke, the process of understanding how language worked
during the Nazi era involved deciphering Nazi hate through a scapegoating
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theory, where the faulty linkage is made based on racial lines. Although Burke
does not make direct links that illustrate how language enables action, his writings
explain how Nazi propaganda made the linkage in the German conscience
between economic or political disparity and the Jews (Burke 1935, 10). Burke
raises the example of blaming of Jews for the economic devastation of Germany,
a false image already widely disseminated; if Jews are in control of the money
according to the Nazi propagandist, an easier (though deceptive) interpretation is
introduced and the masses are given a clearer sense of what the ‘disturbing
agency’ is and are more easily led to get rid of it.
Burke’s scapegoat theory is a linguistically constructed process linked to
inadequate orientation that leads to faulty means-selection. As a result of this
“trained incapacity,” as Burke called it, Germans respond to Jews in the same
manner that Pavlov’s dogs responded to bells (Burke 1935, 12). A different
orientation that deals specifically with the economic systems that cause poverty or
inflation would involve a different linkage in both examples described above.
These linkages, although not specified by Burke, entail the use of language. Burke
also warns that this is not unique to Germans but that all are prone to fall victims
of this “trained incapacity.”
While Burke explained how scapegoating worked linguistically, historians
and Holocaust scholars struggled to uncover the specific origins of the Nazi words
and to document them. Michael, who traced the origin of many of those and
concluded it to be based largely on slogans, quotations, and Bible verses,
“because they sensed that their audience would be receptive to this language”
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(Michael and Doerr 2002, 16). The language, restricted by the speech control laws
(Sprachregelung), was designed to disguise the actions against the Jews,
“…although the insiders knew [what they referred to]” ((Michael and Doerr 2002,
16). According to Michael, the language served to not only disguise Nazi actions
but also to protect the German consciousness and sense of dignity: “The Nazis
employed seemingly innocuous words and expressions such as ‘preventive
detention,’…’scientific experiments’ and ‘final solution’…” (Michael and Doerr
2002, 16).
The finding was crucial, not only for dismissing Arendt’s assumptions, but
also for the analysis of the metaphors that I will cover in detail in the next chapter.
Michael pointed to the fact that Nazi leaders were aware of the power of language
and its effect on the masses. One such evidence is found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf,
where he declares: “I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by
the impression that it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on
the people” (quoted in Michael, 17).
Friedlander’s Nazi Metaphors at Work and Victim-created Metaphors
The complexities and abilities of Nazi language are stressed in the Nazi
language collected by Michael and Doerr. From an historical perspective, less
research has been conducted on the use the masses actually made of Nazi
metaphors, whether they were German citizens or the victims. Saul Friedlander’s
(1980) research does, however, shed light on how language served as a vehicle for
the Nazi slogans and ideas. In an effort to trace the manipulation of language by
the Nazis, Friedlander distinguished between two languages used by the Nazis:
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One, the public language, used as part of the propaganda to guide, convince, and
intimidate opponents, the other, the hidden language, bureaucratic, was that of the
Nazi “technicians” (Friedlander 1980, 103). While the public language
“…created the atmosphere and provided the ideology that justified genocide”
(Friedlander 1980, 109), the language of the technicians served another purpose.
The two complimented each other. The technicians’ language was extremely
bureaucratic; it was designed to disguise the activities. It was never used in a clear
and inciting manner against the Jews, but rather as “codes” that hid the real
meaning of the intentions or actions. Examples mentioned by Friedlander include
“Aktion” (operation): most often meant to describe mass murder of Jews;
“Sonderbehandlung” (special treatment): usually served as a code to the sending
of victims to the gas chamber.
Friedlander’s review of the language used during the Holocaust brings him
to conclude that the coded Nazi Language was known both to the Nazis and to
their victims. The language, he claims, was similar to prison language and as such
used by both jailers and convicts. As such, Friedlander went a step further to
examine the link between the victims’ use of the language and their knowledge of
what their hidden meaning was. He found that at most both popular and “coded”
terms were frequently used by the populations in the ghettos and concentration
camps: “Every victim understood the Nazi code words that served as the
euphemisms for the killings” (Friedlander 1980, 111). According to Friedlander,
the victims did more than simply understand the words that the speech control
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laws (sprachregelung) consisted of; they used the same words to fit their own
languages and needs. This is a very interesting fact.
One of the examples Friedlander cites is a term that will appear many
times in the interviews used in the next chapter. The term “to organize” frequently
used by the Nazis in different forms derived from its biological meaning, as in
‘organism,’ the victim’s jargon quickly, where it meant managing to get more
bread or soup or a better position in the camp by stealing. The victims used the
Nazi codes to describe their experience: “action” was adjusted to ‘akzya’ to sound
closer to the languages of by Jews in Eastern Europe to describe brutal roundups
(Friedlander 1980, 112). These were examples of non-German speaking Jews
adjusting to the reality of the language rules that originated in Nazi Germany. Dehumanizing metaphors used by the Nazis describing the Jewish population in
terms of “freight” or “packages,” were used to describe the killing in Yiddish
(action, transport, selection, sorting). In these contexts they have an ironic
overtone as they are adjusting the words that describe their annihilation to
Yiddish, practically assisting the Nazi language production.
Exclusion and persecution during the Nazi rule forced a new reality on
Jewish populations and Germany and across Europe. These experiences were at
times impossible to explain, as existing language lacked words to describe this
new reality. Nazi victims were forced to create new language and metaphors to
describe their conditions. Friedlander, one of the primary scholars to try to trace
these metaphors, speculates that they originated from the many different
languages the victims spoke. To illustrate, he brings examples of a few metaphors
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like “Kapo” (possibly originating from the Italian word for “head” –Capo), a
metaphor used to describe those in the camps chosen among the prisoners by the
Germans to head a work force (Friedlander 1980, 110). Another example from the
last years of the war was “Muselmann,” a German word simply meaning “Muslim
man” and used to describe a prisoner that had stopped fighting for survival, a
“dead man walking.” Prisoners in better condition used the term to distinguish
between themselves and those who had given up on life; it empowered their
determination to survive. According to Friedlander, the term was “…derived from
German for a Muslim, because these inmates seemed to resemble stereotype
pictures of Arabs: brown skin, huge eyes, always wrapped in blankets”
(Friedlander 1980, 111). Both of these metaphors will appear in many of the
interviews and be a major case in the following chapter and the interviews
researched.
Friedlander’s research adds another layer of meaning to the metaphors as
he situates those in the cultural setting of the camps depending on the originating
countries from which the victims came to the camps from. His research also offers
a possible division for the victim-used metaphors, distinguishing between whether
the metaphor is victim-created or Nazi created, its language of origin, or its
functionality for the users. We can draw his conclusions on the link between
metaphor use and knowledge of its real meaning as he illustrates that the victims
knew what the technicians’ language meant. The examination of the new
metaphors created by the victims, I argued, sheds light on the false assumption
introduced by Arendt that the use of a metaphor does not imply knowing its real
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meaning. This is because their creation, as shown above, stemmed from a reality
acknowledged an object or a situation that needed phrasing. This division is to be
used in the next chapter as the basis for the grouping of victim-created metaphors.
Klemperer’s Diary- the Fine Line between Nazi and Victim Language
Victor Klemperer’s (1957) secretly documented diary of the language
used in the Nazi era is far more than a witness account of the terminology used in
the Third Reich. As a professor at the Dresden University in Germany, Klemperer
gives us an academic perspective expertise in philology: the study and analysis
language. He concludes that the new Nazi language was far more than a language
used and understood solely by the Nazis. Similarly to Arendt’s description of
language providing the Nazis a “smoke screen,” Klemperer claims that the
language created the “fog of Nazism.” Contrary to her, however, he emphasizes
that not thinking did not mean, “not knowing.” Everything “swam in the same
brown sauce” (Klemperer 1957, 12), he claims, concluding that both the
technicians and the victims knew what was in this brown sauce, and maybe they
didn’t think of it, but they knew. He stresses how language controlled the masses
for the Nazis:
Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words,
idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million
repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously. . .
language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly
dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more
unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it. (Klemperer
1957, 15)
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The title of Klemperer’s book itself is a manipulation of language; “LTI”
(Lingua Tertii Imperii), the acronym for “Language of the Third Reich” translated
into Latin, was the code Klemperer used in his diary whenever he made notes
about anything that had to do with language. Klemperer provides many examples
of the political use of language and also how the victims used language. Nazi
language, he claims, is linked directly to the Nazi thought process: “…Nazi cast
of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking and its breeding-ground: the language
of Nazism” (Klemperer 1957, 2). Language, according to Klemperer, is a tool we
can use to understand the true intentions of a speaker because “Whatever it is that
people are determined to hide, be it only from others, or from themselves, even
things they carry around unconsciously- language reveals all” (Klemperer 1957,
11). In other words, despite the fact that language use may serve for concealing
reality, being a “smoke screen,” Klemperer suggests that examining language
holds the key to revealing much about this period. For his project, this is
important as use of metaphor is examined based on its purpose (coping,
concealing, etc,).
Klemperer, too, characterizes the Nazi language as new language that only
consisted of a limited number of new words. Instead, he claims Nazi language
leans on language that existed in German culture much before Hitler, but was
used by a limited group of people. Nazi language “…changes the value of words
and the frequency of their occurrence… [and] steeps words and groups of words
and sentence structures with its poison” (Klemperer 1957, 16).
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One metaphor that was of focus for Klemperer was already mentioned as
examined by several scholars earlier in the chapter. Klemperer found this word to
be especially interesting and a characteristic word of the Nazi language –
“Organization.” Hardly used before the Nazi era, this word turned out to not only
be a basic pillar of the Nazi propaganda. In using it, the Nazi regime was making
a concerted effort to get rid of the common use of the word “system.” Klemperer
explains how this word, “system,” symbolized the era of the Weimar Republic
that they detested and was related to democracies that were viewed as artificial,
intellectual, and theoretical. The Nazis needed a new word to describe the new
regime and the new world order they were trying to build. While the word
“system” demanded thought, the Nazis wished to prevent any such thinking under
their rule. The solution was the extensive use of the “organism” metaphor. This,
according to Klemperer is at the core of the Nazi worldview (Klemperer 1957,
19).
Kershaw and a Structuralist Approach to Nazi Metaphor
More previous direction in Holocaust studies use the structuralist approach
to explain the Nazi use of metaphor. Ian Kershaw explains that, according to the
structuralist approach, Hitler’s politics and actions were all led by a network of
‘ideological metaphors’ that included his goal of “purifying” the German nation
with plans such as the Lebensraum –the living space needed for German body that
was free of any other races. But, Kershaw stresses, the ideological metaphors
were also intended to function in the plans geared for the elimination of any threat
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to the German body with the implementation of the “Final Solution.” It was all
made possible by turning the older worldview in from one that included all
humans as living in one space (a ‘system’ approach) to one in which the German
“body” relied on a Lebensraum – a race-specific, organic environment free from
anything else but Germans (an organic, organizational approach). Kershaw traces
Hitler’s political and ideological metaphoric fanaticism from post WWI and
concludes that once in power: “…the quest for Lebensraum and the extermination
of the Jews, far from remaining the wild ravings of a lunatic-fringe beer-hall
rabble-rouser, became horrific reality and were implemented by the
government…” (Kershaw 2000, 76-79).
As will be seen in the following chapter, the metaphorical use of words
stemming from “organization” metaphors created by the Nazis had a completely
different use for the victims, one in which the victims not only countered the
original Nazi intentions but also created a “world” of their own. (Klemperer 1957,
97-102).
Attia’s Victim-Created Metaphors and Understanding
Since the analytical chapter to follow will examine metaphors using
interviews conducted many years after the events of the Holocaust, a special
emphasis on the interview process and the cultural gaps between the survivors and
their interviewers should also be a major focus. For this, I turn to the work of
Itzchak Attia.
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Attia (In Chalfen, 2001) analyzed testimonies of Holocaust survivors. He
emphasizes some of the communication problems and issues that arise when the
non-Holocaust survivor hears a testimony. An interviewer may not fully
understand certain banal words in the way a survivor does. Attia claims: "We
have to understand the specific semantic traits, but the survivors, largely for
psychological reasons, are not explaining them" (Chalfen, 2001, 2). Attia points to
how certain nouns (he does not use the term ‘metaphor’) used in testimonies
involve a deeper semantic meaning, far deeper than a descriptive one. His
research stresses that in order to understand the true meaning of words, one has to
have knowledge of the certain semantic meanings attached to a noun in a certain
period of time. Therefore, metaphors used cannot be inseparable from knowledge
of what they meant, at least in the context of that period of time.
According to Attia, "Words are signals, Simple nouns such as ‘soup,’
’walk,’ ‘food,’ and ‘door’ are much deeper than just the letters. Each word
encompasses a whole world of connotations." (Chalfen, 2001, 3). Attia stresses
that in order to understand a word used in a particular time, it is necessary to
understand the “…semantic traits attached to that noun, at that time" (Chalfen,
2001, 3).
One word examined by Attia in his still ongoing research is the word
“Soup." Attia claims the word meant much more than nutrition. It symbolized the
Nazi’s control of food and was an instrument of reward and punishment. When a
prisoner would not get his or her soup it could mean death. “Soup” meant life.
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Attia relates much of the difficulty we have in understanding Holocaust
testimonies lays in our inability to grasp all the semantic nuances attributed to
words commonly used by the survivors. He not only emphasizes the link this
language has to the specific time, but also weaves the use of these words to the
experience, thus the knowledge of their true meaning. Still, he falls short in
explaining communicative interaction in the use of Nazi camp language.
Performativity
Before reviewing the primary sources used for this research, a conclusion
based on performative utterance theories can be drawn on the character of victimcreated-metaphors of the Holocaust. The secondary sources reviewed thus far
direct us to the question on the role language can have in this unique
communicative situation. In order to better understand the possible roles
language played for the victims, I will introduce some of the foundational theories
that stress that aspect of language as being performative in order to contextualize
the Holocaust metaphorical utterances and to stress their functional roles.
For J.L. Austin (1962), who introduced the theory of speech-acts, many of
the metaphors included in this study would be categorized as performative
utterances, utterances that, while describing a reality, are not a mere saying of
something but rather are an action that also changes the reality it attempts to
describe. Austin claims that in certain conditions language can enact and that “the
issuing of the utterance is the performing of an action” (Austin 1962, 5). As an
example for an utterance that “does” something more than describe reality, Austin
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cites the expression “I do” at a wedding ceremony. The speakers uttering this are
“performing” something that is not simply describing the reality of a wedding
ceremony but doing it: “When I say, before the registrar or altar, ‘I do.’ I am not
reporting on marriage; I am indulging in it” (Austin 1962, 6). The importance of
Austin’s work to this metaphor analysis stems from his later development of a
speech-act theory of "illocutionary" forces. Austin distinguished between
illocutionary acts, utterances in which the action involved constitutes the meaning
of the utterance, and perlocutionary acts, where it doesn’t. Austin’s work focused
on the illocutionary acts and the different actions, or performances, their use
entails. It may or may not be a specific action, but rather an attempt to cause
action, where change of thought can be one result. It is important for this
discussion about metaphors and meaning because metaphors, in the context of the
Holocaust, whether uttered by victims in the camps or years later in interviews,
are more than simple constatives but rather performatives due to their character as
being more than simple descriptors of the new reality.
What is especially significant in Austin’s work for this project is his
mapping out of the five types of illocutionary force performative acts:
1) Verdictives: verbal acts of giving a verdict including judging,
evaluating, appraising, estimating.
2) Exercitives: verbal acts that act out power of appointing, ordering,
warning.
3) Commissives: verbal acts of promising, vowing, proposing, declaring
an intention, agreeing, swearing.
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4) Behabitives: verbal acts of apologizing, thanking, blessing,
welcoming, commending, resenting.
5) Expositives: verbal acts of affirming, denying, stating, testifying,
reporting, clarifying (Austin 1962, 151).
These types, as we will see in the next chapter, provide us with the
framework of the functions that apply to the use of metaphors in the camps. While
some have a distinct or single purpose, others overlap. Let us look at one
example: The expression “to organize,” “I organized,” or any one of the variety of
forms found in testimonies is far more than a simple constative. Rather, it has a
variety of functions. First, it is a behabitive because its purpose is to counter or
condemn the Nazi regime by “twisting” the meaning of the word.” Second, it is
also an expositive because, although technically it is stealing, the use of the
expression allows for the denial and clarification of an act that should be
considered illegal, but in the camp world is not. In certain situations we can see
victims using the term in its verdictive sense when they tell the story of their
survival. All these create the very reality they purport to report.
Primary Sources
The search for documentation of language used by the victims has
included searches in four continents, numerous cities and a large number of
Holocaust research institutions. While the data section of this project will rely
heavily on The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn, I have also utilized many other sources that
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shed light on the interpretation of the metaphors and better help organize those
into categories. The metaphors found in the interviews will be reviewed in
reference to three sources that documented language during the Holocaust.
Michael and Doerr’s Lexicon of Nazi- Nazi-Deutsch
The first source to introduce me to the vital role language had during the
Nazi era was the text already mentioned earlier: Nazi-Deutsch/Nazi German: An
English Lexicon of the Language of the Third Reich by Robert Michael and Karin
Doerr. While the theoretic part of their work was reviewed in both Chapter II and
III, the focus now is on the second and major part of their book- the actual lexicon
of words used during the Nazi era. The initial purpose for approaching this source
was to determine the role language had on Nazi officials like Adolf Eichmann, to
which indirectly Hannah Arendt suggested a “theory” of language that explains
his actions, a process that was disused in the previous chapter. The lexicon is
considered to be the most comprehensive lexicon of Nazi language, according to
the American Library Association (2000). For the research on the links between
language, thought, and culture in the context of Eichmann and Arendt’s theory of
language, Michael and Doerr’s lexicon provided insight to the systematic
structure of deceit that Nazi language was constructed on. A look at the
terminology and specialized vocabulary that made up the Nazi ideology in the
lexicon can help the researcher make connections between German cultural
symbolisms associated with the words that now served the Nazi regime, as the
authors explain the origins of the words.
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The lexicon spans over hundreds of pages and includes anything for all the
military ranks and terminology, with their specific acronyms to the slogans and
euphemisms and metaphors used for propaganda and to conceal the atrocities.
Since the authors wished to create a comprehensive list of words that defined how
the Nazi party influenced the German language and culture, the lexicon includes
words from as early as the start of the Nazi party, to words used in the period after
the collapse of the Nazi era. Thus, it covers all party slogans, Nazi government
and military expressions and language unique concentration camp language,
whether Nazi-created or victim created. For every lexicon item considered to be
part the Nazi-German language, the authors provide both the literal meaning and
the term, its abbreviation if applicable, the literal English translation, and the
background information or explanation of the word as it was used in the Nazi
regime. The terms are also translated to English and if available, abbreviations
and cross-reference are also provided. An example entry in the lexicon is the
following:
Organisch. Organic. Synonymous with the worldview of National
Socialism, belonging biologically to the German nation. (Michael & Doerr
2002, 305)
Julio Szeferblum’s “Lager” Lexicon
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, where many Holocaust survivors now call
their home, historian Julio Szeferblum is working to provide detailed
documentation of the “culture” of the victims of Nazi terror. His work ranges
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from research on how the Nazis classified prisoners by colors and symbols and
documenting how Nazis classified all the camps and concentration camps. More
relevant to this project though are two lexicons that Szeferblum compiled in 2008.
The first, “INSTALACIONES, ELEMENTOS Y LUGARES DE TRABAJO,”
(Installations, elements, and places of work), gives a detailed vocabulary that
served the work Nazi regime in regards to either work or extermination camps.
These include abbreviations and words, including code words, euphemisms and
metaphors used by the Nazis during the early concentration camp period solely in
Germany (roughly 1933-1939) and the later concentration camps and death camps
all over Europe (1939-1945). The second lexicon is focused more on the lives and
the victims and is ironically called “ORGANIZACIÓN INTERNA,” meaning
“Internal Organization.” This work focuses on “lager” (camp) language
specifically, whether metaphorical or not. The lexicon, which is completely in
Spanish, is geared towards providing a “map” to Spanish-speaking Holocaust
researchers. Thus every entry provides the basic translation and very little context
or analysis is given. Nevertheless, it provides an additional resource to draw from
when searching the interviews for specific language. This this also assist in my
attempt to illustrate the victim-perspective of language use in the concentration
camps.
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Sample Entry (in original German and defined in Spanish, followed by my
translation).
Preso que “organizaba”
(robaba) algo de
propiedad del Campo, no
de algún preso
ORGANISATOR
“Organizer”- A Prisoner that "organized" (stole) property from the camp, not
from any prisoner.
The Yiddish “Lager” Journals
In 2002, while on a research trip to the United States Library of Congress,
I was directed to several Yiddish-language journals that had been mysteriously
and anonymously given to the institution in the 1950’s. The works were all
written and published in Yiddish in the years following the war. These include
works from known academic journals of the time and other unknown journals that
were all geared towards one goal: documenting the language used by the victims
during the period of Nazi terror.
These journals were all part of the Polish Jewish Historical Committee
(Żydowska Komisja Historyczna), an institute established in Lublin by Polish
Jewish scholars in August of 1944. From that time until 1948 and the foundation
of the State of Israel, scholars worked meticulously to document and research the
Holocaust. Beginning a few months before the end of the war, they began to
gather data on Nazi war crimes. One of the institute’s first tasks was to write
elaborate questionnaires for the groups of Holocaust survivors that would return
to the big Polish cities. According to YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research in
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New York, “by December 1945, some 3,000 testimonies had been collected,
constituting one of the most significant bodies of evidence about the Holocaust
gathered in the immediate postwar years” (Tych 2010). The journals are the
result of the efforts the scholars made to interview the Holocaust survivors’ and
document their experiences. In 1945, the institute began publishing annotated
editions of the responses to the interviews. By the end of 1948, after more than
7,000 interviews had been collected, the scholars published their findings in 38
journals and books, all published in liberated Poland (Tych 2010). Among these,
are the four journal and book entries that will be used in this research:
1) In the journal ‫( בלעטער פאר געשיכטע‬Browsing for History), issued
December 1948, the article “Jewish Language and the Struggle against
Fascist Regime” by Nachman Blumental, while discussing use of Hebrew
and Yiddish during the Holocaust, it ends with a few examples on specific
words used to counter the Nazis.
