Begriffe
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Online Publication (86)
- Journal Article (59)
- Part of a Book (7)
Keywords
- Begriffe (21)
- Forschungsfelder (11)
- Methoden (5)
- Grundlagen (3)
- Periodisierung (1)
- Prozesse (1)
This article explores the connection between genocide, language and language consciousness by tracing the strange biography of one Yiddish neologism: shabreven. During the Holocaust, the word came to mean both ›looting‹ and ›taking ownerless property‹. It stoked moral and etymological debate among Yiddish speakers in the Warsaw ghetto, while also occupying a prominent position in postwar Polish and Zionist discourses. The term shifted between different semantic, ethical and cultural fields, navigating a delicate balance between various meanings and norms. The discussions around this term help to shed light on key questions: What were the motivations for the study of Holocaust Yiddish neologisms? How did this early postwar Yiddish philological discourse differ from its parallel in German? Shabreven became both a symbol of the genocidal collapse of language and a tool for regaining victim agency in speech.