The Language of Violence

Some Examples

Catastrophe: "a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin;" "a violent or sudden change in a feature of the earth."1

"Catastrophes are catastrophes because they most often signal an end."2

Hurban: a Hebrew word used to describe the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E.; the destruction was viewed as a corrective moment in the ongoing relationship between God and his people, Israel, rather than its end. 3

Holocaust: A Biblically-based word meaning "burnt whole" or a "burnt offering" or sacrifice made to God. Before the advent of the Third Reich in Germany and the destruction of European Jewry, it meant a tragedy with fire. After 1945, "Holocaust" was gradually applied to the Jewish losses, and it may have been brought into popular culture by Elie Wiesel. Destruction of the Roma and Sinti peoples (Gypsies) is also included as "Holocaust," because the basis of destruction in both cases was race and the intent was total eradication of the group.

"That Which Happened" to humankind and language. Paul Celan's description of the Holocaust.4

Shoah: "desolation" or "time of desolation," "great darkness," suggesting that demonic events can have only negative meaning.

Porrajmos: Roma word for "fearful catastrophe," relating to the destruction of the Gypsies.

Anti-Semitism: A word invented by German writer Wilhelm Marr in the year 1879 to stress the difference between religiously based anti-Judaism with new race theories. Anti-Semitism is not merely emotional, but activist. It aims to (a) render Jews harmless by some means or other, thus negating the enormous power they had "illegitimately gained or (b) to accomplish other political goals not directly bearing on the well-being of Jews." 5

Genocide: The United Nations Convention, 9 December, 1948, Article II: means any of the following acts with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group. (e) Forcibly transferring children of this group to another group.

1 Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA, Merriman, 1963) p.131

2 Alan Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (Syracuse , NY, Syracuse University Press, 1996), p.21.

3 Ibid.

4 John Felstiner, Paul Celan:: Poet, Survivor, Jew. (New Haven, CT., Yale University Press, 1995), p. xvi.

5 Richard S. Levy (ed.). Antisemitism in the Modern World (Lexington, MA, D.C. Health & Co., 1991) p.5.

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Last modified on October 22, 2009