2) In the journal ‫ ( פאלקלאר‬Jewish Folklore) the article -‫און קאצעט‬-‫געטא‬
‫( ווערטלעך‬Ghetto and Concentration Camp Sayings) by N. Glube, was
published in 1947 and includes a list of words unique to the Holocaust and
that were commonly heard in the interviews of survivors.
3) In the essay ‫ווערטלעך און אנעקדאטן‬-‫( געטא‬Ghetto - Words and Anecdotes)
from 1946, the author Barbiet Fiegenbaum groups camp-specific language
in four groups: big camps, small camps, between Poles and Jews, and
various others.
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4) The final essay, Lager Language, written by David Diamant is the most
comprehensive list of words collected by the interviews. It also includes
interpretation and information available on the origins of the word.
The Interviews- Voices/Vision and USHMM Archives
Some of the data analyzed in Chapter V is a result of research that directed
me to the most authentic transliterations of oral interviews conducted with
Holocaust survivors. The majority of the interviews come from the Holocaust
Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. The rest
of the interviews (only those available with full transcripts) are from the Steven
Spielberg Shoah Foundation archive now at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum international database of oral history testimonies in which
survivors use or describe metaphors. All interviews have full-text transcripts, but
only some interviews include either audio or video.
Conclusion
The theories and scholarly works presented in this chapter, along with
situating the current research with previous research, provide the basis for
acknowledging the significance language use and particularly metaphors had in
the survival of the victims of Nazi terror. While historians, and even some
communication scholars, have been intrigued by the role language played in
implementation of Nazi horrors, few have reflected or focused on the role
language had on victims. That is my special object of concern.
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The previous research focusing on victim use of language during this
period was divided to two:
1) Scholars (Klemperer, Friedlander) that examined how victims accepted,
rejected, reversed or simply used the Nazi created metaphors.
2) Scholars (Attia, Friedlander) that examined victim-created metaphor and
asked to trace the origin and determine the functionality.
These findings, which only provided a handful of victim-used metaphor
examples, will be the basis for the analysis of the interviews in the next chapter
that will trace the use of these metaphors in survivor interviews.
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CHAPTER V
METAPHORS IN HOLOCAUST SURVIOR TESTIMONIES-METHODS AND
ANALYSIS
Introduction
This chapter will illustrate through data analysis the role metaphors played
in the lives of the victims during the Holocaust. While this study will rely on the
systematic analysis of metaphor use both during and after the Holocaust that I set
up in Chapter IV, it will also rely on methods used in the process of rhetorical
analysis, as it will focus on the text and interview to further interpret each
metaphor and its functionality. I will also introduce the historical background for
the creation and use of the metaphor and its use in the interview. A combination
of methods enables the effective analysis of metaphors collected through the
interviews that have already been conducted. The goal is to capture the trends,
details, context, and complexity of the language used by the victims in order to
maximize our knowledge not only about the role language had in the Holocaust,
but also of the role it has in our ability (or inability) to understand why survivors
believe they survived the Holocaust, as can be exemplified in the interview with
the survivors.
The inquiry around our misunderstandings and often inability to grasp this
period involves several aspects that will be examined in this chapter: first, we ask
how language played a role in the survival of the victims. What were the roles
metaphors had in their lives during the war? For example, what was the role
language and specifically metaphors had in the concealment of truth from the
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victims themselves or as a tool of self-deception to protect each other (victims and
their children). Then, when we discover that this language system was continually
used after the war as well, what is the functionality a metaphor might have for the
survivor who uses it?
The second question examines the role metaphors play in survivor
testimonials and their effect on interviewers, listeners, and readers alike. These
metaphors signify speech acts communicated after the fact. This topic can help
illuminate much of the misunderstanding and confusion we have when trying to
understand the period and the victims’ ability to use metaphors as survival
mechanisms either during or after the Holocaust. This part is based on
observations in the data of instances when the survivors use metaphors that are
not understood by the interviewer. The interviewers and subsequently, the
listeners, are unable to decipher the true meaning of the testimony, mainly due to
the fact that in such cases a metaphor that has no meaning to the non-survivor.
Here we ask to uncover misunderstanding of survivors and their interviewers as
possible sources of overall misunderstandings of the Holocaust.
From the metaphorical analysis we collect, sort, and examine a list of
metaphors for their semantic value. We can also examine the text to better utilize
the meaning (or lack of it), as it is encountered through the instances in the
communication process of the interview (silences, queues, and questions are some
examples). The methods complement each other and allow for more complete
analysis, of both the functionality of a metaphor during the war and after the war.
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Methods
This scope of this research project will be limited to available transcribed
oral testimonies given by Holocaust survivors with the goal of identifying
metaphor use in the description of the Holocaust, as detailed in the previous
chapter. The metaphors have already been uncovered in previous scholarly work
and in several literary texts. The metaphors selected for further analysis in this
chapter are based on the number of mentions they have in the testimonies
analyzed. Only those with multiple occurrences have been selected for this
project.
The metaphors selected are categorized in a dual process: first, metaphors
will be identified based on their origin – whether victim-created or Nazi-created,
but used by victims. Rhetorical analysis of testimonies includes identifying their
vehicle terms and determining their speech act functions in camp discourse. These
will then be analyzed to illustrate:
A) The role language played and specifically the metaphors used aid in
uncovering their place in general for victims and its importance as a tool
for survival during the Holocaust and after.
B) The several types of the metaphor created and used by the victims:
1) Retroping of metaphors- reversal of intended purpose of Nazi created
metaphor, either to ridicule the perpetrators’ intended meaning (ironic
metaphor) or to create new rules that reveal truth about conditions and
how to improve them.
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2) Invention – New metaphors created by victims in order to describe or
uncover truth of emotions or conditions.
C) The coping function of metaphors created and used by the victims:
Various forms of coping either through use of victim-created metaphor or Nazi
created metaphor used in its intended function to conceal truth.
Each of the metaphors analyzed is first identified as being either victimcreated or not. Re-troped metaphors can logically consist only of Nazi-created
metaphors that were used by the victims and received new meaning. Other novel
metaphors can consist of either Nazi-created or victim-created metaphors. As for
the role each metaphor played, they can have one or several functions depending
on context and/or users. The recurrence of metaphors examined in the interviews
and testimonials with Holocaust survivors allows a grouping into the functionality
groups and to identify trends in metaphor creation and use that I hope to further
delineate with new literature or that was mentioned in earlier chapters. Most of
the metaphors have been listed and discussed in Holocaust scholarly work, and
those, as mentioned, will be the source for the searching of metaphors in
testimonies.
So They Speak: Survivor Testimonies, the Data
In researching archives for this project, it was important for me to find
sources that preserved as much as possible from interview that were not recorded.
Accordingly, the interviews used for the project were collected primarily from the
Vice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of
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Michigan-Dearborn. This is due to the archives commitment to authentically
preserving the information and the interview process: “This archive represents a
guarantee of honest presentation--unembroidered, without dramatization, a
scholarly yet austerely moving collection of information and insight”
(Voice/Vision). Some interviews were also collected at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum international database of oral history testimonies
that enabled partial testimony keyword searches only in 2013. The goal was not to
collect as many testimonies as possible but rather to acquire other testimonies in
which survivors explicitly use or describe metaphors.
Metaphor 1: Organize / Organizing Metaphor
The first metaphor analyzed will be organize.” In order to situate us in the
importance of analyzing the metaphors in testimonies, a sample interview will be
presented first and will be followed by a discussion on these metaphors and their
importance.
Interview 1: Simon Goldman - June 6, 2003
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Simon Goldman, who was a
child in Poland during the Holocaust. In this part of the interview, Goldman is
being asked about survival during the years of Nazi occupation and the fate of his
sister:
INTERVIEWER. And you don't know what happened to her?
GOLDMAN. No. And my older brother, he got married there in '41 or something
like that in ??? to a distant cousin. And they moved, and they moved into her
place, they had a place there. So we were left just the three brothers. The
younger brother and I and our, older than I. So after awhile we were working,
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the two of us, the older ones, we were working in a bakery and uh, we--in
fact, most, a lot of times we slept in the bakery overnight. And we also
organized in that uh, the family needed food, you know, so, and working in a
bakery. And while you could call it, uh...
INTERVIEWER. Stealing.
GOLDMAN. ...stealing really...
INTERVIEWER. Yeah.
GOLDMAN....because they were putting bags of flours, illegal flour into a, into
the, into the basement there, a special hiding place they were putting flour
and so the Germans wouldn't know how much bread they're baking or
whatever because there was rations. They couldn't give out bread to anybody
more than they, they told 'em to bake.
INTERVIEWER. Was this a Jewish baker?
GOLDMAN. Yeah, Jewish baker. A distant, distant relative. And my older
brother and me, and I, we were working there and, and we also slept there, so
at night sometimes we organized on flour and get some. We call, we call it
steal...
INTERVIEWER. Organized, I understand what you mean.
GOLDMAN. ...and uh, we take it to the family, my brother, and, you know,
supplied it, some of the stuff to the family. Until we got caught.
INTERVIEWER. You got caught so there must have been a curfew.
GOLDMAN. No, no, until we got caught stealing.
INTERVIEWER. Who caught you?
GOLDMAN. Uh, the owners, you know, distant cousin.
INTERVIEWER. I see.
GOLDMAN. They didn't caught us stealing the flour, but they caught us baking a
little bread at night. We used to take it home in, in the morning and give it to
the rest of the family.
INTERVIEWER. If you would organize flour at night, was there a curfew in the...
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GOLDMAN. Oh, curfew was there, but we slept overnight. We, we, we slept in
the, in the bakery overnight. The reason we slept in the bakery overnight
because, well, my father met somebody there, and it was, I don't know what,
what, you know, I was too young to know anything about stuff like that, but I
guess she, she had a place of her own and he met somebody and they got
married and he moved in.
INTERVIEWER. So that left the three children.
GOLDMAN. Yeah, the three children at home. And sometimes we had to go
home from the bakery and there was a curfew, we couldn't go home because
they were shooting and beating up everybody. And uh, so we got home one
night and they wouldn't let--she wouldn't let us in, the stepmother. She
wouldn't let us into the house. And we were scared to death at, you know.
Then that, a Jewish policeman came around and finally had them open the
door, because he saw what's happening, you know, so he gave us a break and
opened the door, opened up the door for us before we could ???.
INTERVIEWER. Your father wouldn't let you in either?
GOLDMAN. Well, I don't know what, what happened. I guess he didn't have
control of it.
Analysis
Goldman’s use of the metaphor “organize” to mean “steal” is part of
metaphor group that was frequently used during the Holocaust by the victims. In
the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive testimonies, a total of
221 mentions of the term in its metaphoric use were found. The metaphor was
based on the Nazi construction of metaphors attempting to relate anything
German as “organic,” “biological,” while on the other hand, describing Jews as
those who pose a threat to that organic biological body (“vermin,” see Chapter
IV). Victor Klemperer (1957), whose quote initiates this dissertation comically
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situates us in the complexity of this metaphor: “…who was it that said only
yesterday ‘I must organize some tobacco for myself?’ I fear it was me” (102).
Klemperer attempts to show how Nazi-created metaphors were given new
meaning (or counter-meaning) by the victims. He finds an example of the
meaning victims gave to the verb organisierien (from German, meaning “to
organize”), which meant to “organize” your means of life (getting an extra piece
of bread, a better position in the camp) (97-102). According to historian Doerr
(2002) ORGANISATOR is a prisoner who "organized" (stole) some property, not
from a fellow prisoner. The interviews illustrate that it was a vital part of the life
in the camps because the survivors describe it as essential for their own survival.
The Nazi-created “Organism” Metaphor- Projection Theory
While much has been written on the Nazi propaganda machine, it is
adequate to begin the discussion on the “organism” metaphor (and its reversal by
victims) with Kenneth Burke’s early interpretation of how Hitler used metaphors,
as found in his essay "The Rhetoric of Hitler's Battle.” Burke details the tropes
used by Hitler, one of them being “projection” of religious concepts such as the
“devil” into a visible enemy. He argued that Hitler transferred the known religious
categories to the social level as far as the relationship with the Jews. The
“reidentification” of the German people is explored through this dialectical
process of opposition created through what Burke calls the scapegoat mechanism.
Burke defines the “goat” as a kind of “bad parent.” The alienating of iniquities
from the German people to the Jews is described in terms of a rebirth of the self,
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insofar as the transformation is a sort of change of parentage. During the process
the Germans are therefore “purified” because all essence of evil is now attributed
to the Jews, who become the sacrifice for this goal: “The Hitlerite anti-Semitism
as scapegoat principle clearly reveals a related process of dialect: unification by a
foe shared in common” (Burke 1945, 408). This identification of the German
people also entails a division, expressed racially in this case. Burke views this
process as the “antithetical nature” of dialectical terms such as “freedom” that
gain their significance by contrasting them with opposite terms. Burke claimed
that the persuasive appeal Hitler and the Nazis had for Germans was in providing
such rhetoric that provided a “’cure-all response to inner necessities’” (Musolff
2008, 2). Although Burke did not discuss the organism metaphors in Hitler’s
rhetoric, he provided a lens in which we can view these metaphors as they
affected German culture. The scapegoated Jews are represented as non-organic.
When Jews in the camps retrope organic metaphors the act is not insignificant.
The Nazi-created Metaphor- Infestation Metaphor
Religious projection was only secondary, however, I argue, to the
systematic body-parasite metaphors the Hitler and the Nazis operated. The most
extensive work on the use of the infestation metaphor was conducted by Steven
Perry (1983), as reviewed in earlier chapters as well. Perry’s work specified and
illustrated how “Hitler’s critique of the Jew’s status as a cultural being…is not
illustrated by the metaphor of parasitism; it is constituted by this metaphor and the
figurative entailments it carries” (Perry 1983, 219). He concluded that “organic”
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metaphors were used to build and strengthen the German “body” that was weak
after WWI. Those metaphors reconstructed the German conscience to both give
the regime its strength and as a result of fierce propaganda, everything German
was described in terms of a great organism. Anything outside the German “body”
was not organic. Perry shows that while these metaphors build the German
morale, it involved a process of legitimizing Nazi militant anti-Semitism in a
dual-staged process. First, Hitler uses “…natural, organic imagery to characterize
the German nation…” (Perry 1983, 221). Then, the Jews are described in terms of
metaphors that harm and pose a threat to the survival of the German nation (such
as “parasite”). The result is the social construction of a new “moral universe,”
where the elimination of Jews was necessary for the German existence (Perry
1983, 223).
Historical Background and Nazi Worldview
Hitler and the National Socialist movement that he founded in 1920
succeeded to take over the embattled post-WWI German nation and create a
reality that although it did not last a lengthy period in historical terms, managed to
result in one of the most researched historical periods of all time. The “organism”
metaphor is one of the keys to answering some of the burning questions about this
period.
The uniqueness of the Nazi ideology and the organism metaphor can be
identified if we review some of the sources on which their success of creating the
dichotomy between the in-group and out-group originates. Following the German
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defeat in WWI and the harsh economic times that followed, the Nazis’ task was to
alienate the people from supporting the Weimar Republic and, instead favor an
ideology that would emphasize the concept of German ethnicity: Blood and Soil
(German: Blut und Boden) (Cecil 1972, 166). Historians writing about this
ideology claim that while many view this as direct opposition to the ideology of
Weimar, it could actually be said that many of the elements in the new Nazi
regime both relied on the bankruptcy of the old ideology and institutions of
Weimar, but also continued them in some manner (Neumann 2002, 367). We
illustrated through Burke’s writing and in previous chapters how the Nazi
ideology relied on religious aspects but there were other, political and social
aspects that contributed to the organism metaphor. The dichotomy that the
organism metaphor created between Aryans and Jews that Perry described and the
Nazi worldview have origins in the work of German sociologist Ferdinand
Toennies.
Sociologist Ferdinand Toennies’ distinction between two different types of
social groups called 'Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft' (commonly translated to
English as ‘community and society’) leaves us questioning into what category to
place the Nazi regime and how we should understand the ‘organism” metaphor in
light of Toennies distinctions. According to Toennies' major work, Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft, first published in 1887, all human relationships are comprised
of one of two types: organic and mechanical. On the one hand, claims Toennies,
the Gemeinschaft is a real, organic life full of community, family, and personal
relationships. On the other hand, the Gesellschaft, full of relationships that are
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constructed and mechanical, often times imaginary (Toennies 1957, 192). In
Gemeinschaft, Toennies claims there is a unity of the human will and it is a
natural condition that included three types: kinship, friendship, and neighborhood.
In all three, humans are to be in agreement as to their authoritative figures and are
bound to totality in an environment in which all particulars function in natural law
to the benefit of the whole. Interestingly, Tonnnies stressed the importance of
language as a tool which is agreed-upon symbols allow the relations between
people to flourish in a Gemeinschaft (Toennies 1957, 195).
In a Gesellschaft (society), on the other hand, there is a mechanical,
artificial construction of human interaction. According to Toennies, between
community and society only one commonality exists and that is that “individuals
peacefully live together” (Toennies 1957, 197). Other than that, the unity
between people is artificial and there is a sense of commercial exchange to all
interactions, so while it may be portrayed as though the individual is doing
something for the common group, he or she are mostly acting out of self-interest.
The tension between the individual and community was especially
prevalent as German society under the Weimar Republic became more and more
free-market capitalistic, in effect anarchic. According to historian Jonathan
Wiesen, between the period in which Toeinnes wrote his text and the rise of
Hitler, German society was in a constant battle between strengthening the
capitalistic society on the one hand, and maintaining a strong sense of family and
neighborhood (Wiesen 2011, 25). By the end of the First World War, individuals
in Germany found themselves confronted with political options that asked them to
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choose between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as the various political parties
promoted ideologies that fitted into one of the two definitions presented by
Toennes. The Weimar capitalistic economy was beginning to affect the
relationships of family and neighborhood, bringing “this tension to the fore”
(Wiesen 2011, 25) of the critique raised by both left and right parties opposed to
the government.
While opponents of the capitalistic Weimar way chose to counter it with
an extreme model of Gemeinschaft, others chose its counterpart. Hitler and his
party members, critical of the capitalistic Weimar and the solutions offered by
liberals, socialists, and Marxists, came up with a different option that “called on
corporatism and antiliberal organicism, but also soundly rejected the command
economics of the Soviet Union. They tried to craft a third way that maintained the
advantages of capitalism…but that jettisoned its negative manifestations…”
(Wiesen 2011, 26). By entering into alliance with big business and creating a
military-industrial complex, the Nazis forcibly broke up labor unions. The idea
was to combine the elements of both Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in such a
way that would eliminate selfishness and cause individuals to embrace a
“’German socialism’ that prioritized the nation’s spiritual and economic health
over the individual’s” (Wiesen 2011, 26).
Nazi Volksgemeinschaft and the Organism Metaphors
The outcome of conservative economists advising Hitler and his party is
what historians call a regime that is neither a classic Gemeinschaft nor
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Gesellschaft in its character, but rather a Volksgemeinschaft, meaning ‘people’s
community.’ The concept was based on racial theories of Blood and Soil (Blut
und Boden) that stressed not only the exclusive connection of the German people
to their lands, but also implies organic union between the two. The economic
ideology did not completely counter Weimar’s as it preserved certain elements
such as welfare programs, but, this time, it excluded anyone that was not pure
Aryan from the soil (Fritzsche 2009, 51). The idea was to eliminate existing class
structures for those that were “racially pure” and create a commonality among
Germans by using an “us” vs “them” mentality. These “them” would be
dominated by Jews, but would include other groups and minorities. The point for
us that these others would, under propagandistic methods and the help of
metaphors, become to have no organic characteristics (Gemeinschaft) at all.
Creating the Divide- The Theory of the Nazi Worldview (Weltanschauung)
Adapting Toeinnes’ theory and implementing a new ideology of
Volksgemeinschaft resulted for the Nazis in a majority of Germans that accepted
their worldview and allowed for the Nazi atrocities to happen almost without
opposition. What is unique about this tactic and how were metaphors used to
accomplish these goals? Historian Boaz Neumann indirectly supplies us with an
answer that explains how this worldview is unique and how the organism
metaphors played a key role in the “us” vs “them” concept in Nazi theory.
Neumann explains that the Nazi “twist” to the Toeinnes distinctions, not
only created a new social-political sphere, but also a unique phenomenon that
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should be seen as a “world view (Weltanschauung) that created a dichotomy
between the Aryan German and the Jew” (Neumann 2002, 366). Neumann’s
work illustrates how this dichotomy is created in the Nazi spaces, body and
language. He claims that the Nazi worldview aimed to establish that anything
Aryan was organic (thus, in Toeinnes’s terms would be “Gemeinschaft”), while
anything Jewish would be mechanical (“Gesellschaft”). In terms of space,
Neumann illustrates this division in what he calls “Life-Space” for the Germans
and “Death-Space” for the Jews and illustrates this through the contrast between
the German building of many stadiums during the Nazi era, on the one hand, and
concentration camps on the other hand:
While the new German city was a manifestation of Nazi urban space, the
Stadium was a significant cultural and political space. It furnished tangible
expression of the social and politically organicity possessed by the
community of the German people (Volksgemeinschaft). Whoever was
classified as not belonging to that community, who was socially and
politically ‘different,’ was directed to the Lager – the labor camp or
concentration camp. (Nuemann 2002, 365)
The stadium, in its structure and function, had the goal of uniting the Germans.
The camps had the opposite goal: to de-humanize and divide. While the stadium
is characterized as organic and increasing solidarity and unity, the camps are
mechanical and break the individual down to a selfish survival mode. So claims
Neumann; the two body types that differentiate the camp and the stadium are one
representative of the Nazi worldview that associates anything German to the
organic body, while associating anything in the camps to the mechanical body:
“In contrast to the organic body (German), the body found in the camp was a
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Mechanical Body, an instrument-body in the image of the slave, an object-body
in the shape of the Muselmann (Neumann 2002, 364).
The distinction between the organic German space and the mechanical
camp-Jewish space illustrates the different environments that the Nazis aimed to
create for the two groups and the importance overturning the organic metaphor
might have had on the victims. The Jews were to become void of organic
characteristics and would not have any relationship with their environment (the
Muselmann is the extreme outcome of this). While the Nazis attempted to reduce
the Jew to a “No-Body” (Nuemann 2002, 364), that is nothing but a corpse, the
Jews refused the distinction and the death sentence and, as we shall see, used the
organism metaphor in a reversed manner to ridicule and illustrate that they do still
have power and agency.
The “Organism” Metaphor: Ironic Reversal of the Nazi ‘Weltanschauung’
The Nazi ideology and implementation of the “Final Solution” left Jews
across Europe with very few means to resist, or even survive. Once the Nazis
conquered the majority of the areas in Europe with Jewish populations, Jews
found themselves in either a ghetto or camp of some sort. At this point,
characteristics of life as they knew it were all taken away from them, and the
distinctions between the German-organic body and the Jewish-parasiticalmechanical body that the Nazi ideology envisioned became more and more
evident in everyday life. The Nazi regime forced the Jews in the ghettos and the
camps towards a state of living that did not resemble anything they had
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experienced: separation of families, starvation and disease, confinement to limited
spaces, and mass killings and torture. In these conditions, everything that was
considered “organic” in the victims’ past, including family or interpersonal
(neighborhood) relationships, were now either weakened or eliminated from the
victims’ lives. These “natural,” organic relationships were systematically replaced
with the mechanical tasks of daily survival under extreme conditions created for
the individual in the camp, both physically and psychologically.
In the Nazi Weltanschauung, anything “organic” in nature was reserved
for the Aryan people and Germany, as I have shown. Thus the use of the
metaphor “organize” in different contexts always implied a perfect biological
creation and function that represented not only life, but the order and perfection of
a world in which all individuals were working in harmony towards the goal of
preserving and strengthening the German nation (body). Thus for the Jewish
victims, who were subjected to a world that the Nazis wished would be only
mechanical, any organic function became impossible under the conditions created
for them. It is for this reason that I claim Jewish victims reversed the “organism”
metaphor to both counter the Nazi attempt to void them of basic functions of life,
and also to ridicule and rebel against the role the metaphor played in the “perfect
world” of the Nazi Weltanschauung.
In the interviews, what will be stressed is that the “organize” metaphor is
reversed by the victims to mean “steal” by the victims and is a central part of their
descriptions of survival in the camp. The word is constantly used in the
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interviews with its metaphorical reversal maintained. The functions vary
depending on the interview but are generally one of the following:
1) Reversing the “no-body,” mechanical being imposed by the Nazis on
the individual. The use of the “organize” metaphor with its meaning to steal gives
the victim a sense of survival and an active rather than passive life, countering the
passivity and death the Nazis wished to impose on all Jews.
2) Preserving the organicity of the family and interpersonal relationships.
The ironic reversal use of the metaphor can also indicate that the victims are
exerting communicative agency that allows them to bring the sense of community
and neighborhood that are limited with the imposing of Nazi rule. Each individual
was confined to his or her physical body in order to survive, leaving no room for
the family or friends in their lives. The use of the metaphor is mentioned many
times in relation to the victims wanting to do something for the collective,
whether it be immediate family or friends or the victims as a whole. The actions
of organizing (stealing) food and supplies thus not only provide the means for the
physical survival, but also psychologically, arguing with this action that the “lifebody” still exists within the individual who maintains “organic” relations with his
or her surroundings by providing those others victims with food or supplies in
order to survive.
3) Ridiculing and disrupting the “organized” structure of Nazi rule by
re-appropriating a term that was intended to define and strengthen the German
psyche into a term that means disrupting and undermining the Nazi attempt to kill
or starve the Jews. The use of the metaphor in its reversed meaning also disrupts
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the goal the Nazis had to prevent the victims from having a language to describe
their reality in the world of the camps.
From the Archives
In the Goldman interview (Interview 1) presented earlier in this chapter,
we can see the functionality of the “organize” metaphor both for the victim and
the present day survivor. During the interviews, despite the fact that they took
place decades after the Holocaust, interviewees insist at times to use the
metaphor, indicating its importance in their tale of survival. The interviewers
vary, and at times are historians familiar with the metaphors and clarify their
meaning with the victims. Other times, the interviewer inquires what the meaning
of the word is. Or still other times the metaphor goes unnoticed or remarked upon
by the interviewer.
Interview 2: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982
The interview with Sam Seltzer, a Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor, was
conducted by Anita Schwartz. In this part of the interview, Seltzer describes
when he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and was later assigned to the Kommando
attached to Buchenwald.
Section: Conditions in the Außenkommando
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=seltzer&section=30
INTERVIEWER. Hm.
SELTZER. ...and it had to be cut. So they sent me you know, sent me back in
there. And somebody cut it. They cut it for me. And it shot up all the way up
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to the ceiling. A big boil, pus. And at that time, while, after he cut it all open,
I felt good. So I didn't go back to work, I went back to the barracks. So I went
out to see what I can organize to eat. We called it organize. So I went up by
the kitchen there, and I saw a uh, delivering some beets. Um, they called it
uh, Kohlraben.
INTERVIEWER. Kohlraben.
SELTZER. Kohlraben they called it. Anyway, yellow.
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm.
SELTZER. I--they were as big as, as a uh, We have here the uh, melons.
INTERVIEWER. Cantaloupe?
SELTZER. Cantaloupe. A...as big as cantaloupe, yeah. But it was a hard, nothing
in the center, it was hard. Kohlraben they called it. And I stole one of those
and put it under my arm and put the jacket over. And I was walking down the
hall. While I walked down the hall comes up the uh, the uh, SS, the SS uh,
Führer, SS Führer with the dog, a big German Shepherd dog and with a whip.
And he says, "Hey, hold it." He says, "What are you doing there, hold it.
What do you got there?" So I said, "Nothing, nothing," you know, says,
"nothing." So I said, "Well I, I, I just have this you know, I just have this..."
What am I going to tell him? "And I just have this because I work there," I
say, "he gave me." That's what I said in German, you know. So, so he says,
"He gave you? Nobody gave you here, nobody would give you this here.
Give me this here. Take that off and put it back there," he says. "Put this back
in the room where you're supposed to put it." See? So I went back and put it
back there. Then, then he comes along with the German Shepherd and tells
the German Shepherd, he says, "Go Fassen!" Fassen means get him.
"Fassen!" And the German Shepherd comes up to me, and he runs up close to
me for roar and growls and, and, and sticks out his teeth, but he wouldn't
jump on me. He wouldn't do it. So he whips--he gives me one with the whip
and hit me right under the eyes somewhere with the whip. It was bleeding so.
I don't remember where it was. And, and then I, I put something on it, I don't
know what it--but who care. You know, I didn't care about a, a, a whip. I
wasn't afraid of a whip anymore. So uh, I went back into the room and
everything. But the dog wouldn't do anything to me. No, no, I had, I had such
a luck with the dogs that they, they wouldn't jump on me, they wouldn't. I
stopped and looked at the dog, just looked in his eyes and they wouldn't jump
on me. They wouldn't...
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In this segment we see an instance in which the metaphor appears while the
interviewee is narrating. He does not directly state what the meaning is but it can
be implied by the context. He explains that the metaphor was a word that was
commonly used to describe theft. Interestingly, although his action was an
individual action he says, “We called it organize…” emphasizing the collective
nature of the action. It is not an individual trying (mechanically) to survive, but
rather an organic community. Later in the interview, Seltzer replaces organize
with “steal” to continue the story and does not use the metaphor “organize,”
perhaps to make it clear that the action was stealing.
Interview 3: Michael Opas - [n.d.]
The interview with Michael Opas, a Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor was
conducted by Paul Draznan. In this part of the interview, Opas describes his
survival during his imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp in
Germany towards the end of the war.
Section: Work in Buchenwald
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=opas&section=21
INTERVIEWER. Did you work during that time?
OPAS. No, we didn't go to work. And uh, and we actually begged to go to work
because at work we could, we could manage to, to, to steal something or, or
organize something. There in that camp we had to rely on that little soup and
that piece of bread. Like, li...a half, half my, my--a tiny little piece of bread
maybe. Maybe five dec or five--how do you say? Fifty, fifty grams. And it
was like, oh, like, like dirt--terrible, terrible bread. And lousy soup. This was
the only food we got. So naturally we couldn't survive on this. Everybody-we, we begged to go to work but they wouldn't take us. Finally we had to, we
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had to go out at night time around three o'clock in the morning. We
smuggled, we smuggled into the big, big camp where they selected people to
work. Lèon Blum was there in that, that big camp, you know the French
premier?
INTERVIEWER. Mm-mm.
In this segment of the interview with Opas, he talks about how he
managed to find food for survival in the Buchenwald camp. Opas first utters the
word “steal” but pauses, then rapidly replaces the word using the phrase “or”
twice and stating that it was not stealing but rather to “organize something.” We
get details about the lack of food and the need to get more food by stealing later in
the interview. What is striking is his insistence of using the metaphor, especially
after saying the word “steal.” Opas arrived at the camp alone, yet used the term
“we” when discussing the act of stealing and organizing, with the purpose being
not for himself but rather for the community of prisoners. Opas’s interview is an
indication of the countering aspect that this metaphor had for the victims and also
the importance the preservation of the metaphor has for the survivor.
Interview 4: Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001
The interview with Fred Ferber was conducted with the head of the
Voices/Vision archive, Sidney Bolkosky in 2001. Ferber, who grew up in
Chorzow, Poland, survived the war and the hard conditions of the Mauthausen
concentration camp and after the war was taken to the German city of Stuttgart by
a Jewish relief agency. In this part of the interview, he explains the “organize”
metaphor and how its use changed during the harsh period immediately after the
war.
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Section: Life in Germany
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=ferberf&section=41
INTERVIEWER. So you were in Stuttgart, then you went to...
FERBER. It--let, let me say something. Eh, the DP camps--eh, let's, let's put it
that way -- it was no pride to be living in a DP camp, you know. Supposedly
we won the war, supposedly we were the free people. But yet, it was very
hard for the Jewish people to get dispersed because the Americans, the
English, they kept us together. There was no--they, nobody, so to speak,
raised their hand, was willing to take us in at that time. Eh, people were
willing to go to Israel in, in great groups. But, but Israel, the English again
wouldn't allow people to, to go to Israel. I will tell you a little story what
happened to me after the war while I was still in Tirschenreuth. My mother
wanted to send me out in the worse way, out of the country. Because they
always talked about another war, there was a Cold War beginning. And my
mother thought if, whoever can leave first, I should leave and then she will
follow me. So I was sent to a camp near Weiden in Germany, it's also
Bayern. And there was a camp of Jewish children, mostly youth, who were
eh, willing and eager to immigrate to Israel. And we got our training over
there. We were trained to talk Hebrew, we were trained on how to eh, how to
ride eh, farm equipment, how to deal with farm equipment. And, and, and I'll
tell you what it was, eh. In, in the morning, in, in, the eh, let me say the uh,
the Rooakh, the other word for it is the...
INTERVIEWER. Spirit.
FERBER. The spirit was such a great spirit over there. The, the children and the
people, they were all in their twenties mostly. Eh, such a great spirit and
willingness to, to go to Israel. In the morning everybody, at breakfast time,
every one was singing the, the Israeli songs. At lunchtime, singing Israeli
songs. In the evening, singing the Israeli songs and other songs. And we
heard that pretty soon there will, there will be a transport. And eh, we will go
through Italy, we were trained, how we're going to go. We go through to all
illegal immigration. So we knew we may have to be quiet the places where
we go through and we may be going on, on ships which eh, eh, are not
com...completely legal. We may, we will not be able to get to Israel. So we
were trained through all that. What happened really, after a week or two or
three weeks actually eh, I felt that I'm wasting time. The reason for the word
wasting is because I didn't have my teacher over there. I, I di...I didn't learn
anymore English. I didn't learn eh, my, my mathematics. I, I, there was, I, I
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felt I was losing time. The time was great, we had a good time. But I, I was of
the mentality that I have to continue going to school. My mother kind of eh,
eh, expressed it to me in so many different ways and so many different times.
So it was ingrai...ingrained in me. So, so I felt I was losing time and the truth,
the truth is that one, one day eh, came a truck with milk or whatever else. I, I-on the way out, I hid on the, I, I got, I got on the truck and I left the camp
with this truck eh, legally or illegally and I went back to Tishenroit. They eh,
everybody was surprised to see me back, but I expressed to them. I, I missed
everyone, number one. Number two I didn't know how much longer or when
the immigration will, will, will, will start, so I wanted to be back with my
people. So the truth is that after we moved to Stuttgart and I went to this
particular school, the second semester, once again I had a lot of help. Eh, I, I
was very good in science at that time. By science meaning eh, physics eh,
mathematics eh, chemistry and other things like that. Eh, at one point my
mother dec...told me that she would like me to go back to Israel-- to uh, to
America. She would like to send me to America. Of course it was eh, at first
eh, it, it was eh, something I, I couldn't even understand why she was asking
me to leave. We just got together. I mean, we been just year and a half
together. And we, we haven't seen each other for quite, for pretty near eh, two
years because she went to one type of concentration camps and I went to a
different type. So we, I wasn't going to eh, eh, to part again. But she was
insisting on me going to the United States and going under the quota. I wasn't
seventeen yet. I had an opportunity to go because children under seventeen
had special rights. And especially children under seventeen who didn't have
mothers or fathers. So the thing was that I had to make believe eh, in order to
go--and I finally ag...agreed with my mother that I will go, eh. So we had to
uh, uh, register in a way that my mother was really my aunt. That she was not
my mother. We, we had to uh, make believe that she is uh, my mother's sister
who's taking care of me. Otherwise I, I could not come to the United States,
eh. And as...s...so I did get my papers. I did come to the United States under
this particular quota. And eh, I ended up in San Francisco. And the reason I
ended up in San Francisco 'cause when I came to New York and I expressed
to the social worker that I really don't want to be sent away together with all
the other children. Because all the other children, I mean, they, they knew
how to play soccer and they were a good uh--they, they knew how to hustle,
how to be eh, streetwise. And I spent all the time in school surrounded in
being eh, eh, eh, en...en...enjoying so to speak eh, the word was organizing
things. Organizing meaning. Organize...
INTERVIEWER. Stealing...
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FERBER. ...food and, and clothing in order. It was not really stealing.
Organizing in concentration camp was stealing, to organize things. But eh,
eh, after the war it was more like eh, trying to get clothing and food and
things eh, that we needed for everyday. I really didn't hustle too much during
all this, during the two years after the war.
In this section, Ferber describes the two years he spent in DP camps in
Germany after the war and in this last part tells how there was a phrase
“organizing things.” He repeats the metaphor again trying to detail its meaning
and by the third time he mentions the metaphor, Bolkosky interrupts him and
gives the definition of the word, “stealing.” Ferber then directly explains that in
the camps it meant stealing but that after the war it meant “trying to get clothing
and food.”
We see in Ferber’s interview a direct explanation to the metaphor and its use
during the war and an indication that some order had been restored after the war
and that it may no longer be a counter-metaphor. We also see an example of an
interview conducted by a knowledgeable historian who adds meaning when an
interviewee is unable to explain a metaphor and guides the survivor towards
explaining the metaphor used.
Interview 5: Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
The interview with Herman Marczak, a Holocaust survivor from the Polish town
of Zduńska Wola was in a German forced labor camp for most of the war and
survived the Bergen Belzen camp to be liberated by the British army. This part of
the interview conducted by conducted by Paul Draznan. In this part of the
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interview, Marczak tells interviewer Eva Lipton about the conditions durning the
early stages of the German occupation of Zduńska Wola.
Section: Life under German Occupation
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=marczak&section=14
MARCZAK. So we started, after a few weeks people started to organize. They
were stealing our--some supplies uh, of--I was working over there with--in a
little shop, we were make parts for shoes. Everybody still had some supplies
and--people started to get back to work and try to continue to living as much
as possible. So the way we heard about it that the, the, the Gestapo or
whoever it was they made that provocation, and they wanted--it was
supposed to have been a German communist in town, who was a, a Polish
German, not, not a--so they provoked him to, to pass by someplace in the
shopping.
INTERVIEWER. A Jew.
MARCZAK. No, no, a German.
INTERVIEWER. A German.
In this part of the interview with Marczak, he uses the metaphor in the first
sentence, followed by another sentence that describes the meaning
(“stealing”). Marczak avoids mention if he stole and described the
“organizers” as “people” and “they.” His second sentence makes it seem as if
those that organized did it for the collective (they were stealing “our”).
Interview 6: Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999
The interview with Bella Camhi, a Greek Holocaust survivor from Salonika (also
known as Thessaloniki), was conducted with Sidney Bolkosky. Camhi’s interview
provides us with insight to a more distant Jewish community and the use of the
metaphor maintaining its meaning as it was for the western and eastern European
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victims. After being in the Salonika ghetto, Camhi was deported to AuschwitzBirkenau and will also be mentioned later for her use of metaphors from that
period.
Section: German Occupation of Salonika
http: //holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=camhi&section=11
INTERVIEWER. Do you remember when they came to Salonika?
CAMHI. Uh, I remember, yeah, sure I remember. I remember, I was, I was took
uh, I got once caught by a German shepherd because I went to organize a
loaf of bread. So he got me before the bread. I was lucky. You see, they didn't
have to use us, they used to put the dogs.
In this part of the interview with Camhi, she describes the situation in
Salonika with the invasion and occupation of the Nazis in 1941. As conditions
worsened for not only the Jews, but the entire population, many began to use
alternative means to survive. Camhi uses the metaphor in the first sentence
without defining the meaning of the word. We can conclude based on the
narrative that “organize” meant stealing the bread as she was caught and the
action was not allowed by the occupiers. The metaphor is not given its specific in
the interview and the interviewer does not question or explain it.
Interview 7: Eva Cigler - March 17, 1982
The interview with Eva Cigler, a Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor was
conducted with Eva Lipton. Cigler and her family were deported to AuschwitzBirkenau in 1944 and towards the end of the war, Eva was transferred to BergenBelsen, where she was liberated in 1945 by British forces. The interview gives an
account of the metaphor used in a camp other than Auschwitz.
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Section: Remaining in Bergen-Belsen
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=cigler&section=67
INTERVIEWER. Right.
CIGLER. And when we're going to go once they give us and we ate it already and
then we went again in a line and they recognize. I don't know how [laughs]
why they could recognize us, and they right away said, "You can't have
anymore and we start to scream, you worser than the Germans," and this and
that. Because now we liberated we have to uh, eat more than before we was
there.
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm.
CIGLER. But after that they came and they said listen, "We would like to give
you but uh, you couldn't handle it and if you want to stay alive you listen to
us. So some of them uh, listen and didn't uh, eat just that much what they was
giving. And some of them went and uh, organize it, steal it and they uh, all
get uh, they couldn't take the food.
INTERVIEWER. How long did you remain in Bergen-Belsen after the, you were
liberated?
CIGLER. Uh, we was liberated in April and... We was in May, June, end of July
when they took the transport already. No, we uh, stayed in Bergen-Belsen uh,
in uh, May, in June. And after that, after that they took us to Celle, away from
Bergen-Belsen because they needed uh, more uh, barracks, two barracks to
be empty and we were selected to go to Celle.
In this section, Cigler is describing the confusing days after being liberated
from the Nazis. She and the other survivors of the Bergen-Belsen camp are being
rationed food by the British liberators. Ciglar directly uses the metaphor by saying
the others went to get more food by trying to “organize it,” immediately adding
“steal it” after that.
Interview 8: Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982
The interview with Luba Elbaum, a Polish Holocaust survivor was conducted by
Arthur Kirsch. Elbaum’s family was forced to work in German factories until, in
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1944, they were all murdered in Auschwitz. In 1944. Luba survived and was sent
to Bergen-Belsen and then was death marched to Theresienstadt camp in
Czechoslovakia and liberated in 1945.
Section: Life in Płaszów
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=elbaum&section=42
INTERVIEWER. They count you.
ELBAUM. They counting us for hours. More counting like ??? somebody was
missing you stay and stay and stay. He could--who could survive, survived.
We were working. Sometimes uh, you know, like I was younger, I was
watching--I was taking the back, back the empty space in the kitchen
sometimes you take a piece of potato. Take it, I mean, from the kitchen.
Sometimes I pick it. They give us--they make the soup us--how you call from
the--I've forgotten. From reams they make a soup and some kind of
vegetable. So sometimes I was, I mean, strong. I was taking a piece of meat,
you know what I mean. Organize, nobody would see. In this everybody took
a piece, took a piece of bread and that's the way you survive. I mean, younger
women survive--younger people. Healthy people survive.
INTERVIEWER. What was your clothing like? What did you wear in the camp?
ELBAUM. In the camp in Budzyn they give us like--they give us every week we
went on clothes--we wearing civilian clothes--we wearing our clothes. They
give us something. They give us one, one shoe, one shoe, da, da, da--because
they have all the clothes what they bring out from the people. Tooked out in
all the ghettoes. They had no store, but they had all the clothes from
Majdanek they bring the clothes--from all over they bring the clothes. They
give us skirt, like a sweater, like a coat, like a--something they give us. And
in '4...like in '44 we were already still there in, in uh, in Płaszów. They took
us--we--when the Germany came back it was also a cemetery. And they start
to dig out the all dead people. Like I say in the first uh, they make the
ghettos--when they make--when was the ghetto they just, big, big holes and
all the people push in like. And then when the Germans--when the Russians
start to come in, in the armor car, they set to dig out--the dead people take
out. They were burning with something. I was not working but they said they
were burning with something--gas. Not to, not to find like, I mean, a
symptoms. And then when the Germans--when we are--I think the Russians
started came closer in '44 started came closer, they start everyday was
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transport to Oswiecim. Everyday was staying for miles empty, for miles
empty, empty like trains. It was Appells and they start digging in the eighty
people--hundred people in that train. And everyday they went away the
trains. We don't know this where they're going because we don't know it's
Oswiecim. We were on the Płaszów. We don't know what's going on over
there. We never hear from these people.
Elbaum begins this section describing the daily routine in the work camp
in Płaszów, Poland, where she and her family made parts for the German army in
1943, before being deported to Auschwitz. She tells the interviewer how she
survived in the work camp and describes the food she ate. She casually adds that
this was the act of “organizing” (the piece of meat), avoiding the use of the word
“stealing” to explain what the action or metaphor mean. We can assume that the
action was not allowed because Elbaum adds “nobody would see.”
Interview 9: Edward Linson - November 10, 1981
The interview with Edward Linson, a Polish Holocaust survivor was
conducted by Arthur Kirsch. Elbaum’s family was forced to work in German
factories until, in 1944, they were all murdered in Auschwitz. In 1944. Luba
survived and was sent to Bergen-Belsen and then was death marched to
Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia and liberated in 1945.
Section: Hitler Visits Magdeburg
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=linson&section=23
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm. Can I ask you, when--you said you worked in
Weimar, were--did the citizens in Weimar--not, not the army--did they see
you working there?
LINSON. Let me tell you what happened, in Weimar--Magdeburg, this was
Magdeburg ??? this ammunition factory. Naturally they didn't, they didn't
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give us to the, to the to work for the, for the, for the ammunition. So what
happened? We were--they was building some kind of a, a--I don't know, in
Europe there's a style. You have a garage--it's a hole to fix the car to go
down. There was a, a picture. With one time they come us and we got a, a
shovels. Hitler was coming into Magdeburg. And everybody got to lay down
with the coat. The ??? the coat there with the ???. You got to lay down. He
took away the shovels and the side and after an hour they, they release us.
???.
INTERVIEWER. But the Germans saw you. They knew you were there.
LINSON. Yes.
INTERVIEWER. They knew. How much did you weigh then?
LINSON. I'll tell you the truth Beiner--bones. Who got over there a, a, a scale?
INTERVIEWER. Did you know approximately?
LINSON. Approximately maybe seventy pounds. In, in Magdeburg we had been
working here by the station in the other side from the street. I don't know how
it was over there uh, coffee, chocolate stores, burned down. So I was a good
organizer. I, I got always I--where I can steal and take--organize--so I found a
basement with a few guys and they hold me in case I got to go. And an older
SS man, what I am saying, this was not ???. So he says to me, "???" "You
want to run away?" So I went a few with him--we rode.
Linson describes the confusion and hardships in the weeks before
liberation. During this time, Linson was working in a forced labor factory near
Weimar producing ammunition for the Nazis. In this segment, he details a visit
made by Hitler and how poor his own physical conditions were. When asked by
the interviewer how much he weighed, Linson begins to elaborate on how he
gained weight by “organizing” food. He says “I was a good organizer. I, I got
always I--where I can steal and take—organize” making it clear that the action is
actually stealing.
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Metaphor 2: ‘Muselmann’ Metaphor
Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and as conditions
worsened in the concentration camps towards the end of the war, many of the
Jewish survivors were left alone and without their families or friend in the
struggle to survive. Not only did the physical conditions worsen but the morale
was at an all-time low. The living condition imposed by the Germans in the camp
were such that the dichotomy between the German, healthy, organic body and the
Jewish body was non-organic and mechanical to a point that “The body of the
Jewish people (Volkskörper) disintegrated into a pile of corpses, in which it was
no longer possible to attribute any organ to a specific whole body” (Neumann
2002, 364).
While many victims in the camps were in such dire mental and physical
conditions that they could barely function and gave up, others tried to maintain
normalcy and win the battle for survival. The victims that were strong enough to
work seemed to distinguish themselves from the prisoners that were too weak and
so close to death. One of the metaphors used to categorize those “dead men
walking” victims was “Muselmann” (German for “Muslim man”). This became
the common word used to describe the condition of a prisoner who is on the brink
of death due to starvation and exhaustion and who has lost the will to live. While
the origins of this word used to describe Jewish victims is unknown, the use of
this metaphor served many functions and empowered the stronger victims in their
determination to survive. Friedlander explained that the metaphor derived from
the word “Moslem” was used to describe the weaker victims simply “because
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these inmates seemed to resemble stereotype pictures of Arabs: brown skin, huge
eyes, always wrapped in blankets” (Friedlander 1980, 111). In order to better
understand the Muselmann metaphor and its function in the semantic economy,
let us turn to Primo Levi, the Italian chemist mentioned in earlier chapter. His
account of the use of language he encountered in Auschwitz will strengthen and
complicate the organism-mechanical dichotomy even further.
Primo Levi’s ‘Muselmann’ Distinction
In Chapter I, in order to establish the importance of language for the
survival of Jewish victims in the Holocaust, Italian chemist and Holocaust
survivor Primo Levi was quoted describing his experience in Auschwitz and
explaining the void that existed: “…we became aware that our language lacks
words to express this offense, the demolition of a man” (Levi 1958, 22). For Levi,
documenting the language that was used, or, detailing the instances when there
was no language to describe the events, were both just as important as writing
about the atrocities. Levi, who wrote several memories about his imprisonment,
defines in The Drowned and the Saved how life in the concentration camp was as
being in-between life and death. Levi is describing a world that is beyond
language, precisely a point in his life, a starting point, where he realizes that what
is happening is beyond anything “knowable or sayable:”
It is a gray zone, poorly defined, where the two camps of masters and
servants both diverge and converge. This gray zone possesses an
incredibly complicated internal structure and contains within itself enough
to confuse our need to judge. (Levi 1986, 42)
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Despite the constraints of being in this “gray zone,” Levi describes vividly how
language was what helped the prisoners create the distinctions that would define
lie and death among the victims. Survival, claims Levi, along with life, was linked
to the prisoners’ ability to “organize” food and essentials that allowed better
living conditions.
Levi’s thesis that distinguished between two types of prisoners is first
mentioned in Survival in Auschwitz from 1958 yet only fully developed in one of
his last works The Drowned and the Saved, published in 1986, a year before his
death. There, Levi stresses how that “…those who, without fulfilling particular
functions, had always succeeded through their astuteness and energy in
successfully organizing, gaining in this way, besides material advantages and
reputation, the indulgence and esteem of the powerful people in the camp.
Whosoever does not know how to become an ‘organisator,’ ‘kombinator,’
‘prominent’ (the savage eloquence of these words!) soon becomes a
‘Musselman’” (Levi 1958 88-9).
Levi’s detailing of daily life in the camp seems to imply that the victims
who made an attempt to counter the Nazi-imposed mechanical death sentence of
becoming a ‘Musselman’ would do so by becoming “organizers,” maintaining
additional foods and materials needed for survival. Levi tells the story of how
when he and his friend were chosen for a privileged position as laboratory
workers, they felt “bound by a tight bond of alliance, by which every ‘organized’
scrap is divided into two strictly equal parts” (Levi 1958, 138). Levi also
describes how political the camp became. In one instance, after prisoners
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smuggled soup into the camp, they feared that one of the prisoners, Elias, might
be untrustworthy: “…as for Elias, he is perpetually at our side, and although he
spies on us with tenacity to discover the secret of our ‘organisacja,’ he
overwhelms us…” (Levi 1958, 145). The mention of the “organizing” metaphor is
repeated throughout Levi’s memoir and although he parenthesizes the organism
words, through the context we can conclude that “organizing” means “getting
by,” essential to anyone who wanted to avoid becoming the Musselman, and thus,
survive: “The reputation of being a seducer, of being ‘organized,’ excites at once
envy, scorn, contempt and admiration…” (Levi 1958, 120).
The Musselman Metaphor –Additional Mentions
Mention of the Musselman metaphor appears in the WWII lexicons and
journals previewed in Chapter IV. Michael and Doerr in their extensive lexicon of
the language of the Third Reich list the metaphor as “slang” but do not associate it
to Nazi language:
Muselmann. Muslim. Slang referring to a concentration camp inmate on
his way to death by means of starvation, exhaustion, and despair. Living
corpse ready to be chosen to be sent to the gas chambers to be murdered.
(Michael and Doerr 2002, 281)
In the lexicon of words accumulated by Argentinian Holocaust scholar Julio
Szeferblum, we find this description:
MUSSELMANN: Prisoner living corpse, exhausted by hunger, without
force or will, were dying in masses. (Szeferblum 2008, 5)
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From the Archives
The Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn includes over a dozen mentions of the metaphor. In the
interviews, the survivors use the metaphor to describe those prisoners that have no
chance of survival. In most cases, the interviewees offer their interpretation of the
condition and try to explain the metaphor to the interviewer. Since there are
multiple interviews, we see a variation of either further questioning or ignoring
when the metaphor is mentioned, depending on whether or not they are historians
familiar with the metaphor and wish to expand on this definition.
Interview 1: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982
In the previous metaphor section, I introduced Sam Seltzer, a Jewish
Polish Holocaust survivor. The interview was conducted by Anita Schwartz. In
this part of the interview, Seltzer describes his arrival at the Nazi death camp in
Faulbrück and the selection made between those fit for work camps and those
bound for the gas chambers. This was before the events mentioned in the previous
section, when he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and was later assigned to the
Kommando attached to Buchenwald.
Section: Selection in Faulbrück
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=seltzer&section=22
SELTZER. Stuffed myself with this cake. And, and I was working and eating,
working and eating. And for a while I did that and I recuperated yeah,
recuperated a little bit. And one of these days they came into Faulbrück and
they had a selection. Well, this is when I was picked out to the gas chamber. I
was picked three times to the gas chamber. This is one of them. They, they
were picking people, I mean, kid, kids, which were, looked like Muselmann.
Muselmann. They call it Muselmann because of, the ribs were showing,
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know. Now they picked me that Sunday as they, they--I had a number there
in Faulbrück . Uh, uh, 95685--fünfundneunzigsechsfünfundachtzig. So they
picked my number. I came to the selection, they did left and right, left and
right. So--and they took uh, they saw my number there, they asked me,
"What's your number?" So I showed the number. They picked a file, they had
a file on the table. This number they made a "U." A "U" meant that you were
not good for work anymore. And a, a, "A" means good for work. And a "U"
was untauglich, no good for, for work. So uh, the uh, the same day, they
picked out like a hundred and fifty boys and put them up on the attic, the ones
who--you, you, you had to let your pants down and you had to turn around
and see whether you're go...still good for work or not.
In this segment, Seltzer details the selection process conducted by the
Nazis for the prisoners. He mentions the metaphor to describe what those sent to
death were called, then stops. He then repeats the metaphor and stops once more.
There is a long pause. He then says “They call it Muselmann” and it is unclear
who he is referring to. He explains that they are called that because their ribs are
showing, then pauses and says to the interviewer “(you) know.” The interviewer
does not stop him and he continues the story.
Interview 2: Joseph Klaiman - May 4, 1982
The interview with Joseph Klaiman, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor,
was conducted by Anita Schwartz. Klaiman was a teenager when he was forced
into the Łódż ghetto, where his parents died. He was transported to Auschwitz in
1941 and was moved to several camps afterwards until he was liberated by British
troops in 1945.
Section: Remembering the Other Jews in Camp
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=klaiman&section=25
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INTERVIEWER. everybody...
[interruption in interview]
INTERVIEWER. ...differently under the pressure, under the psychological--under
the physical pain. Do you remember the people you slept with? Do you
remember?
KLAIMAN. I remember no--off hand I was working all the time and uh, you
could see all the time. He, he, he looked at me and I looked at him and he
said, "Joe, you changed a lot, you know, you're not the same.' And I said,
"You, uh...' I didn't want to make him feel bad. I saw that he, he's going on
and I didn't feel a need because I--he was about two or three years older than
I am. He said, "You're getting awful skinny,' something like that and I said,
"I'm feeling good.' I was still fighting. And he was fighting too. You could
see every day this, you can see in the, in the people of the die like, like a
Muselmann, you know how they say, you could see all the time
INTERVIEWER. The bones.
KLAIMAN. Bones and bones and bones. And I saw it in--and, and in
Buchenwald I saw the same thing and, and then you get, like you say, you get
used to this kind of life, that uh, the men died. You know 'em for, for two
months or something. It's a normal thing in life.
INTERVIEWER. Didn't have an effect.
KLAIMAN. Oh it had an effect. An effect I'm never going to forget in my life
there.
INTERVIEWER. No, but in the moment... In the moment I cry--the moment I
knew that it's going to happen to me the same thing. Human being...
[interruption in interview]
In this segment, the interviewer asks Klaiman to give more details about
the other prisoners that were with him in the camp. He talks about a friend in the
Barracks whose condition was deteriorating and says he was very skinny.
Klaiman tells the interviewer that he was still fighting, just like he was but then
says that the friend was, like many prisoners, almost dead: “You could see every
day this, you can see in the, in the people of the die like, like a Muselmann, you
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know how they say, you could see all the time…” In this part, he defines the
metaphor before saying it and asks to affirm this with the interviewer. The
interviewer adds “bones” to which Klaiman reacts emotionally detailing the sight
of just bones and later pauses the interview.
Interview 3: Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001
Ferber, who was also mentioned in the previous metaphor section, is a
Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor. The interview was conducted with the head of
the Voices/Vision archive, Sidney Bolkosky in 2001. Ferber was taken with his
uncle to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1944 and in this part he
details the harsh conditions in the camp.
Section: Death of Uncle
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=ferberf&section=24
INTERVIEWER. Gusen II, okay.
FERBER. Still in Gusen II. I was moved to a different barrack. I went to visit him
two, three days later. And I've seen him, I already knew that he is not going
to survive. Had--you know, people over there eh, eh, be..., became what we
call Muselmann. Muselmann, that means, you look at the, at the, the
someone, you see bones and, and eh, what you call, what's that see, not just
bones and, and eh, eh, nothing on the body and you see the wild look in their
eyes. A wild look. We already knew that that, that parties, that we had a lot of
people with this, running total naked already, with a number on his breast.
Because they, they wanted to put the number in front knowing who is go...so
they could eh, write down who is going to die or who is going to die. And
that particular party, totally naked, with a number of his breast with a wild
look in his eye was walking eh, like, like in a haze. And you seen this so
much, you know, a lot. And uh, uh, next day of course that party wasn't there
anymore. We always seen, there was always a pile eh, the one spot between
four or five barracks are. We always seen a pile of fifty to a hundred just
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stacked up one on top of the other of these so to speak Muselmanns who just
eh, died from malnutrition, or, or eh, or, dysen...dysen...dysentery. So I came
to visit my uncle once again. I came to bring him a piece of bread. I gave him
that piece of bread. But he was already, he was not naked yet, but he had the
wild look in his eyes, eh. He was in a daze a little bit. He, he couldn't stand
strong on his legs. [pause] I, I knew, I, I was, I was questioning myself
whether to give him that piece of bread or not, because it was such a, such a
dear thing to me, that piece of bread. But I left it with him. Next time I went
to, next time I went there he wasn't there anymore. So he died at, at that time.
INTERVIEWER. You think he was sent to Birkenau.
FERBER. No, he died.
In this segment, Ferber describes the condition of his uncle and other
prisoners in Mauthausen that were in the condition of near death. He begins by
saying that he knew his uncle was not going to die and explains it is because he
and other prisoners in his condition “became what we call Muselmann.” Ferber
then stops, repeats the metaphor once again, pauses, and then explains that the
metaphor means that the human being has become mere bones. But what is
interesting in Ferber’s description as it continues is that he mentions that the
Muselmanns had a “wild look in their eyes” and wailing like in a haze. He
explains that the other prisoners knew these prisoners were bound to die. Ferber’s
account and description adds another layer to the idea of de-humanization and
mechanization that the Nazis wished to impose on all the Jews. Here is a
description of prisoners who were animal-like and mechanical at the same time.
Interview 4: Emerich Grinbaum - October 3, 2000 & January 8, 2001
The interview with Emerich Grinbaum, a Jewish Czech Holocaust
survivor, was conducted by Sidney Bolkosky. Grinbaum and his family were
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deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where his mother was gassed. Towards the end of
the war, Grinbaum was sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany and later
to the Allach satellite work camp where he worked for several German companies
including BMW. The section in the interview describes the German attempt to
evacuate the prisoners as the war was coming to an end. Grinbaum was liberated
by American Allied forces in 1945.
Section: Deportations from Allach
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=grinbaum&section=44
INTERVIEWER. A closed car.
GRINBAUM. Yeah, closed car. There were eighty--ninety--hundred, we don't
know how much. Practically no food, very little food. And they, sometimes
we uh, went one direction fifty kilometers and then was--they couldn't go
further, so they go back, back. I remember one, one time the rail station
which were, that was bombed, but we di...we were not hurt, so I don't know.
So finally we arrived to a mountain place which uh, in Tyrol, in Alps you
know, somewhere.
INTERVIEWER. You don't remember the name?
GRINBAUM. No. I don't know.
INTERVIEWER. It was small town?
GRINBAUM. We didn't see a town. Th...there was a top hill, a forest all over,
you know. And s...and, and that's all. We uh, you know, the uphill. Even
many places snow, but uh, already melting. And we stayed there. We had
only one guard, an elderly guard he--who didn't care you know, that was a-he didn't care. So he let us, he let us go out. But we didn't go anywhere. We
couldn't go. So we were looking in the field. So if we found certain places,
let's see, potatoes, we dig up--dug out potatoes and we ate something and I
don't remember even. So we--that lasted for a week, I guess.
INTERVIEWER. You didn't see any civilians, nobody, nobody.
GRINBAUM. No, no, that was in, in, you know. We had, we had you know, we
didn't care. But probably the idea was uh, to kill us or something. But they
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didn't bother us you know, so we--didn't bother us. Strange. That was a long
train, probably many thousand people. Very long train. But maybe mostly
were lying in, in our train and who dared out--to get out or had the strength to
get out to the fields. And we were looking for some food. We found some
potatoes I remember, took out and we ate.
INTERVIEWER. Potatoes, that would be a farm, right?
GRINBAUM. Yeah, no, I don't know, I don't know. That was in a field. We didn't
see civilians, we didn't see anybody.
INTERVIEWER. This is the end of April.
GRINBAUM. End of April. In 29 of April [pause] at that time we were starving, I
know. I don't remember being so, so uh, in a bad shape than at that time.
They called Muselmann, you know that ex...expression. We were
everybody. We looked at each, each other, we couldn't recognize each other,
we could hardly move. Twenty-ninth of April we heard that some uh, cars uh,
trucks coming. Because that was a, a place they could arrive, I don't know.
But we saw with Red Cross. They say Switzerland, whatever. And they
delivered some food. Every two, every two of us got a package. I don't know
how did it happen. Every two of us got a package. And there were all, all
goodies there. No, no, no water of course. But all goodies there. Meat and,
and, and, and Oval...Ovaltine and, and uh, different things.
In this segment, Grinbaum describes the conditions in the remote Swiss
Alps, where he and the other prisoners were sent from the work camps on a ghost
train. Grinbaum tries to detail the conditions and mentions the Muselmann
metaphor when describing the way he and the other prisoners looked after being
starved for a few weeks. He tells the interviewer that they were starving and were
in bad shape and adds: “They called Muselmann, you know that ex...expression.
We were everybody. We looked at each, each other, we couldn't recognize each
other, we could hardly move.” His mention of the metaphor does not flow in the
interview. He mentions it, pauses, and tries to confirm if the interviewer knows
the metaphor, calling it an “expression,” but revealing uncertainty beforehand and
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pausing. Although there is no direct definition or explanation provided by the
survivor to the metaphor, the listener can understand by the provided context that
the metaphor can refer to the poor physical conditions as the survivor tells of the
poor conditions and starvations and the fact that they could not recognize each
other. Here, we see a survivor that although does not have to include the metaphor
in his testimony insists on doing so, despite expressing doubt that the interviewer
knows what the metaphor means.
Metaphor 3: Kanada Metaphor
For the victims in Auschwitz, the new reality imposed by the Nazis was
like nothing imagined in their cultures. As Jews from all over Europe began to
arrive in the camp and its extensions, the Nazis devised a strict order to the
process of either using the victims as slave labor or, to fulfill the idea of the “Final
Solution,” to expedite their execution and death. A metaphor specific to only the
Auschwitz-Birkenau victims experience is the “Kanada” metaphor (Canada in
German). The victims used the metaphor to describe the “Brezhinka” barracks in
Auschwitz where the personal belongings of the murdered were sorted and stored.
Canada was perceived as the land of richness and opportunity. This is attributed
mostly to the Yukon gold rush and its cultural impact on Europe, for example as
seen in the Charlie Chaplin film The Gold Rush from 1925. What was the
significance of this “perspective” and what role did it have in the struggle for life
in the camps? Without trying to uncover the “degrees” or “layers” one might
remain puzzled as to the use of this metaphor to describe these particular barracks.
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The experience one might have in this encounter exemplifies an extreme degree
of incongruity; the possibility of identifying the connection between these realms
is less visible.
In previous research, I interviewed Gretta Steiner, a Holocaust survivor in
her home in Jerusalem. Steiner, a Czech Jew, was deported to the camps along
with her family. Upon her arrival at Auschwitz she was assigned to the “Kanada
Kommando.”
…And it turned out that after all I have been through there was ‘Komando
Kanada’ where I was, oh…assigned to. So the next morning we marched
out. We went to ‘Kanada’, we thought this would be a great place like the
country (Canada). We saw what was going on in there…it was that all the
things from those who came off the trains were brought here and we had
to sort everything…(Steiner, Interview, 12/01)
Steiner’s testimony about her assignment and workplace while imprisoned
mentions the metaphor of the place and the group of prisoners assigned to the
place. Neither Steiner nor the interviewees from the archives give us much
interpretation to how this name was given to the barracks and work group.
For a deeper understanding of the metaphor and its functionality, we must
first understand the social and hierarchy structures of the Nazi concentration camp
in relation to these storehouses and then prescribe it to the dichotomous
distinction of organism versus the mechanical that the Nazis wished to impose.
Only then can we try to explain how this metaphor functions as countering that
distinction.
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The Kanada Metaphor –Cultural Meaning
Naming these barracks ‘Kanada’ and the work force attending to those
barracks ‘Komando Kanada’ was not a formal Nazi directive, but rather was
created by the victims. Canada, the country, was considered in the European
consciousness the most peaceful worry-free land of that time, a world far from the
reach of the victims. The barracks containing the belongings were part of that
world, a world that seemed so far, yet a symbol for all that the Nazis wished to
strip the Jews of, not only physically (effects that represent life), but also
spiritually (life itself).
In the dichotomy described earlier between the “organic” and “mechanic,”
the Kanada metaphor, although seemingly unrelated to this distinction, is striking
when compared to the Nazi official name for barracks, like the one in Auschwitz
that contained all the personal belongings of the victims. Linguistically, the word
“Effektenkammer” is related to the Latin word “affectus” and refers to “a state of
body and mind” or “the beloved objects, the dear or loved ones,” (Lewis 1879,
online) items that are furnished, supplied, endowed to an individual and become
part of their personal property and, in essence, their persona. As described earlier,
the Nazi goal was tonstrip to Jew of any “organic” notions of being. This is also
made possible through the system that was in place: the victims would enter the
camp and any unique expression of self in the form of personal effects (“effekt”)
is taken away. The property of a man (from Latin “proprium,” a possession or
property) is as defining to the livelihood of the person, or of the person himself, as
anything else. By taking all these effects and replacing them with a tattooed
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number, we get the Nazi recipe to turning Jews and others they aimed to rid of
organic humanity into the desired numbered mechanical objects, eventually
becoming corpses, or “Musselmans.”
