Description
On Friday 1st March 1946 a British Military tribunal opened in Hamburg, the defendants being Bruno Tesch, Joachim Drosihn, and Karl Weinbacher, all employees of the company Tesch & Stabenow, which held a monopoly for the distribution of Zyklon B east of the Elbe. Zyklon B was the method of mass murder employed in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and at some concentration camp sites.At the trial, British legal military personnel were required to speak about the mechanics of genocide, using English. German defendants and witnesses at the trial had worked with Zyklon B for many years and made use of a range of terms. In order to discuss and in English the mass murder of Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution using gas, English speakers used code-switching (incorporating German terms like Blausäuregas, “hydrogen cyanide gas”, into English), calquing (translating German words part-by-part, such as “delousing” for Entlausung), and coining expressions like “the gassing side”. By tracking the use of code-switching, calques, and coinages through the trial transcript, this paper will explore how the language used in 1946 to describe the mechanics of genocide differed from accepted use today, and how language use reflects political, legal, and emotional responses to the Holocaust in the immediate post-war period.
| Period | 24 Oct 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | After genocide and mass violence, what comes next? |
| Event type | Workshop |
| Location | Huddersfield, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |