From: [email protected]

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism

Subject: "Ausrottung" = "Auswanderung"?

Date: 21 Oct 1996 23:39:55 GMT

Organization: University of New England, NSW, Australia

A while ago I posted the following:

Attention has been focussed on the word "Ausrottung" as used by leaders, policy and decision makers of Nazi Germany, particularly when used in the expression "Ausrottung des juedischen Volkes" or similar contexts. Several "creative" suggestions have been proposed as to the most faithful rendition of these expressions and the intentions they communicate.

To those who have any doubts, let me reproduce again the quotation from page 182 of Vol I of Langenscheidt's Encyclopaedic Dictionary (1974): 

"ausrotten 2.(Volk, Rasse, etc.) exterminate, wipe out, extirpate; diese Krankheit rottete die ganze Bevoelkerung aus -- this disease wiped out the entire population; die Urbevölkerung des Landes wurde ausgerottet -- the native population of the country was exterminated."

Despite such authoritative quotations, the deniers who participated in the discussion attempted to insist that "ausrotten" as used, for example, by Himmler in his speech at Posen, was really meaning something else, namely the geographical removal of Jews from Germany.

This Website comments: Not Good Enough. Have a look at 1930, 1940, and 1950 dictionaries for the meaning of Ausrottung. So far as we know the Third Reich ended some years before 1974 and the dictionary cited above, from which our Nizkor correspondent has anyway cited only the secondary meaning (2), not the primary one.