For the victims, thus, the use of the term “Kanada” to describe the
barracks where these symbols of life went, is not only a countering of the Nazi
purpose of creating voids in language, but also a giving of “life” to all the victims
through their taken belongings. Since the country of Canada was to be considered
a land of riches and livelihood following the gold rush of the 19th century, these
European Jewish victims labeled the barracks with the “life” and prosperity that
Canada represented for them and provided the organic continuation that the Nazis
wished to eliminate.
The Kanada Metaphor –Additional Mentions
Michael and Doerr provide the following definition of the metaphor:
Kanada. Canada. Slang name used by the guards and inmates for the
warehouses in Auschwitz II where the personal property taken from the
thousands of victims heading for the gas chambers was sorted, collected,
and stored. Most likely a Polish term used before the war. (Michael and
Doerr 2002, 235)
The authors do not provide further information as to the supposed Polish origin of
the word, nor did my research reveal any answers to this. In the lexicon of words
accumulated by Julio Szeferblum, we find this description:
KANADA, EFFEKTENKAMMER
(Origin of name: unknown) Deposit place of the effects the prisoners,
Items stored in these places and were stolen from the Jews.
(Szeferblum 2008, 9)
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Szeferblum’s entry for the metaphor attached the official name given by the Nazis
for these barracks and that is the “Effektenkammer,” a German word meaning a
(personal) effects chamber, cabin or room. According to the United States
Holocaust Museum database, every Nazi concentration camp had a large barrack
(lager) storage facility called Effektenkammer that was a building in the camps
where the personal belongings of the prisoners were stored. Michael and Doerr
direct us to “Kanada” in the entry that includes the “effect” word. In their lexicon
the term is:
Effektenlager: Properties camp. Lager Kanada at Auschwitz II. See also
Kanada. (Michael and Doerr 2002, 135)
From the Archives
Since those appointed to the Kommando were a selected few, this
metaphor is not as common as the organizing metaphors. The Holocaust Survivor
Oral History Archive at the University of Michigan-Dearborn includes over a
dozen mentions of the metaphor. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Oral History archives have many more mentions and one of those (decoded)
interviews is used in this section. The survivors use the metaphor in the
interviews, usually without explaining it, as if preserving it, authenticating history
by describing those barracks and meaning the metaphor had for their survival.
The interviewers, whether familiar with the metaphor or not either, either question
or ignore the metaphor when it is mentioned.
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Interview 1: Mrs. Roemerfeld – 1982
The interview with Mrs. Roemerfeld (first name not provided), a Jewish
Polish Holocaust survivor, was conducted by Eva Lipton. Roemerfeld and her
family were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Roemerfeld was assigned to work in
the Kanada barrack and was part of the group of workers called the Kanada
Kommando. Her task was sorting the clothes taken from the incoming prisoners.
Section: Kanada
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/roemerfeld/section037.html
INTERVIEWER. How many months was that after you had originally arrived to
the camp? A long.
ROEMERFELD. Oh it must have been within eight months uh, from the time that
I arrived from home. And uh, I start working in Kanada. Also, meanwhile
I've seen one of my cousin which lives now in New York, which maybe
shouldn't be on the record, but for your information I've got to tell you that.
Uh, she saw me walking and she already worked in the Kanada because she
was never sent to Budy. And uh, I asked her, I says, "Could you help me
Sarah." And she says, "Well so many die, so you may as well die too." But
uh, I have to clear that for you uh, not that I ha.hold a grudge against her,
because it was a matter of survival. And uh, she was in much better shape
because she was in Block 21 and she had uh, the means of helping me a little
bit, encouragement at least. But it was a matter of survival and uh, I do not
hold any grudge against anybody, but I will never forget it. So many die, so
you will die. And that was a cousin of mine. So it uh, it was the
circumstances must have made people be the way they were. But uh, soon
enough I was uh, transferred into Block 21 and start working in the Kanada.
And uh, it, it was horrible because the first day that I started working there
and I found my mother's babushka, which it was red and black. A knitted
scarf between the clothes what came back from the gas chamber. And we had
to sort it and I found it. [pause, crying] And uh, from then I realized that this
is a place that I've gotta do the work what they want me to do. And uh, as we
worked there awhile, naturally, we got educated to the point that we knew
that uh, this is the thing that we're not going to survive and uh, we're not
going to make it so uh, uh, we just might as well take one day at a time. And
uh, there were some men working in a place carrying clothes-bags from one
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barrack to the next. And Kanada's Kommando was working near the city of
Auschwitz.
INTERVIEWER. It was outside the camp.
ROEMERFELD. Outside the camp. It was approximately two miles away from
Birkenau. And uh, we've seen uh, while we were working on the outside
sometimes uh, uh, sorting that clothes coming back from the transports from
the train uh, all kind of transports from Belgium, from Greece, from all over
the world. Um, we've seen a group of women walking outside the fence and
they were just like skeleton. Later we found out they were for uh, uh, testing
or giving blood for the soldiers on the front, for the German soldiers. And
later on we found out that they were sterilized for life. They could never bear
any children-which it-at the time it didn't matter. But they looked like
skeletons. Uh, as a matter of fact, after the war one of uh, the girls in a-from
our hometown, she lives in Israel now, she's sterile. She was one of 'em that
survived, that made it. But everyday's work there were just as unpleasant as
anything I can think of, except we did not get as much beating as we gotten in
Budy or anywhere else. And uh, one day uh, uh, two Germans came in and
they picked me out I should cook for them, of all things. So I start cooking
for them, the big officers. So they taught me how to cook -- I didn't know
how to cook. And they called me Helena. They didn't like ???. And uh, I
worked there and uh, I seen other people taking things, but I didn't realize the
value of gold or silver or, or.
INTERVIEWER. You mean in Kanada.
ROEMERFELD. In Kanada. That was at work, that was not in Birkenau. That
was on the job. And uh, they were taking things into the Stubowas, what you
call, you know, the ones that took care of the barracks during the day so they
treat 'em right, you know. But I wasn't bright enough to do that. I didn't know
what was going on. And uh, after awhile I came to my senses and I used to
take in a bar of soap or anything I could find that I didn't know the value of it
to give to the Stubowa so she won't hurt me when I go into the door. Because
those were Jewish girls, mind you. Those weren't not Germans, that had to be
uh, paid off in order to be treated right.
INTERVIEWER. Those were Poles that had been there before you?
ROEMERFELD. Uh, those were uh, the girls who were there before me. The first
were from Czechoslovakia. They were the first uh, and, and Hungary. Those
were the first that came there. And don't get me wrong. Not all Hungarians or
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not all Czechoslovakian were mean, because I have some good friends.
[laughs]
In this segment, the interviewer asks Roemerfeld to describe her job in the
camp. The interviewer does not ask what “Kanada” means, nor does Roemerfeld
give more detail about the origin of the metaphor or its meaning. The narrative
does however highlight the fact that the possessions taken were from those who
were gassed upon arrival like Roemerfeld’s mother. Roemerfeld describes finding
the Mother’s babushka and scarf while sorting on her first day on the job,
meaning that she was sent to death. Roemerfeld, through this description,
illustrates how ironic the “Kanada” metaphor becomes and the significance of the
effects barrack as tool to counter the Nazi goal of making the organic mechanical.
Instead of being a storage barrack of the “effects” of those killed, the Kanada
Kommando victims are making it alive, not only through giving it a name of a
living, rich place like Canada, but also through the preservation of those effects
that were part of the “life” of those killed.
Interview 2: Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999
The interview with Bella Camhi, a Greek Jewish Holocaust survivor, was
conducted by Sidney Bolkosky. When the Nazis and their Italian Allies conquered
Greece in 1941, Camhi and her family were placed in the Salonika (Thessaloniki)
ghetto. In 1943, they were deported to Auschwitz, where only Bella was spared
the gas chambers and assigned to work in the Kanada Kommando. The
interviewer is the one to mention the metaphor and her assignment to the barrack
before the interview, which might have an effect on the context of the metaphor.
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Section: Saved from Selektion
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=camhi&section=32
INTERVIEWER. They pulled you out. How did they do that?
CAMHI. Oh you know, maison, maison--housing uh, uh, how is in English?
When you have the in, that somebody's there. All you need is you know, to be
lucky, to be somebody there for you.
INTERVIEWER. But didn't they have to send a certain number of people?
CAMHI. No, no, no, no. What they did was one, two three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten. There was no bookke...bookkeeping over there. No. It was not
that they will tip the, the truck, you know. It's like those uh,
hand...handicapped uh, things you have here and they all fly in.
INTERVIEWER. Who else was in the Kanada Kommando?
CAMHI. Oh my God, I have a, a woman that I saw yesterday. We were working
together. Uh, it was all, all uh, woman, not a... There was no man there except
the, the German soldier and the dog.
INTERVIEWER. They weren't all Greeks, were they?
CAMHI. Yeah.
INTERVIEWER. All Greeks in the camp?
CAMHI. No, not all Greek. There were Polish. Uh, they were uh... The French
were not there. I hear they were there. Maybe I--we didn't meet any. I don't
know. Uh, mostly they were Polish people.
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm.
CAMHI. The majority were Polish.
INTERVIEWER. And the Kanada too were Polish. They'd been there, been there
for awhile.
CAMHI. Right. Well, don't forget, I was there only... Uh, Poland the, they'd been
there already since uh, '33.
INTERVIEWER. Thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty-nine...
CAMHI. '39.
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INTERVIEWER. Yeah.
CAMHI. Yeah, but they were taken as '33. Like we were uh, from '41 to '43. They
were in ghetto in Poland.
INTERVIEWER. Well, the Germans came in '39 in Poland.
CAMHI. Right.
INTERVIEWER. But that's a long time already.
CAMHI. Very.
INTERVIEWER. Two years with the Germans I guess is not... Do you remember
any specific, anything that stands out that's in your memory about something
unusual that happened that was, during your time in the Kanada Kommando?
CAMHI. Well, like I say, I didn't leave the, this area.
INTERVIEWER. You were always in Birkenau.
CAMHI. Yeah. Uh, I hardly walk two hundred feet. There was the station that the
transports were coming. And I don't want to say it, it sounds terrible. I never
have a life like this like over there. I didn't work outside. I was not out in the
rain. You know, and nobody mistreat me. I never got hit. And then I have
things to eat that, that uh, I asked, what is this.
In this segment, Camhi tells the interviewer what had happened after
arriving at Auschwitz. She details the “selection” and the interviewer then tries to
guide the survivor, as there is some confusion about the dates and it is not certain
whether Camhi’s control of English is sufficient to comprehend the questions.
Bolkosky is the one to mention the metaphor, this time adding the common name
given to the victims who worked in the Kanada barrack-“Kanada Kommando.”
The interviewer, a historian who presumably knows of the meaning of both
metaphors (Kanada and Kanada Kommando) does not ask what “Kanada” means,
nor does Camhi give more details about the origin of the metaphor or its meaning.
From the interview we gather some information about Camhi’s experiences. She
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describes being in the Komanndo as something reserved for the “lucky.” We are
also told that the majority of the workers were Polish.
This interview, although confusing, supplies us with a vital key to framing
the misunderstanding of the Holocaust. Here we see an interviewee that does not
use the metaphor in the interview. Instead, the interviewer tries to insert both the
Kanada metaphor and the Kanada Kommando metaphor that refers to the victims
forced to work in the barrack. This is presumably because he is familiar with both
metaphors as he is a Holocaust historian. Yet, non-survivor readers will likely not
be able to decipher or grasp any of Camhi’s references to her work in Kanada, nor
would the interviewer’s mention of the corresponding metaphors help as he does
not explain them. The reader can thus be left with a misunderstanding of the
events and the barrack at Auschwitz.
Interview 3: Interview with Linda Breder, Holocaust Oral History Project Dated
June 26 1991 and February 1994
The interview with Breder, a Czechoslovakian Jewish Holocaust survivor,
was conducted by three interviewers from the USHMM Holocaust Oral History
Project and was professionally transcribed. Breder’s experiences during the Nazi
occupation of Czechoslovakia included the evacuation of her family from their
home. In 1942, collaborative Czech forces arrested her and her family and they
were deported to Auschwitz. There, Breder was assigned to the Kanada barrack,
where she worked until the death marches in 1945 and her liberation by Soviet
forces.
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Section: Tape 1
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508450
The interview begins with the interviewer requesting Breder to describe her
experiences. There is no interruption as the survivor tells the story in full. Only
the parts relevant to the Kanada metaphor are cited.
INTERVIEWER. Today is Wednesday June 26th 1991. Im Judith Backover with
the Holocaust Oral History Project interviewing Linda Breder. With us today
is Sandra Bendayan. Were at the Holocaust Center at San Francisco. Good
afternoon Linda.
BREDER. Hi.
INTERVIEWER. would like to ask you to begin by telling us when and where
you were born and discussing your wartime experiences.
[skip to page 15]
BREDER. So there in the barracks transports when we were relocated to Birkenau
they were -- the first camp for the women was B-i and the men were also in
these camps. My husband was there but never met him in camp. And
transports started coming. And before December before Christmas one day
we couldnt go to work. At this time was working already and was assigned to
unit which was called Canada where was sorting clothing from the people
who came and we had to first search each garment to look for valuables. And
then we were 300 girls in this unit and then the rest of them had each to
separate coats and underwear and shoes in different pile and putting ten and
ten pieces together. And then when it was cleaned and neatly packed they
were shipped back to Germany and those clothing the Germans distributed to
the families who had their sons on the front. So the irony killing the Jews
taking everything that they had including tearing out their gold teeth and they
awarded the German families for their bravery on the front.
In this segment, Breder describes her experiences in the Birkenau camp
(B-1 sub-camp of Auschwitz). She describes being assigned to the “unit which
was called Canada” (spelling likely due to original transcription) and gives some
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detail about the activity she and the other female victims took part in. She gives
the interviewers details on the work she did in Kanada. She describes the process
of sorting the clothing of the victims that were sent to the gas chambers, including
the cleaning and packing of the effects. Breder also supplies us with the
information that the goal of this barrack was to collect all these goods for the sake
of being sent to the German homefront. We also get a mention of the gold that
was present in the barrack as Breder also tells us of the gold teeth that were pulled
from those who were murdered. These gold teeth were sorted and stored in the
barrack, adding more substance to the origin of the metaphor and its link to the
gold rush associated with Canada at that time, giving more insight into the
metaphor’s origin.
This interview allows us to frame the metaphor as being connected to the
association that Canada had with gold and the parallelism in that the barrack was
the place where all the pulled gold teeth from the victims were sent. Breder also
calls it ironic that the effects of the victims ended up being sent to Germans.
Interview 4: Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997
The interview with Szymon Binke, a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor,
was conducted by Sidney Bolkosky. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, he
and his family were forced into the Łódź Ghetto. In 1944, they were deported to
Auschwitz, where Binke, who was only 13 at the time, was assigned to the
Kinderblock (the children’s barrack) and was later sent to various forced labor
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sub-camps of Auschwitz. He was liberated in 1945. The section begins upon the
arrival of the train at the Auschwitz station.
Section: Arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=binke&section=18
INTERVIEWER. Now when the doors to the car opened, do you remember your
first impressions?
BINKE. Pandemonium. Dogs and yelling and screaming, "Raus, raus, raus."
Tried to take our luggage and stuff, a nechtiger tog, forget it. You know, we
were expecting, hey, we need all our stuff. We need our bread rations and all
that. They lined us up and...
INTERVIEWER. So who drove you off the car? People came into the car and
chased you out?
BINKE. No, no. They, you came out and they grabbed you and yeah.
INTERVIEWER. Who? Who? Germans?
BINKE. Oh no, no. Uh, prisoners. The Kommando they called it.
INTERVIEWER. Prisoners?
BINKE. Right. They called it the Kanada Kommando. I don't know why
Kanada.
INTERVIEWER. What were you thinking at the time? Remember?
BINKE. Weren't thinking. Total shock.
INTERVIEWER. What happened next?
BINKE. The world, well, they lined us up, men separate and women separate.
That's the last time I saw my mother and sister. And uh, you lined up in one,
one line and kept, walked, walked up to a German officer and he was
standing like this and pointing with his thumb this way or that way. When I
came up, came up, he grabbed me by my right arm to feel if there was
something there and he pointed to that side. We didn't know which, which
was good and which was bad and after that we wound up in a, in a bath house
all night long. And the next morning we were in the gypsy camp in Birkenau.
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In this segment, Binke gives details on his arrival at Auschwitz. He
describes those who came up to the train cars to direct the victims to the selektzia
(selection process). He then explains how those who came up to the train cars
pulled the victims and directed them to the selection that would determine
whether a person would go to the gas chamber or the work camp. The interviewer
asks whether Binke is referring to the Germans who went up to the train cars.
Binke responds that these are prisoners and calls them “Kommando.” The
interviewer then stops him to ask “prisoner?” and Binke confirms, giving the full
name “Kanada Kommando” and says he does not know why they were called
“Kanada.” The interviewer does not continue to question him on the metaphor
and Binke continues with his narrative.
The segment illustrates how a non-survivor reader might be confused by
the description of the events and of the use of the metaphor. The interviewer does
not supply the information despite being an historian but simply directs Binke to
do so by asking if they were prisoners. We cannot understand the metaphor and
its origin, and Binke also claims that he does not know why the metaphor was
used, and yet it is a vital part of the description of the events. These instances are
what create misunderstandings between the survivors and non-survivors and are
thus important to stress.
Metaphor 4: Kapo Metaphor
The Nazi language was rich with metaphors that were meant not only to
conceal the Nazi crimes, but also to intensify the dichotomy between the
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“organic,” living German body and the “mechanical,” life-less Jew. The
metaphors that would transform the Jewish people from literate humans to
speechless, mechanical “Musselmen” included words that would reduce human
daily activities to animal-like behaviors. One example is the German word
“fressen,” used by the Nazis to describe Jewish victims eating in the camps. The
point was to use a verb associated with animal eating behavior (while “essen” is
the common verb used to describe for humans eating in the German language).
The Nazis’ creation of concentration and death camps never before
experienced by mankind also created conditions and experiences that the victims
found no adequate words to describe. In some cases, like the Kanada metaphor,
metaphors were used not only to describe the new experience, but also to attempt
to counter the linguistic death-sentence imposed by the Nazi language rules.
These rules excluded the victims from being able to use words that were
associated with life that became exclusive to the Germans in order to describe
themselves.
The victims dreaded using those terms that stole the humanity from them,
increasing the need for more metaphors that gave themselves a sense of the
“organic” life that was allowed for the Germans only. As seen earlier, metaphors
provided the victims a mechanism that gave hope for life and a sense of control
(one example being the “organizing” metaphor that made stealing more food and
gaining better conditions a legitimate action).
In order to describe some of the objects or conditions in the camps,
victims would use the Nazi language as well. Yet, the use of Nazi language by the
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victims troubled many including Victor Klemperer, who claimed that “…in our
troubled isolation we should have developed a special language, that we ourselves
should use the official terms from the Nazi dictionary originally coined to refer to
us, that here and there we should come across an extension of jargon…”
(Klemperer 1957, 191). But the countering of the Nazi language was not the only
reason to invent new metaphors. The victims who were in the camps were
transported by the Nazis from across Europe and North Africa and spoke at least
twenty different languages. There was thus a need to develop new language that
would be both inclusive of the different languages the victims spoke and also
unique to the victims. Levi, one of the Italian victims of Auschwitz, saw language
to be a vital tool in the mental and physical survival of the Jews: “The confusion
of languages is a fundamental component of the manner of living here: one is
surrounded by a perpetual Babel, in which everyone shouts orders and threats in
languages never heard before…” (Levi, 1958, 38).
The metaphors created by the victims in the camp did not have one source
language, nor did they represent the language of the majority group (most likely
Polish). In most cases, the victim-created metaphors were borrowed from the
well-known part of their old world; others were borrowed from mysterious and
obscure origins. Steiner, who spent most of the Holocaust in Auschwitz, could
not fully trace the origins of the metaphors she used: “I don’t know how and why
(we made up) these words…I guess it was our memory of how everything was
before…” (Steiner, Interview, 07/02).
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Since the Nazis needed the assistance of the local population and prisoners
in the camp for carrying out their plans, they appointed the prisoners and victims
to perform some of the prison-guard duties. These prisoners became known as
“Kapos” (or “Capos”), a term meaning “head” in Italian. It is thus speculated that
this metaphor was introduced to the victims by Italian Jews. While, as mentioned
earlier, the term could have stemmed from Kameradschaftspolizei, meaning
comradeship police, yet the term Kapo was not officially used by the Nazis.
Kapos were formally called something else by the Nazi authorities. One term used
for prisoners who gained authority over other prisoners was Funktionshäftling
(functionary prisoners). Some armbands belonging to Kapos that were found after
the war read “Lagerpolizist” (camp police). The origin of the Kapo metaphor and
many other metaphors used by the victims, thus remains a mystery and it is not
clear whether the metaphor was created by the Nazis or the victims, yet both used
them.
The “Kapos” were indeed those among the victims who were chosen by
the Nazis to “head” a work force or living quarters. Steiner cannot recall the
origin of the word: “…for a while they had no name…maybe ‘officer’ or you
would call them (the Kapos) by name. But they were the head of the group of
workers and so when the word ‘Kapo’ appeared; it was a good fit” (Interview
07/02). Steiner’s recollection is that the metaphor was not always what was used
to describe those among the victims the Nazis chose to lead prisoner groups. The
creation of this metaphor might have been a result of the Kapo’s unique status in
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the camps. While they were prisoners like all others, they were given a role that
entailed leadership, without a formal title.
Following Boaz Neumann’s theory from earlier in this chapter, the
“Kapo” metaphor should be seen as a victim-used countering metaphor. Neumann
claimed that Nazi language stressed the distinction between the organic German
space and the Jewish mechanical camp. Thus, using a metaphor like Kapo
(literally an organic body part) exemplifies the overturning of the mechanical
non-organic terms that the Nazis wished would become exclusive to the Jews).
