Levi's Use Of German Language Essay

Jewish culture has several languages. There are those, like Hebrew and Aramaic, that are typically used in more scholarly settings, though recently Hebrew has had its revival and can be widely spoken and used by Jewish people everywhere, particularly in Israel. There is Yiddish, the language typically spoken in the home, with a common ancestor to the German language. Other regional languages exist within the Jewish community, such as Ladino or Judeo Arabic, but Jewish people also often learn the language of the country they live within, or else learn other languages of the world over time under special circumstances. Such languages are not inherently tied to Jewish culture, yet Jewish people will still speak, write, and communicate in these
Often his foreign words are part of the story or dialogue, as when the German officer stops Levi from using an icicle for water: “’Warum?’ I asked in my poor German. ‘Hier ist kein warum’ (there is no why here), he replied, shoving me back inside” (Levi, 25). This was one point at which Levi used the German language himself, and the same language inhibited his actions. Although it is the German officer who mocks Levi, and the Nazi’s who have imprisoned him, the language used by these oppressors is also a tool of oppression, forever tying the language to the oppressors for Levi. There are also instances of Levi using German and other languages more sporadically, or at least not in dialogue, closer to the way that Hoffmann scatters foreign language into his own memoir:
The Carbide Tower, which rises in the middle of Buna and whose top is rarely visible in the fog, was built by us. Its bricks were called Zeigel, briques, tegula, cegli, kamenny, mattoni, téglak, and they were cemented by hate, hate and discord, like the Tower of Babel; and that is what we call it, Babelturm, Bobelturm; and we hate it as our masters’ insane dream of grandeur, their contempt for God and men, for us men. (Levi,