8 - “The whole language was a scream”: The German Language during the Seizure of the Jews

Summary

I. Introduction

In 1966, David Faber Entered the Hilton Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, to meet with a representative of the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany. “‘Herr David Faber?’” the man asked. After considerable coaxing, Faber had agreed to meet with West German officials to answer questions about his brother's murder by Gestapo Hauptsturmführer Gerhard Grunow in Tarnów, Poland in 1943. Faber reflected on the moment when the agent had greeted him: “The heavy German accent took me back to the camps and the horror. My body felt chilled, and for a moment I couldn't speak.” Hearing the German voice immobilized Faber, transporting him to the five years of his life when he had suffered inconceivable persecution. As he explained, “I felt again the pain … and sobs shook my body.” Faber's testimony provides insight into how Holocaust victims heard and remembered the German language. Seared into his sensorium were the linguistic sounds that he associated with his untold suffering. In this essay I explore the sounds of the German language during the seizures of Jews in Eastern Europe. Drawing upon victims’ descriptions of Holocaust sonic environments as chronicled in memoirs and recorded interviews I investigate how Germans weaponized their language and voices and how the victims apperceived and recalled the perpetrators’ vocalizations.

At every stage in the Holocaust as it extended through Europe, Germans strategically deployed their language to dominate both soundscapes and victims. Relying upon Jews or local collaborators to translate orders, Germans spoke almost exclusively in their native tongue. Survivors stressed that the Germans habitually shouted. As Polish Jew Felicia Schloss remarked, “I thought the German language was so horrible because the whole language was a scream.” Such testimony underscored that Germans transformed their language into a sonic weapon that they wielded to petrify victims so that they would perish in presumably quiet fashion. The German language was a potent tool in the seizures of Jews. For the persecuted, the linguistic sounds echoed as unbridled savagery. If the words were understood, their content traumatized those listening. But even if their meanings were not comprehended, their mere sounds rang violently in the victims’ ears.

These acoustic assaults were compounded by other frightful noises that pervaded detention soundscapes: gunshots, barking dogs, derisive laughter, and victims’ wailings. The audial onslaught left many victims perceptually paralyzed.