While the Nazis attempted to reduce the Jew to a “No-Body” (Nuemann 2002,
364), that is nothing but a corpse, the victims’ use of the Kapo metaphor
demonstrates their refusal to accept the distinction and the death sentence while
still maintaining power and agency.
The Kapo Metaphor –Additional Mentions
The Kapo metaphor is frequently mentioned in Holocaust texts,
testimonies, memoirs, and also in the WWII lexicons and journals previewed in
Chapter IV. Michael and Doerr in their lexicon of the language of the Third Reich
translate the Kapo metaphor to “foreman” but do not provide any explanation to
its origin or whether it was part of Nazi language or victim-created language:
Kapo. Foreman. A camp inmate appointed by the SS to head a unit of
other prisoners. Many Kapos were brutal toward other prisoners and were
sometimes feared more than the SS. (Michael and Doerr 2002, 236)
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In the lexicon of words accumulated by Szeferblum, we find this description:
Prisoner in charge of a
working group, word taken
KAPO (Kamerade Polizei, a prisoner in charge from the Italians who
of guarding)
worked in Bavaria in road
construction, first used in
Dachau, also a prisoner
with functions
CAPO (Head, Chief)
(Szeferblum 2008, 2)
Szeferblum’s indeed traces the metaphor to Italians working in forced labor in
Bavaria, but he gives no further detail as to the origin and how the metaphor
expanded to all the other camps.
From the Archives
The Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn includes around fifty interviews in which the metaphor is
found. This is a metaphor that was common in the ghettos as well as work and
concentration camps and thus appears in the testimonies of victims who were
from various nationalities. The survivors use the metaphor in the interviews either
in singular (Kapo) or plural (Kapos) to describe a person among the victims or
prisoners who was appointed by the Nazis to have an authoritative role. In most
cases, the survivor says the metaphor while telling the story and does not offer an
explanation to the word. It is also uncommon for the interviewer to stop the
interview in order to question the meaning of the metaphor. This metaphor has
been known to historians and perhaps it is assumed that the listeners would
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understand its meaning. The victims do not offer any details on the origins of the
metaphor.
Interview 1: Sam Seltzer - November 29, 1982
Seltzer, mentioned in the previous metaphor section, is a Jewish Polish
Holocaust survivor. The interview was conducted by Anita Schwartz. In this part
of the interview, Seltzer describes the last weeks before liberation as he was
transferred to German soil and his assignment to the Kommando attached to
Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.
Section: Buchenwald
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=seltzer&section=31
INTERVIEWER. The Buchenwald camp.
SELTZER. Yeah, yeah. Außenkommando Buchenwald. Closer to Buchenwald
was a brick factory where people from, from Buchenwald worked in the, in
the factory. Now while the front was coming up, the Russian and the, and,
and the uh, American front was coming up. They were evacuating us ten days
and ten nights, going in between the front into Buchenwald. See Thüringen,
Buchenwald was in Thüringen. Like Michigan here, you see Thüringen.
Buchenwald was uh, um, yeah, and--they walked us ten days and ten nights
and our Kapo--we had a Kapo there--our Kapo, which I didn't use before,
word Kapo. Kapo was uh, people, like a German, was a political prisoner or
it was against the Nazis or something, they were Kapos, they made them
Kapos see. He was a political, he had a red, a red...
INTERVIEWER. A Russian?
SELTZER. No, a red triangle sewed in into the, the stripes. So did we, see? So uh,
he was the Kapo and he went over.
[interruption in interview]
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SELTZER. I gotta start over again.
INTERVIEWER. Go ahead.
SELTZER. He went over into the SS and told 'em, "As soon as we come into
Buchenwald, you guys will have to go to the front. You know, you have to
turn around and fight on the front." They mostly were older men, see? They
were not youngsters, but they were older men, see? So as soon as we come
into Buchenwald you guys will have to turn around and fight the front. Some
of 'em are going to get killed. He was a smart guy. He was a, a German Kapo,
so. Otto was his name, Otto. The Kapo. So we went ten days and ten nights.
We were--when it was raining we put blankets over us and we're walking like
five, we were holding each other. Sometimes we passed by towns, cities and
something like that. In one town I remember there were some people running
after us and giving us, giving us something to drink, like pop or something
with buckets. And they had, in the buckets they had bottles and they give us
some pop or something. But they wouldn't allow that, see? Now they said,
they told 'em not to, not to do it and they wouldn't let 'em do it. And one time
there was a, a uh, bombing uh, you know, uh, uh, airplanes came down and
while we were walking, during the day, and they were shooting at us and
everything. And we were happy, so. At that time we disbursed and I ran into
a, into a goat shed. There was goats in there and I packed up with a lot of
carrots and stuff, whatever the goats were eating there. I looked up and uh,
some of the um, uh, cabbage uh, inside something, uh. The hard part inside.
INTERVIEWER. Stem.
SELTZER. The stem from the cabbage. It was terrific, sweet. And uh, at that time
we got, before we left the camp we got uh, they had sugar, so they gave
everybody a little bag with sugar. They didn't have anything left anymore
from, from that Außenkommando Buchenwald. So they gave us uh, bags of
sugar and so what, dipping in the sugar the carrots was very good. Whatever
we found we dipped n the sugar.
INTERVIEWER. Did they tell you where they were taking you or you were just
marching?
SELTZER. No, we're just marching. They didn't, they never told uh, tell anybody
what--but the Kapo knew where we're going. We didn't know uh. So we went
uh, there was a uh, a plane came down and start shooting and everything and
I had a chance to run in there and I helped myself with the food from the
goats. Instead the goats, I ate. And I tried to hide. That time I decided this is
it. I'm not going into Buchenwald, I'm going to hide. And there was a big pile
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with uh, hay. I dug out some hay about, about in the middle. Not down on
the, on the, but in the middle. And I, and I--then I covered up with each one, I
covered up, covered up, covered myself up, see? And uh, all of a sudden the
SS man comes in and he starts screaming, "Every...where's everybody,
everybody out," and we got to go and this after the, the, uh...
INTERVIEWER. Planes gone.
SELTZER. ...the planes were gone. And he starts stabbing with the bayonet in the
uh, in the hay and he hit me in the head here. I got a mark here. Right in the
head with the--cut, cut through. And everybody was already out there. I--you
know, the guys are already waiting to walk and I was still--I was late. I said,
"This is it, I can't do it anymore." I had already pain in my, in my uh, my
corners here, in my groin.
INTERVIEWER. Groin, yeah.
SELTZER. My groin, I had pain and I, I, I couldn't walk anymore. I felt this was
it. So when he hit me with the bayonet I didn't say nothing. But finally I said,
"Well, if he does that again he's gonna hit me." So I said "No, I'm out--I, I'm
here, I'm here, I'm here." And he happens to be a son of a bitch. Yeah. He
was the--a, a tough one. So I, I said, "I'm going, I'm going, I'm here." And he,
he said, "Well, wait until we come into Buchenwald, I'm going to report
you." He says, "I'm going to report you." So I had bandaged my uh, head, by
the time we came into Buchenwald I took it off. I didn't wait 'til it heals up. I
took it off so you can't recognize me. And this way he didn't recognize me.
As long as he didn't take my--and he didn't have any numbers, see? So he, I,
I, he didn't recognize me, he didn't report me. And so I was glad. We came in
twelve o'clock at night to Buchenwald. Midnight--twelve o'clock. Well, on
the way, where we stopped in, we waited 'til another days go by and here we
hear the guns. So on the way in that place where they had the uh, they were,
the prisoners were making bricks was a big hole down deep, I don't know
how many feet. Very, very deep. That's where they were digging the clay.
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm.
SELTZER. So uh, we tried to, when we come into Buchenwald we have to have
something to trade. So they had the conveyor belt, it was leather. So five of
us boys, we were new, knew each other. Five of us--we start cutting the
conveyor. We cut a piece off and we took 'em with leather. The leather is
going to give us food in Buchenwald. So we cut--is he bothering you? Why
don't you go eat bAbi... So the, the conveyor belt was leather, good leather,
like sole. Shoe, shoe sole leather. So we cut in pieces and I had it stuffed in
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right in back of me, and you know, tied up with, with a string. Next day, they
line us up, everybody make lines and we separate and they searching. The,
the man from the conveyor belt--from the factory, the, the German came and
he said that we made sabotage, that somebody cut the belt, the conveyor belt.
It was a big thing for them. They searched everybody. I had it on me. One of
the uh, uh, Jewish Kapos was searching me and he going up and down and he
couldn't find anything on me. I had it on me. The other boys threw away into
the, into the hole there, into that water...
In this segment, Seltzer details the conditions among his forced labor
group in Buchenwald. The first part includes the initial mention of the Kapo
metaphor. Seltzer is aware that the word might not be completely understood by
the listener and there are pauses and a sense of confusion: “…our Kapo--we had a
Kapo there--our Kapo, which I didn't use before, word Kapo. Kapo was uh
people…” Seltzer explains that his work group had a “Kapo” yet is unable to
explain what that is. He tells the interviewer that it is a word he did not use before
and then tries to explain what and who these “Kapos” were, claiming they are
political prisoners who are “made into” Kapos. The confusion causes Seltzer to
stop the interview. He later gives detail about the German Kapo who was in
charge of them and through the events the role of the Kapo is made a bit clearer.
While at first he described the Kapos as comprised of political prisoners, the end
of this segment includes a mention of a Jewish Kapo as well, who searches him
for stolen goods.
While this segment can be a bit confusing for the listeners, Seltzer’s
testimony provides us with some deciphering of the metaphor and its role in lives
of the victims, both during the Holocaust and as survivors. In his testimony,
Seltzer struggles with the definition of the metaphor once he mentions it and is
unable to fully explain it. He does not avoid the metaphor the next time he needs
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to use it, but then does not spend time to try to explain its meaning. The
interviewer is likely knowledgeable of the term and does not ask for its meaning,
also perhaps because the survivor is struggling. The fact that Seltzer admits to the
metaphor being new indicates its absorption among non-Italian Jewish prisoners.
Interview 2: Joseph Gringlas - January 14 & 22, March 18, 1993
The interview with Joseph Gringlas, a Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor,
was conducted by the head of the Voices/Vision archive, Sidney Bolkosky in
1993. Gringlas spent most of the war years in the Monowitz sub-camp of
Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1945, he was sent on a forced death march to Germany
until Allied forces liberated him. In this part of the interview, Gringlas describes
the working conditions in Birkenau upon his arrival.
Section: Labor in Birkenau
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=gringlas&section=26
INTERVIEWER. So you were, you were in Birkenau and you were worried that
there was no work.
GRINGLAS. Yeah. No work. Then they co..somebody eh, from the Gruppen SS
came out, a German and he came out, we need for, for making, for making
some...doing something, flowers, this was in there to make it look nice, inside
flowers. And they called who's a gardener. I had learn in Poland I was eh, I
was taught how to do farming and flowers and so I said, "Yes, I am a, I can
do flowers." And I volunteered to do, I want to do something. So they took
me to work and when I got that job of putting flowers in the ground. So I get
double piece of butter and double portion of bread because of that. It was
wonderful at that time in Birkenau to get a double portion. So I, I worked on
the flowers for them and they liked it the way I did it. And then there was a
lot of people--as I explained, there was a lot of other people didn't work. And
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they stepped on the flowers. So when they came out, the guy said, "What you
doing, why didn't?" And they were, I think this was a, one of the civilians
from us, I mean from the, the, he was a Kapos. Told you what to do. And he
said, "Look what you have to do, watch it what they're doing." So he gave me
a big stick and you have to hit him, hit him because they shouldn't go to step
on. Nobody in the world would believe I took the stick and gave back that
Kapo. I said, "Not me. I'm not going to hit anybody." And, and so I lost my
double portion food and double bread. It's unbelievable. Because you feel like
people are hungry they would do anything.
INTERVIEWER. Mm-hm.
GRINGLAS. I couldn't, I couldn't take a stick and hitting the people there. I know
what, what they're there for. So, I lost that wo...the job from work and doing
with the flowers. And then I worked uh, on a different, unloading. I, they
were looking for something to do but it wasn't, you could see there was no,
this was not for people to work there. It was just waiting to be finished.
In this segment, Gringlas gives details about his first encounters at the forced
labor camp at Birkenau. Before he is assigned work, he volunteers to plant
flowers and the other prisoners step on his flowers. Gringlas then mentions the
metaphor Kapo as the person who comes to his aid and directs him to take a stick
and hit those ruining his flowers. He describes the Kapo as being “one of the
civilians from us” and then pauses and says “I mean from the, the he was a
Kapos.” There seems to be a few pauses during this part of the interview and
Gringlas struggles with trying to explain who the Kapo was. The listeners can
conclude that this is a prisoner of some sort assigned to some task. We learn more
as Gringlas adds that the Kapo “told you what to do,” and that lets us know that
the Kapo had authority over the victims.
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In this interview, the survivor uses the metaphor and has difficulty
explaining what it means. His insistence to tell the story using the metaphor also
stresses the importance the definition of the Kapo role had and still has on the
victims. Gringlas gives two clear indicators to explain who the Kapos were: they
were “one of us” and they “told you what to do.” The listener can gain an
understanding of who these people were yet, as can be seen, through much
difficulty on the part of both speaker and listener.
Interview 3: Paul Molnar - July 24, 2002
The interview with Paul Molnar was conducted in 2002 by Sidney Bolkosky.
Molnar is a Jewish Hungarian Holocaust survivor who was initially sent to
Auschwitz along with his family in 1944. He was shortly after transferred to
various forced labor camps in Germany including Buchenwald, Magdeburg, and
an I.G. Farben factory. In this part of the interview, Molnar is sent to Berga, a
BMW labor camp comprising mostly of American prisoners of war. During this
part of the interview, Molnar gives detail about the conditions in Buchenwald and
Berga and also describes the power distribution among the prisoners in the labor
camp. The previous section ends with Molnar mentioning German Jewish
prisoners that were “privileged.” This section begins with the interviewer asking
him to tell more about this.
Section: Berga
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=molnar&section=22
INTERVIEWER. German Jews.
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MOLNAR. German Jews who were the leaders of the camp you know, that really
ran a lot of it. And they-we also had in Buchenwald people like uh, Prime
Minister of France was held there, Leon Blum, head of the-Thalmann who
was the head of the German Communist Party. I mean, these were in another
section. This was a privileged people who were held there as prisoners. But
anyhow, I was in Buchenwald and you know, it was a different camp because
the prisoners could, could get all the news because they had shortwave radios
in the barracks and everything that they built themselves to materials from
the factories. So we knew that the Germans were losing the war. I mean,
December of 1944, we knew that Americans were already in Germany proper
and the Russians were almost all of uh, the East was already right near to the
German border. So we knew it was just-if we can just survive you know, we
can survive. There were about twenty-five thousand people in this camp in
Buchenwald at the time. And the leadership at Buchenwald decided that uh,
the Germans are not going to leave Buchenwald. They're going to raze it,
they're going to do something because they don't want to leave this evidence
of all these horrible things for the last eleven years they carried on there. So
chances are they're going to come in and kill everybody, blow it up or do
something. So they decided that us twenty children should not stay in
Buchenwald but we should be shipped out to a smaller sub-camp because at
the end of the war during the chaos we have a much better chance to survive.
So all twenty of us from the Jewish barrack, all of us twenty children, Jewish
children, we were sent to a place called Berga, which is B-e-r-g-a, which is
right near Czechoslovak border near Sudetenland. And when we got there it
was terrible cold. It was January. And we only had this little jacket, a pair of
pants and a cap. Terrible cold. And this was a little camp of about 1500
prisoners, and there were some Jews and non-Jews. And when we got there
all of us children were. And what the factory did was there, there was one
factory, it was run by BMW. That's why I love all these lovely German
companies today. Uh, and they were building uh, a V3 rocket which they're
going to win the war with, which never happened. In the underground
factory. Well, when we got there uh, all of us children were assigned inside
the camp and I was assigned to work in the kitchen. And my job was, among
others-there other people also-uh, to uh, peel potatoes from six in the evening
'til six in the morning. Now it was a terrific job 'cause I was not exposed to
any of the Germans. They never came in the kitchen. And I was not exposed
to the cold because the kitchen was warm. And I slept during the day while
everybody was-the others were working in an underground factory. And uh, I
didn't have any more to eat, because I think I would have been killed if I took
one potato by all the prisoners in there. And this was run by a, a, a Serbian
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man. He was in charge of the kitchen, he was in charge of our, he was a
prisoner, but he was our Kapo. And he was quite nice, he didn't-I don't think
he ever beat anybody or. He may-he might have yelled at us, but he, he didn't
do anything, he never. About six of us kids we worked in the kitchen, we all
peeled potatoes. And that's what we did, we peeled potatoes night after night
after night and. We went through the counting everyday and everything else.
And in February, something happened to us which is unique to my story. A
lot of this stuff is not, like with the other people. What happened was, that
naturally all we could think is when are our liberators coming. We didn't care
if they're American, British, Russian. Just liberate us. And one day the trucks
come in, in our camp and they're American GIs. First time I ever seen
Americans. First time in my life. And they have their uniforms on. But
they're not our liberators, they're American prisoner of war. These three
hundred and fifty were the only American GIs ever brought in concentration
camp. And the reasons were numerous. Some because they were captured as
one of the first American troops cap...cap, captured in Germany proper.
Others because they were asked in the camp, prisoner of war camps whether
they were Jews or not and they stepped forward and said yes, they were Jews.
And others because they had Jewish sounding names, so they decided they
were Jews. So these three hundred and fifty American GIs, they had-they
were allowed to keep their uniform and they were allowed to keep their hair
and they were separated from us within the camp with a barbed wire. They
were put to work in the same factory where everybody else worked. They
were guarded by SS guards. They were given the same food we had. They
were treated just as badly as we were. And they were there ninety-nine days
in this camp and a third of 'em died in ninety-nine days. Because they were, I
guess, more used to better things in life and they died even faster than other
people. And they were the only ones who were ever put in concentration
camp. After the Second World War, in 1948 when I was already in United
States, I was contacted uh, and I gave a deposition for that. Some of the
guards in the camp uh, the head of the camp uh, who, and they were on trial
because of the way they treated these American prisoner of war, they were
specifically on trial. Not in the Nuremburg trial, but they were on trial. They
were tried by German-American military tribunal.
In this segment, Molner begins where the last segment ended to answer
the interviewer’s indirect question and restating of “German Jews” that are
prisoners described to have privileges and better clothing than other prisoners in
Buchenwald. He makes a reference to the fact that German Jews had authoritative
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roles in Buchenwald by stating that “German Jews who were the leaders of the
camp you know, that really ran a lot of it.” He does not say they were Kapos, yet
that would be the only way to explain his description that they ran the camp.
Molnar infers the knowledge he assumes the historian might have about this by
saying “you know.” Later in this segment of the interview, when Molnar talks
about his assignment to work in the kitchen, he mentions the metaphors directly,
yet after some pauses and uncertainty as he tries to explain who was in charge in
the kitchen: “and this was run by a, a, a Serbian man. He was in charge of the
kitchen, he was in charge of our, he was a prisoner, but he was our Kapo…”
Molner seems to anticipate that the word might not be clear to the interviewer and
emphasizes that the Kapo was a prisoner, the one in charge. We cannot fully
conclude what the metaphor means but can understand it is a prisoner in charge.
Metaphor 5: Liquidation Metaphors
In Chapter IV, much detail was given on previous research conducted in
an aim to decipher the role language had in the Nazi ideology. As mentioned,
Perry, along with Michael and Doerr, all stress the fact that Nazi-Deutsch was an
ideological language of exclusion, domination, and annihilation. As part of this
language, new metaphors were created by the Nazis in order to describe the act of
murdering entire populations in a manner that would both legitimize the killings
and create a “smoke screen” for those committing the crimes. These metaphors
compared the Jews and other victim-groups to vermin and other animals and
reduced their entities into being either inhuman, mere mechanical parts or, at
189
times, even rubbish. The de-humanizing metaphors were very dominant in Nazi
language and Perry stresses their vital role in the implementation of the “Final
Solution.”
According to Perry, “Hitler’s critique of the Jew’s status as a cultural
being…is not illustrated by the metaphor of parasitism; it is constituted by this
metaphor and the figurative entailments it carries” (Perry 1983, 219). Not only
were the Jews described through metaphors that were de-humanizing, but the
actions taken against them were as well. There were several examples of
infestation, dehumanizing or mechanical metaphors that were mentioned in
previous chapters like “taken away,” “liquidate,” “disinfect,” “fressen” (eating
like an animal as opposed the verb used for humans “essen”). The last metaphor
of this chapter is thus one of those Nazi-created metaphors that was used by the
victims yet not necessarily overturned in meaning or that acted as a counterhegemonic linguistic tool. Rather, as the interviews show, it is a term that
infiltrated into the lexicon of the victims then and the survivors today. The
metaphor chosen is “liquidate” and its variations.
The Nazis used metaphors to describe the Jews or what was being done to
them in terms of what was commonly used to describe commodities, not humans.
One example is the explicit term “liquidate” (liquidate). The Nazis added the
letter “L” following the name of the prisoner on the concentration camp arrival
list to indicate that he or she would be “liquidated,” typically by being sent to a
gas chamber. According to Klemperer, “There were a frightful number of options
(for liguidieren- to liquidate): toten (to kill), morden (murder), beseitgen (do away
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with) etc…” (Klemperer, 1957, 254). While in the beginning of the war these
terms were rarely used, towards its final years, “liquidate” became more
widespread and public: “…one reads every day: umpteen people have been
‘liquidiert (liquidated).’ ‘Liquidieren’ derives from the language of commerce, as
a loan word it is a degree or two colder and more objective” (Klemperer, 1957,
149).
The difficulty of describing the daily routine in the camps is apparent in
the interviews, yet the use of the “liquidated” metaphors by the survivors so many
years later raises questions about their functionality. Unlike the metaphors that
were reversed or victim-created, it would seem that the use of this metaphor
would entail agreement to the lessening of their value as humans. Since the
metaphor appears in many interviews, I asked survivor Gretta Steiner why she
continued to use the degrading metaphor. She explained that “…how else would
you tell someone that yesterday there was a town full of Jews and the next there
was nothing?” (Interview 07/02). This response may indicate that the void in
language to describe such events may have left the victims with none other than
the original Nazi metaphor to describe it. According to Levi, language was
reduced to the conditions the victims were exposed to and the language to
describe those conditions was the language created by the Nazis. He gives the
example mentioned earlier that: “In Auschwitz ‘to eat’ was rendered ‘fressen,’ a
verb which in good German is applied only to animals” (Levi 1986, 99). Many of
the actions the Nazis conducted on the Jewish populations were so extreme, so
191
unheard of, that the victims found the only way to describe them was with the
Nazi-created metaphors.
Liquidation Metaphors- Additional Mentions
The liquidation metaphors are also mentioned in the writings of other
Holocaust scholars, typically as an example of the Nazi manipulation of language.
The metaphor, in its different variations, also appears in the WWII lexicons and
journals previewed in Chapter IV. Michael and Doerr include the metaphor in
their overview of Nazi speech regulations (Sprachregelung), claiming it would
function to strip anyone who was non-Aryan from any sense of “practice and
privilege” (Michael and Doerr 2002, 28). The metaphor was distinguished from
German metaphors of building and strength like “Feinsehrohr (fine-seeing tube)
and Gangwerk (motion work)” (Michael and Doerr 2002, 28). The lexicon offers
four entries for the metaphor in its variations and reveals to us that the metaphor
was initially used in the Nazi Action T4, the euthanasia program intended to
“cleanse” the German nation:
Liquidationsanstalt. Destruction center. Under the control of T-4, a
number of institutions were created or designated for killing adult patients
during the Euthanasia Program. In general, German children were killed in
other institutions although there was some overlap. See also Aktion T-4;
Reichsausschuß zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung von erbund
anlagebedingten schweren Leiden.
Liquidationskommando. Liquidation unit. Special unit in death camps.
See also Sonderkommando.
liquidieren. To liquidate, to settle, to dissolve. To shoot, to do away with,
to murder Jews, political opponents, and partisans.
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Liquidierung. (L) Liquidation. Mass murder.
(Michael and Doerr 2002, 265)
From the Archives
The Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn includes over a twenty mentions of the metaphor. In the
interviews, the survivors use the metaphor to describe an act of totality performed
by the Nazis, usually resulting in the complete annihilation of a Jewish
community or the total destruction of a Jewish town. Like the other metaphors
mentioned, the typical testimonial offers no explanation for the metaphor and it is
only through the contextual cues that we can conclude on the meaning. It is also
rare that the interviewer interrupts or question the survivor when the metaphor is
used.
Interview 1- Josef Slaim - February 7, 1982
The interview with Josef Slaim, a Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor, was
conducted by Arthur Kirsch. Slaim was appointed to be a Judenälteste (member
of Jewish council) in a number of labor camps including Tarnowitz,
Blechhammer, Gross-Rosen, and finally, Buchenwald. Once the Allied troops
were close to German soil, he was sent on a death march. During the last few
months of the war, Slaim disguised himself as a Nazi soldier with a uniform he
had stolen. This part of the interview is focused on the last months of his
imprisonment at Buchenwald.
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Section: Life in Buchenwald
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=slaim&section=17
SLAIM. From over there it was not long. We was there a couple months. There
was coming an order. As a matter of fact, I'm going back. Buchenwald-the food was cleaner. And it was on time--at least in our sick barrack, we
got the food on time, and it was cleaner. Enough is no question, never was
enough. Now an order come, that they gonna start evacuate Buchenwald,
that the Russian are close. They start a call to ??? to every room that
everybody, special Jews has to come assemble in this and this place, and
the other people has to come in another place. So we figured, if they called
just the Jews in an extra place, that's nothing--that's not a good sign.
They're probably gonna liquidate us before. And that probably was their
mind, but nobody showed up. So what they did, in one 'o'clock in the night
another loud speaker come--in every room there was loud speakers, that in
the morning we should assemble--the whole camp should assemble before
the barracks and we gonna be handed over to the Russian. The Russians
here and they're gonna--they don't want that us--that's gonna be a whole
mess, they're gonna make it uh, organized. So uh, that's what we did. In
the morning we assembled. As soon we assemble--SS was hiding behind
the barracks mit guns in hand and was coming in the front, and start telling
all the Jews have to step out. I saw one Jew fall on an, on an SS man. He
start fighting mit him uh, it was not uh, I mean logical it was not worth it.
What could he do, I mean, one person, you know. So the next SS man shot
him gave him right away uh, shot him right away on the place. Anyway,
they brought us to a place, just the Jews--assemble place. One commander
was coming--a higher--a high ranking official--officer was coming. He
said, "Say, listen. We want you to know, tomorrow the Russian gonna
come and take over the camp. We want give you over to them in an
organized way. That's the good news what I have to tell you." Maybe he
was right. We had to believe, we had to trust in this person, but looks like
the other SS wasn't going for this. They want to kill us before they want to
turn over us to the other. So in meantime, they changed their thinks. They
wanted us to liquidate. In the camp, Buchenwald was a political camp. As
a matter of fact a single SS man was always afraid to come in, in the
camp. He would never go out alive. They--he would killed between the
uh, from the uh, prisoners. The other prisoners-- it was like I mention it,
70,000 people found out about this--they wanted us liquidated. So there
they could call to ??? through the microphone uh, through the microphone
from the uh, not the microphone, from the loud speakers to the SS and told
194
them--they warned them if they're gonna liquidate the Jews, they're gonna
make uh, a revolution in the, in the camp. They gonna kill all the SS what
they gonna get. Somehow--I don't know if it makes them a little bit
worried or not, or whatever it is. Anyway, they start beginning a
Totenmarsch. Start taking us out.
In this segment of the interview, Slaim explains what the thoughts were at
the Buchenwald camp during those last few months of the war, as he and other
prisoners felt the war was coming to an end. Slaim uses the metaphor “liquidate”
(in various forms) four times in this segment. The first mention is when he
explains what gathering all the Jews in one place would mean and then he says it
would not be a good sign and would mean that they were to “liquidate us” before
the Allies arrive. His narrative continues and he mentions the metaphor additional
times referring to the action of wanting to get rid of the Jews before the camp is
turned over to the Russians.
Interview 2- Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
The interview with Herman Marczak, a Jewish Polish Holocaust survivor, was
conducted by Eva Lipton. In the beginning of the German occupation, Marczak
and his family were placed in the Zduńska Wola ghetto, where conditions were
very harsh and eventually his immediate family members were murdered. In
1942, after the ghetto was “liquidated,” Marczak was sent to forced labor camps
and eventually to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where he was liberated by British
soldiers. In the first section selected from this interview, he is still describing his
days in Zduńska Wola ghetto. In the second selected section, he discusses the
“liquidation” of the Łódż ghetto.
195
Section: Liquidation of the Ghetto
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=marczak&section=26
MARCZAK. When everything was prepared and they were prepared to liquidate,
so they came at night and everything had the same pattern. There was a
special unit from the SS and they had the, they had the same pattern to
liquidate the city. They can liquidate a city of fifteen, twenty thousand
people in one day. There was no--they got trained to it, they got adjusted to it.
So they came at night, four o'clock at night they came to hall, everybody got
to get out and to concentrate on one field. So everybody went, the young and
old and children ev...whoever didn't, and they said whoever won't be there by
seven o'clock in the morning will got shot on the spot. And that's what
happened. Seven o'clock it was, it was like, it started to sound like on a, on a
front, you know. They're shooting people all over. And then we were there all
day long, they were pushing from one side and from the other. You know,
just to, harassment and things like this. Then in, in the afternoon they
marched the whole town to the Jewish cemetery, it was a very large
cemetery. And at that cemetery they took out from the twelve, thirteen
thousand people about a thousand young people between the ages, I would
say from eighteen 'til twenty-eight, thirty. On side and all the rest of them on
the other side. And that's when they separated us. They take my mother and
my, and my sister and all the rest of the family and put them on one side, and
me they put on the other side with the young people. And then they sent us to
the ghetto in Łódż. And the rest they went to Chelmno we never heard from
anybody, from all the rest of the people. That happened in one day.
INTERVIEWER. How old was your sister at that time?
MARCZAK. She was born in 1927, that was, for her, it was fifteen years old-fifteen years she was at that time. So, and then we were staying there
overnight--lying on the cemetery. The next day they, they took us, they
marched us over the city to the railroad, to, to, to the railroad station. And the
Polacks was applauding on the streets.
In this segment of the interview, Marczak describes the final days of the
Zduńska Wola ghetto before it was destroyed. He used the metaphor to describe
what we learn eventually is the complete destruction of the ghetto and its
inhabitants by the Nazis. He explains how meticulous and well-planned the
196
“liquidation” was and says it lasted only one day. He then gives detail on how the
entire ghetto was gathered to be shot on the spot. Marczak also tells of the
preparation before the actual “liquidation” and explains that the process was
repetitive in other places, repeating the word “pattern” several times. His
testimony gives us an idea of how a survivor must hold on to the Nazi metaphor,
not only because it is not easy to comprehend such a totalizing action, but also
because it preserves the crime that can only be associated with the Nazis. It is not
a random killing and destruction but rather a known pattern that he identifies. By
using the same Nazi-created metaphor, it could be that victims like Marczak feel
they are testifying on a crime and that using the metaphor used by the Nazis is the
evidence to the specifics of that crime.
Marczak, section 2: Liquidation of the Ghetto
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=marczak&section=27
INTERVIEWER. They were applauding?
MARCZAK. Yeah. They were standing around on the roofs and applauding. So
then they brought us in to the, to the Łódż ghetto. Then we came into a new
world. The people who lived there, people who was growing up in a large
city, they, they lost all the senses of a normal human being through those
years. They adjusted them so that they thought if they will have enough to eat
for their part the war can last for another hundred years. If they will have
enough to eat, everything, all the problems, all the--there was one single
obsession with those people: to eat. Because to--there was no such a situation
that you can, that even, that anybody can help them how they smuggle in
food, you know. Because the, the ghetto was just like a large concentration
camp surrounded with barbed wires, an area I don't know for how many
square miles. At that time, you know, before the war there was living in Łódż
about three hundred thousand Jews, about fifty percent of the population was
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Jewish. And at that time when we came into the ghetto there were left about
fifty, sixty thousand. The rest of them they were all liquidated by that time.
In this segment that immediately follows the previous segment, Marczak
describes the move to the Łódż ghetto after his ghetto was “liquidated.” He
mentioned the metaphor once more, this time as interchangeable with “murdered”
to describe the killing of the majority of the Jews in the city which dwindled in
number from 300,000 to 50,000. Marczak’s mention of the metaphor along with
the word “all” stresses the extremity of the metaphor as meaning killing all the
inhabitants of the area.
Interview 3- Nathan, Bernard, and Samuel Offen - September 3, 1987
The interview with the Offen brothers, Jewish Polish Holocaust survivors from
Kraków, was conducted by Sidney Bolkosky. In the beginning of the German
occupation, the Offen family were placed with all the Jews in the area in the
Kraków ghetto, worked at the Płaszów labor camp, and then were sent to the
Mauthausen concentration camp. Eventually, the family was transported to
Auschwitz, where the father was murdered. In this section, the brothers are
describing the events before being sent to Mauthausen.
Section: Transport
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/interview.php?D=offen&section=11
BO. It, it, theres no conception about that, that kind of thing going on, happening
anywhere in the world. I, I wanted to uh, uh, finish about this--oh, this camp I
was in, which was called Judenlager. Uh, that was being closed down and I
was reunited with my father and worked in the shoe factory and then uh, uh,
the Płaszów camp was being liquidated. So we were--my father and I were
198
together. We were put on a transport, on a train and sent to Mauthausen.
Now, I later on found out--quite a few years ago--that, that my brothers Sam
and, and, and Nathan were on the same cattle car with us and I--totally
unconscious about that, that they were in the same car with me.
SO. That's right, with our father...
[talking at once]
NO. I worked, I--so I worked that time, from the ghetto, I use to go out to the uh,
Zabierzów, like I said to work on that Red Cross train where the Germans
were coming from the Russian front. Then this came to an end because they
were starting to liquidating the ghetto. Uh, because we--they were moving the
ghetto to the Płaszów camp. The Płaszów camp was on the old Jewish
cemetery. This was the camp built on the old Jewish cemetery. And uh, to
make the ghetto smaller they started to liquidate the people and uh, just
shooting anybody on the spot. Thousands of people they were killing, killing
and killing. And I was the chosen one to, to pick up the dead bodies and load
them on the wagon, horse and carriages, in trucks and everything and take
them down to Płaszów. We worked at it for two days, for two days, and there
was--they were liquidating the hospital. This was across the street. There was
a little hospital across the street from the mikvah, from the ritual baths.
Jozefinska and uh, what was that hospital? Jozefinska just across from uh,
they were throwing, there were little babies in the hospitals. They were
picking up the babies. I saw the German SS men picking up the baby. They
threw it through the window. One threw it through the window, a little baby-maybe two months old, or just born, I dont know. Just picked it up by the feet
and hit it against the curb. They were doing like this with all the little babies.
[pause] Then, after we were taking those bodies to the, to the, to the uh, ghe...
INTERVIEWER. Płaszów?
NO. To the Płaszów, yes uh, they decided to liquidate the people who worked on
that, on that Kommando who were bringing up the people from the--and they
started shooting at us. There was--we were throwing in the body in a big, big
mass grave. Thousands of people. Some of them were not dead even. And
moaning and groaning and people, and then they started shooting at us. I right
away felt--I saw what was going on. I threw myself in on the bodies. I was
covered up with blood. I pretended--I didnt scream or anything. I pretended-because then they used to go down--two of them...
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In this segment of the interview, the Offen brothers describe the harrowing
experience in 1944 of witnessing the mass killings in the Kraków ghetto and the
Kraków-Płaszów camp as the Nazis were beginning to fear losing the war.
Bernard Offen, who begins this segment, situates us with the linguistic barriers
that many experienced when trying to describe the events. He says the events
happening to the Jewish populations are indescribable and that there is no concept
like it anywhere in the world. This comes just before his first mention of the
metaphor referring to the destruction of the Płaszów ghetto. There is no
explanation of the metaphor by the survivor and no contextual cues that could
assist in deciphering its meaning. Of note as well is a hesitation and pause before
Bernard Offen mentions the metaphor for the first time: “then uh, uh, the
Płaszów…” This could indicate an uncertainty he has about using the metaphor
and whether or not it will be understood.
The second brother, Nathan, also shows hesitation and pauses after he uses
the metaphor for the first time. He describes how “…they were starting to
liquidating the ghetto…” and then shows hesitation and pauses, then adds “uh”
and explains that they were “moving” the ghetto. He continues to use the same
metaphor to describe the murder of the inhabitants as well. He first testifies that
people were liquidated and then pauses, utters “uh,” and finally defines this
metaphor as an action involving the mass shooting of the ghetto Jews. In his third
mention of the metaphor there is also a brief pause before he tells us that the
hospital was liquidated. His last mention of the metaphor confirms that it means
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killing as he tells of people being “liquidated” and describes in detail how the
killings and the aftermath.
The testimony given by the Offen brothers in this segment illustrates a few
characteristics regarding the metaphor. First, the survivors seem determined to use
the metaphor despite repeated instances of hesitation and pauses that indicate the
possibility that they are not sure whether the metaphor would be understood by
the interviewer or non-survivors. Secondly, the inevitability of the use of the
metaphor is made evident, as shown by the admittance of Bernard that it was
difficult to describe the experiences. This reaffirms the theory that using the
metaphor created by the Nazis is the only way to describe the actions. In addition,
this testimony illustrates we see the totality of the metaphor that includes both
human life killed and physical property destroyed to their entirety.
Conclusion
The metaphors selected for this chapter are both similar and unique at the
same time. They all share the characteristic of having functionality beyond the
mere descriptive. Not only do they fill a lexical void; the role they play for the
victims, both in the camps and many years later while giving testimony, is a
strong performative, constitutive force that will be overlooked unless it is
rhetorically analyzed. The metaphors are also characterized as part of the Nazi
attempt to create a language that would essentially divide between organic
metaphors for the Germans and mechanical metaphors for the Jews. These
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metaphors would create a dichotomy that was aimed to isolate the Jews and
prevent them any form of linguistic “being.”
This chapter has included analysis of both reversed Nazi-created
metaphors and original victim-created metaphors. These metaphors all symbolize
the drive to counter the death sentence that the Nazi language and Nazi speech
regulations (Sprachregelung) forced on the Jews. The aim has been to illustrate
how the metaphors functioned for the victims within the attempted creation of the
Nazi dichotomy by seeing these words used in context. In the camps, metaphors
became a rare tool for the victims in an attempt to hold on to the essence of life
and to the ability to communicate as humans. Through the interviews, it is made
evident that the survivors relied on the metaphors in order to survive, not only
during the Holocaust, but also as survivors telling their survival stories. The
insistency on using metaphors, even if it meant that an interviewer and listeners
might not comprehend, indicated that the metaphors had far more weight than
being mere ornamental linguistic tropes. So does the recurrence of these
metaphors in interviews held decades afterward.
Though consistent in many aspects, the metaphors are also individually
unique. The sample of metaphors chosen illustrates, each in a different manner,
that they played a role in the struggle to survive in the camps. Each metaphor was
either a retroping of metaphors devised by the Nazis or a newly-invented
metaphor that in some way or another made sense for the victims in a chaotic
world. These metaphors served as a coping mechanism that allowed a
communicative world that enabled survival. Making sense of the conditions and
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experiences encountered under Nazi terror was inevitable, as Klemperer admits.
There is little documentation on where the metaphors originated, nor is there
much information on those who might have constructed them. What we do have
is documentation of these metaphors, immediately after the war. The fact that
Jewish scholars began documenting “lager” language stresses the importance they
saw in this aspect of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. This research only
focused on five metaphors and a sampling of interviews, but can establish that
metaphors are indeed a key to understanding this period in history.
The “organizing” metaphor, the first metaphor analyzed in this chapter, is
a Nazi-created metaphor that functioned as part of Nazi Weltanschauung
(worldview) that was meant to associate anything German with organicity, as
opposed to the non-organic, parasitical and mechanical Jew. In a sense, the
metaphor is a sort of overarching metaphor, as it possesses traits of both a Nazi
metaphor with the elements of the Nazi dichotomy, and a victim-reversed
metaphor with new meaning. The “organize” metaphor in its different uses in
Nazi language implied the perfection that Nazi ideology associated with the
Aryan race: a perfect biological creation that meant life and perfection of the
German nation (body). As the interviews show, for the Jews, who were subjected
to the non-organic metaphors in Nazi language, this metaphor and its ironic
reversal to mean “steal” countered the idealized Nazi order of things and also was
an attempt to gain back the basic functions of life and agency. The metaphor
became the essence of the ridicule and rebellion against the role the metaphor
played in the “perfect world” of the Nazi Weltanschauung. In the interviews, there
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are several instances of confusion due to the use of the metaphor, at times
clarified by the interviewer and in other instances explained by the survivor. The
survivors, giving their testimony so many years later, seem to insist on using the
metaphor to emphasize both the countering of the Nazi plan and the coping with
an act that in their “normal” world of pre-Nazi life was forbidden according to
Jewish law.
Unlike the reversed “organize” metaphor, the second metaphor treated in
this chapter, the “Muselmann” metaphor, was likely a victim-created metaphor.
As the testimonials illustrate, this metaphor, literally meaning “Muslim man,” was
a sense-making metaphor for the victims in the extreme reality created in the
camps. While the struggle for survival was focused on countering the Nazi
regime, an internal distinction for those in the camp was also created. The victims
tried to gain a sense of life and cope with a situation of bitter conditions and
hunger that produced “dead-like” prisoners, that were neither dead nor alive, a
concept no one knew how to express with language. Curiously, the metaphor,
despite expressing exactly the mechanical life-less being the Nazis wanted all
Jews to become, provided the victims in this linguistic “gray zone” defined by
Primo Levi with a sense of clear distinctions between life and death, concepts that
became blurry in the camps. The distinction as used by prisoners put them on the
side of life. Levi, as do the survivors documented in the testimonies, included the
metaphor in order to accurately describe the reality in the camps, despite the risk
of not knowing whether the listeners would understand its meaning.
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Two other victim-created metaphors that were analyzed, the “Kanada”
and “Kapo” metaphors also functioned as both sense-making and countering of
the Nazi-exclusive organicity. The victims, who were stripped not only of their
clothing and belongings, but also of any human social order, wished to escape
from the Nazi attempt to place them in “lifeless,” mechanical reality. These two
metaphors show that attempt to bring themselves back to the sense-making world
of human communicators. In particular, the “Kanada” metaphor allowed the
victims a sense of life and wealth, a reclaiming of hope and prosperity that was
stripped from them upon entry to the camp. Steiner, who was part of the “Kanada
Kommando,” admits that handling and holding the possessions of the dead in a
barrack named after the land of riches gave the victims a sense of empowerment.
So empowered were these victim-prisoners that they were even called a
“Kommando.” The barrack was no longer seen as simply a barrack with a
number; it was a reclaimed sense of life and the power that comes from owning
things. The metaphor describing the barrack or the metaphor describing the unit
of victims assigned to it both disrupted the Nazi-attempted dichotomy that was to
reduce the language of the victims only to mechanical terms and numbers.
The “Kapo” metaphor fits a bit differently in the camp jargon. Its origin is
unknown but was likely introduced by Italian victims from the Italian word Capo
for “head,” illustrating the complexity and diversity of victim metaphor creation.
The metaphor was given to those prisoners who were appointed by the Nazis to
supervise prisoners and carry out certain leadership and administrative tasks.
While these prisoners were still doomed to the same Nazi death sentence as any
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Jewish prisoner, the use of the metaphor implied they are the “head,” a vital
human body part, vital for survival. The metaphor provided the prisoners with a
sense of control that was also organic in nature to further counter the Nazi
dichotomy. It also created a sense of unified language among victims that came
from many different countries in Europe and North Africa and spoke many
languages. Compared to other metaphors in this study, the Kapo metaphor is
unique because it can be seen as an in-between metaphor preventing the divide
between the Nazi-desired organic sphere and the mechanical Jew. While the Nazis
try to associate all that is organic, the Kapo metaphor disrupts that. In a sense this
metaphor allows the victims to maintain a sense of power and agency.
Finally, the “liquidate” metaphor is unique in a different manner. While
most of the Nazi-created metaphors referred to the Jews as parasitical, or were
infestation-based in nature, this metaphor took its meaning from economic jargon
relating to the elimination of assets, the emphasis being the totality of the action.
Like bringing a balance to zero or a complete elimination of debt, the Nazis’
actions of killing Jewish populations or of total elimination of Jewish populated
areas, were total: no one or nothing remained. Prisoners insist on using this word
to indicate a degree of the destruction of life that has no equivalent in ordinary
language: it is something so opposed to life it must be expressed in terms of
mechanical processes, similar to an economic term. This is an ironic affirmation
of life. The metaphor thus is also part of the biological-mechanical dichotomy I
have been using, although this time the mechanical nature is unhuman because of
its association with assets or materials, not because it is parasitical or animalistic.
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The metaphors for analysis in this project were selected based on their
commonalities, not differences. First, the metaphors seemed to correspond in
some way with the desired Nazi dichotomy of mechanical-biological. Second, the
metaphors served a purpose for the survivors, both during the Holocaust and after
it. Finally, the metaphors are vital for our understanding of the Holocaust. As the
testimonies used in this chapter illustrate, not knowing the meaning of the
metaphors makes the understanding of the stories difficult. The next chapter will
conclude with suggestions on using the analysis from this project for further
understanding not only the Holocaust, but also other historical periods as well.
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More
dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act
without asking questions.
-Primo Levi
(Levi 1995, 228)
On April 11th, 1987, on what was a beautiful spring morning in the
northern Italian city of Turin, the body of Primo Levi was found at the bottom of
the stairwell in his home. Did prisoner #174517, survivor of the Auschwitz death
camp, commit suicide? Levi left no suicide note, nor did he hint that he was
interested in ending his life. While the Turin police determined the cause of death
to be suicide, the questions in regard to his death are still open to debate. Some
argue that it was an accident, yet others, including members of Turin’s Jewish
community, note that in the months prior to his death, Levi expressed
disappointment in the new meanings being made of the Holocaust and a feeling of
being misunderstood. Miriam Anissimov, Levi’s biographer, documents the
European incidents of anti-Semitic Holocaust denial that was the core of his
disturbances:
…he had been deeply offended by the arguments denying the Holocaust
which had received broad coverage in the press, and had replied to the
French revisionist Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and Ernst Nolte, the
German apologist for the Nazi regime, in an article called "The Black
Hole of Auschwitz," published shortly before his death in La Stampa.”
(Anisssimov 2000, 3)
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While the mystery and debate surrounding Levi’s death continues, the theory that
he committed suicide raises questions about whether the inability of those who
had not been its victims to comprehend and produce meaning from the Holocaust
could conceivably be the cause of this man’s disappointment and possible suicide.
While we cannot answer these questions or solve the mystery of Levi’s death, we
can focus on the assumption of those who believe in the suicide theory. They
assume that Levi could not continue to live in a world that did not understand him
or began to deny the Holocaust.
For the research conducted for this project, Levi’s writings stand out. Not
only was he an academic writer about his experiences in the camps, but he also
identified the need to explain the language of the camps before telling any stories
about Holocaust experiences. He stressed the importance of situating readers in
the lexical world created in the concentration camp – which he saw as vital for the
comprehension of the events and the human conditions they revealed. As a
survivor, he spent his life dedicating himself to teaching his fellow Italians and
others the lessons learnt from the Holocaust. Accepting the theory of Levi’s death
being a suicide and stemming from his inability or unwillingness to live in a
world characterized by failure of language is what prompted much of the
motivation for this project. Language was a key to understanding both Levi’s
survival of the Holocaust and his presumed suicide. During the Holocaust,
metaphors were what enabled prisoners like Levi to make sense of a senseless
world. Having survived, on his own account, because of language, then the postwar failure of straight-forward testimony about fact, specifically the discourse
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called Holocaust denial, was undoubtedly extremely disconcerting to Levi, so
disconcerting that the misuse of language would be a threat to his life.
The Levi example about language illustrates the power of metaphor. A
better understanding of metaphor can bridge the lexical gap between both the
“universe” of the Holocaust and our world. The goal is to build a platform and
secure tools for communication research that will result in a better understanding
of history through enabling the deciphering of metaphors in a given historical or
contemporary situation in which language become a tool of the oppressed in new,
extreme conditions.
The initial assumptions about the role of rhetoric, and more specifically
metaphors, in human communication can and should be viewed differently as a
result of the analysis and conclusion we can draw from deciphering the place
metaphors had and still have in the lives of the survivors. This work has aimed to
uncover the importance of metaphors, both for the survivors and those interested
in understanding the Holocaust. We have identified ways in which
communication functioned to counter the oppressors, to maintain a sense of life,
and to testify truthfully to conditions that common language does not enable. The
fundamental importance of language for being human can only really be seen by
examining language in extreme conditions. That is what I have tried to
accomplish with this project.
In the first chapter, I began with Victor Klemperer, who quotes his
neighbor explaining how the Nazis managed to succeed for so many years “’cos
of certain expressions” (sic). Just as metaphors aided the Nazis in the
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implementation of their regime of terror and destruction so too did metaphors play
a vital role in the struggle for survival of their victims. In order to gain answers on
the functionality language had for the victims, I found it necessary to collect all
the information on the language of the Third Reich, first, to understand the
ideological, cultural linguistic setting in which both oppressors and victims
communicated, and secondly, to determine which metaphors might have
originated in Nazi language and took a form of ironic reversal and resistance
when used by the victims, and which are attributed to the prisoners themselves.
Chapters II and III, of interdisciplinary character, traced the history of
metaphor in scholarly work, between the ornamental, decorative definitions and
those that stress the functional aspects of the trope. Beginning with Aristotle’s
initial definition of metaphor in Poetics, where it was a trope that only the limited
and talented were able to create and only to be an ornamental component of
creative writing. Chapter III then focused on the differences between Aristotle’s
definition of metaphor in Poetics and the one found in On Rhetoric and the debate
scholars have had throughout the ages on the role of rhetoric and metaphor in
human communication. The theories reviewed led to conclusions on the cognitive
role metaphors can have within a culture and the thought processes and
functionalities that behind them. Through scholars like Ricoeur and Richards we
were able to establish even by beginning with Aristotle that a cultural or
psychological platform is needed for metaphors to be unconsciously used and that
metaphors not only can convey the reality, but also create a new one.
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Chapter II introduced my revisiting of the questioning of Arendt’s theory
about the role language had in enabling Adolph Eichmann, the implementer of the
“Final Solution,” a “Nazi technician” in the words of Arendt. This inquiry raised
many questions on the link between language, thought, and culture and the role
metaphors play in those interactions. While my previous research focused on
countering Arendt’s conclusions about how language provided a safeguard for
Nazis like Eichmann, shielding them from the reality of their crimes, the present
work has aimed to prove that those curious about the Holocaust could better
understand that period in history if the metaphors and their value are fully
deciphered. Arendt’s theory is to dependent on an external, decorative conception
of metaphor to discover the roles it plays in the life not only of persecutors but of
persecuted
The literature reviewed in Chapter III focused on three main areas: firstly,
the full range of rhetorical theories of metaphor was examined in order to situate
the Holocaust metaphors in the ongoing scholarly debate on the character of
metaphors and whether, although they do not function as “ornamental,” instead
produce new meaning and in being performative have actual effects on the
prisoner’s ability to live life, from which the Nazi language excludes them.
Secondly, a review of scholarly work focused on the Nazi vernacular and its
origins and functionality, concluding with a summary of the research that exists
on language used by the victims. The claim reached before arriving at the data
analysis is that metaphors, at least in this historical context, should not be seen as
preventing thought – what Arendt claimed they enabled indispensable Nazis like
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Eichmann – nor like “ornamental” words that just aim to decorate a description of
events. Metaphors, as this chapter concluded with interactionist theories, are in
fact functional tools we can use in exploring, accepting and coping with new ideas
and new realities, much like the victims in fact did. The chapter allows us to reach
the conclusion that one cannot appreciate the value of metaphorical expressions
on camp language if one only has a certain weak conception of metaphors. The
extensive review emphasized that revealing the importance of metaphors in
extreme situations is only possible with the theories that are not ornamental in
nature, but rather vital components in the survival of victims.
In Chapter IV I reviewed the scholarly work that would be the basis for
the inquiry sought by the analysis of the testimonies in this project. These works
provided the necessary cultural and historical information, along with the theories
that linked language and culture, to enable me to position the Nazi ideology and
language within the pre-Nazi culture. The texts included works ranging from
history, philosophy, linguistics, and rhetoric. The chapter details the importance
metaphors thus have in the Nazi goal to exclude and eliminate the Jewish people
from and German aspect of life. While navigating the theories of metaphor in the
various disciplines was vital for this project, so was the finding of texts dedicated
to language in the Holocaust. Chapter IV aimed to create the database for
research focused on language in the Holocaust. The goal was to situate the
existing rhetorical inquiry on metaphors and their importance in human
communication in situations in which there is a lexical void with what is known in
Holocaust studies about metaphors as well as to situate my discourse in a large
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literature. The chapter is a literature review, a “catalogue raisonné,” of known
works on language during this period in history. It is preparatory in that the next
chapter includes interpretations of the source material. The goal was to establish
the basis for arguing for the significance metaphors had in the survival of the
victims of Nazi terror. The chapter returns to the inquiry about Nazi language
inspired by Arendt and other scholars who were intrigued by the role metaphors
had in implementation of Nazi horrors. Later in the chapter, a review is given of
what is known about the role language had in the lives of victims.
The importance of understanding the cultural setting in which victims
created and used metaphors is stressed in the chapter as it illustrates the
importance Nazi saw in establishing Nazi language and speech control laws
(Sprachregelung) in order to achieve their “Final Solution.” The secondary
sources compiled in this chapter represent the spectrum of inquiry in regards to
language during the Holocaust, as a tool used by both the Nazis and the victims in
this period of history. The chapter began with Perry’s account of the distinctions
the Nazis created by the infestation metaphors. These, as the data chapter will
show are the basis for the understanding of the Nazi worldview and eventually
how the Jews countered that worldview. By following Arendt’s conclusions on
the role languages had on Nazis like Eichmann, the aim was to challenge her on
the vitality metaphors can have for the survival of the victims, this through the
illustration through her case study on the link between metaphor and thought.
The cultural and social elements that were the basis for the German peoples’
acceptance on the Nazi metaphors are also stressed in this chapter through the
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works of Doerr, Michael and, Burke to illustrate not only where the Nazi
metaphors originated but how they functioned linguistically and where they
positioned the non-Aryan in the semantic field. They went deeper than Nazi
ideology.
Finally, the chapter offered a review of both secondary and primary
sources that focused on victim-create and victim-used metaphors during the
Holocaust. The performative character of the metaphor used was established
through the theory of speech-act, as the victims not only described reality, but
attempted to change it, as the data chapter proves. The secondary sources, by
Attia, Klemperer, Kershaw, and Friedlander introduce the themes and metaphors
that dominated the linguistic realm of the victims and that will be further analyzed
in the testimonies. The primary sources that were presented also confirm that the
metaphors were vital in some sense to the survival of the victims.
In the data driven Chapter V, through the positioning of the metaphors
between the Nazi proposed dichotomy of “life” vs “death,” or Aryan vs Jew, I
concluded that only the performative, interactive interpretation of metaphor,
whether ironized or not, can enable us to understand the events as the survivors
really experienced them. In most Holocaust testimonies, survivors did not explain
the metaphors they used. Levi’s inclusion of explaining the role language had in
camp life is a rare occurrence in Holocaust testimonies and memoirs. The
conclusion was that the cultural reality of the Holocaust was for the victims what
grounded their metaphorical thought.
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In Chapter V, the dichotomy the Nazis wished to create between Germans
and Jews through language use was detailed. According to Boaz Neumann, the
Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews was not merely physical. It had a psychological
and linguistic component as well, resulting in a “worldview” (Weltanschauung)
that created a dichotomy between the Aryan German and the Jew” (Neumann
2002, 366). By excluding the Jews from anything that was “organic,” whether
individual, family, or nation, and assigning them instead a “mechanical”
existence, the Nazis aimed to “break” the spirit of those still among the living.
While the Nazis referred to the Jews using parasitical and mechanical
metaphors, one would assume that those excluded from the “language of the
living” would slowly die without being able to fulfill the basic human need to
communicate. But, this did not always happen. The Nazi killing machine was
forceful and continued the mass murders, but in the ghettos and camps, resistance
through metaphoric language took shape. The perseverance of life by the victims
was achieved through the use of metaphor, as language is the house of being, the
opposite of the mechanical prisoner who was only a number in the eye of the
Nazis. Metaphors like “Kanada” and “Organize” showed us that despite being
deemed “mechanical,” the victims showed resistance to death through preserving
their “being” and life, either by reversing Nazi-created metaphors or creating new
ones. The metaphors functioned as life-building for victims who were in extreme
new circumstances that existing language could not explain. Despite being from
different countries and speaking many languages, the victims’ use of metaphors
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becomes constitutive in its nature, as it allows a creation of a common world with
shared meaning.
The preserving of life through metaphor and the “world” of meaning that
is created to makes the victims “organic” beings again strengthens the opposition
I suggested to metaphor as merely expressive, ornamental, or colorful. In her
1926 essay “On Being Ill,” Virginia Woolf makes a claim that sheds light on the
position held by many that metaphor is ornamental. Woolf claims that unlike
concepts like love or battle, illness is a form of non-being in which “language at
once runs dry” (Woolf 2002, 7). Woolf adds that for a sick person to adequately
communicate their condition, they “would need the courage of a lion tamer”
(Woolf 2002, 5). Woolf’s describes how the lack of language that the ill have may
cause them to seek solace as they will be unable to be understood by the world
around them. If they do make an attempt to communicate, she concludes, they
will turn to Shakespeare, or “perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to
look up—to look, for example, at the sky” (Woolf 2002, 5). The conclusion is that
metaphors, either in the literary works of writers such as Shakespeare, or the sky
around us, will supply words to express the condition, thus enabling expression.
The metaphors studied in Chapter V, whether Nazi-created or victimcreated, all supplied the victims with tools for coping, in conditions as described
by Woolf as being in a state of illness and pain that cannot be described by words.
For Woolf, in illness, the ability to in fact come up with the linguistic devices that
enable “life,” or in other words, the ability to communicate, takes the courage of a
lion. The victims, in conditions far worse than illness can, if seen through this
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lens, be considered extremely courageous, as they were not only faced with the
linguistic void, but also under one of the worst kinds of the rule of terror known to
humanity.
Each metaphor analyzed revealed how the victims made sense in world
that was called by many “another planet.” The ironic reversal of the organizing
metaphor allowed the victims to gain a sense of life that the Nazi language
excluded them from. Its use also countered and ridiculed the “order” that the
Nazis so meticulously tried to associate only with their race. The Muselemann
metaphor, a victim-created metaphor allowed the victims to create a sense of
order within their people, a hierarchy of social order that was stolen from them.
While the Nazis wished to turn all the Jews into mechanical “no-bodies” by
tattooing a number and stripping them of any organic characteristic, this metaphor
proved that the victims still made order in a chaotic world- some were dead men
walking without any will to live, while others were still fighting for life.
Similarly, the victim-created metaphor “Kapo,” also allowed organicity in the
camp order. The Kapo (head), would thus describe a prisoner through an organic
metaphor, exclusive to the German nation. The “Kanada” metaphor allowed the
victims to regain hope through the naming of the barracks containing the
belongings of those murdered with the name of the country they believed to be the
richest, most promising in the world. The final metaphor reviewed in this chapter,
the “liquidate” metaphor was unique in that it was a Nazi-created metaphor that
was used by the victims and not ironically revered in its meaning. The use of the
metaphor in the survivor’s testimonies indicates the importance the metaphor has
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in preserving the meaning of totality that the metaphor had the fact that no other
words exist to describe the actions.
One of the striking discoveries this project has revealed is that all the
testimonies analyzed stress the fact that survivors all try to attain organicity in
some way or the other through their use of metaphor. Metaphors used thus
function as speech-acts and are performative in nature because they allow the
countering of the Nazi ideology, a vital tool in an environment in which very few
options of resistance are possible for the victims.
Conditions of Survival and Suggestions for Further Research
Only 54 percent of the world’s population have ever heard of the
Holocaust. This, according to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Anti-Defamation
League. This is a striking figure, but even more disturbing is the finding that a
third of those who heard about it claim it is either a myth of largely exaggerated.
(ADL). Almost twenty years ago, information about Holocaust denial might have
been what prompted Primo Levi to jump to his death. We will probably never
know what happened that spring morning in Levi’s home in Turin or why
Holocaust denial is growing worldwide. This project did not aim to solve the
mystery of Levi’s death or to find a cure for the hate that produced the atrocities
of the Holocaust. It did however aim to create a framework of understanding, a
metaphoric analysis model for understanding how language works in severe
human conditions in which there is a lexical void.
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As this projects proved, metaphors were a vital tool for the survival of the
victims of Nazi terror. Through emphasizing the importance metaphors had in the
Nazi organic-mechanical dichotomy, it was illustrated how victims aimed to
counter this linguistic “death sentence” by either reversing the metaphors,
creating new ones that were organic in nature, or using a metaphor that
emphasized the Nazi crime by making their word mechanical (“liquidate”). The
metaphors became the basis for the language of the camps or Lagersprache, in
essence an unofficial vehicular language that united the victims that came from all
over Europe and North Africa. Metaphors also proved to be an important part of
the lives of survivors in the years post WWII. Scholarly work, along with Levi’s
memoir and Steiner’s account made it clear that understanding the world they
encountered in the Holocaust relied on understanding this “lager” language.
While this project was limited in number of testimonies and metaphors, those too
illustrated the importance survivors placed in the metaphors to describe their
experiences, at times at the risk of being misunderstood by their interviewers. The
analysis of the testimonies points to a consistency in the vitality metaphors have
in the survivors’ attempt to give precise testimony to the experiences of the
Holocaust. The events of that horrific period are still the source of many studies in
various academic fields as we try to understand and answer questions like how it
happened or how humans managed to survive Nazi terror.
Metaphors, as shown in Chapter III have been a trope that has been
defined differently throughout history with scholars debating on whether
metaphors can function as more than mere decorative elements of human
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communication. The metaphors detailed in this project bring to light how, in
circumstances of limited linguistic means, the victims used them in the camps to
retain or gain agency through the performative use of language. Although these
circumstances are unique to human history in their extremity and scope, they are
not completely isolated events in which humans are placed in extreme conditions,
so extreme that language cannot describe. Language, as Celan and Levi claimed
in Chapter I, was the only tool in which victims could fight back:
Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses:
language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against
loss. (Celan 1990, 34)
Holocaust survivors are often asked the burning question, “How did you
survive?” and while they struggle to provide an answer that would provide the
technical answer that fits to our account of history, they fail to stress the place
metaphors had in the creation of the moral universe that allowed their survival.
Unfortunately, the Holocaust is not the last attempted genocide in recent
history. While the characteristics of the Nazi cruelty are unique to that event,
mankind has devised other techniques of cruelty that resulted in other genocides.
A regime of terror intended to eliminate groups of people creates situations in
which lexical voids are created. It involves violence in such extreme measures
that speakers of a language might turn to metaphor in order to not only describe
the new reality, but also to gain agency against their oppressors.
The end of the twentieth century, for example, saw two such events that
the shocked the world as stories from them began to spread. Decades after the
Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the Bosnian genocide between
221
1992-5 shocked the world, not only because of the violence and large numbers of
dead, but because they were incomprehensible. We asked how could these
genocides happen and how they are to be described? The genocides, although
different in the particulars, resulted in these victim groups of Jews, Tutsis, and the
Bosnian Muslims being in unique situations in which they found themselves in
semantic lacunas while the wars were happening and when aiming to describe the
horrors to the world. The horrors of the Rwandan genocide have been a focus of
research for scholars who ask many of the same questions raised in regards to the
Holocaust in this project. Some of the answers direct us to the importance of
language, specifically metaphors. Such a framework outlined in this project could
thus aid in the interpretation of those, as well as other events as well.
Anthropologist Christopher C. Taylor, for example, claims that in order to
understand how the killings and torture happened in the Rwandan genocide one
needs to rely on the unconscious cultural images and metaphors of the Rwandan
cultural landscape that “shaped how killing and torture are carried out” (Taylor
2002, 138). Taylor’s work draws not on testimony of the survivors, however, but
rather on cultural and colonial history underpinnings to find that in the killings in
Rwanda, the horrors had a pattern that drew on an established “common language
of symbols and cultural myths” that not only allowed the atrocities but also
determined how they were done. Similarly to the Nazi dichotomous organicmechanical order, Taylor finds that metaphors of flow and obstruction became the
dichotomy between life and death between Tutsis and Hutus. This is why so many
rivers were found obstructed with bodies by the end of the genocide. Like the
222
organicity the Nazis strived to be exclusive for the German people, Taylor claims
that “in a sense, the rivers became Rwandan society's organ for excreting the
hated Tutsi” (Taylor 2002, 143). But research such as Taylor’s, like Perry’s
infestation metaphor, only examines the setting in which the genocide took place;
it does not look at metaphor as a means of survival or how the Tutsi victims
treated the flow/obstruction dichotomy in order to cope, survive, or even to
counter their Hutu oppressors. Testimonies from the survivors of the genocides of
Rwanda and Bosnia can be combed and analyzed in order to find how metaphors
enabled their survival and what role they played in their resistance to their
oppressors. The work in this dissertation may have wider significance.
Seventy years ago Victor Klemperer, Primo Levi, Gretta Steinier, Sam
Seltzer, Michael Opas, Fred Ferber, Bella Camhi, along with many others
including my grandparents, Haim and Miriam Ben-Zvi, were fighting for their
lives in the last year of the Nazi-led war that sought to eliminate them and all the
Jews from the face of this earth. It was what seemed to be a doomed struggle. So
many already died and the world seemed to stand in silence to the systematic
murder of the Jewish people. Despite this fate, there were those who never
stopped to retain a sense of humanity, keep the faith in life and the living and
retain what distinguished them from the animal, language. The Nazi plan to create
a world and language that excluded the Jewish victims from the world of the
living and language failed. Metaphors, as this project illustrates, became the secret
weapon that prevented those survivors from all becoming the Musselmen, lifeless
223
and mechanical, like the Nazis aimed. This secret weapon also holds the key to
our better understanding the means in which the victims survived.
224
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