During the Second World War, the SS main office under the direction of
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler published a series of brochures on the National Socialist worldview directed towards the education of German soldiers. In one of these brochures, there is a quote regarding the Jews that contained the word
'Ausmerzung' which was said to mean "eradication":
German: Für Deutschland gibt nur ein Ziel: Kampf dem Bolschewismus und Kampf den Plutokratien.
Ausmerzung des Juden, des Erzfeindes jedes Volkstums! Und fur dad neue Europa, das unter Fuhrung Deutschlands auf der Grundlage einer volkischen Ordung nach dem Endsieg erstehen wird, kann es nur eine Losung geben:
Befreiung Europas von der Herrschaft des Juden!
English: For Germany there is only one goal: fight against Bolshevism and fight against plutocracies. Weed out the Jew, the arch enemy of every nation! And for the new Europe, which will arise under the leadership of Germany on the basis of a popular order after the final victory, there can only be one solution:
Liberation of Europe from the rule of the Jews!
SS Handblätter für die weltanschauliche Erziehung der Truppe – Thema 18/ Siehe Broschüre Nr. 12, 'Der Jude zerstört jede volkishe Lebensordnung' (Herausgeber: Der Reichsführer-SS, SS - Hauptamt.). // SS leaflets for the ideological education of the troops - topic 18 / see brochure no. 12, 'The Jew destroys every popular way of life' (Publisher: Der Reichsführer-SS, SS - Main Office).
You can read these booklets online, for this exact page, see: https://archive.org/details/SSHandblaet ... 7/mode/2up
The word
'Ausmerzung' or
'Ausmerzen' defined by itself using an online translator, or just looking it up is said to mean "eradication". However, this full quote put through google translate actually has the word say to "weed out".
This quote, originally translated by someone in a group chat I observed, was a German concerned over the use of the word. To him he only knew that it meant "eradication" and had no idea that words such as this have multiple meanings. In fact, I myself hadn't seen this word explained or used really anywhere. It only shows up on this forum a few times, it isn't nearly as common. However it deserves a debunking as well.
I did some online searching and found a German-English dictionary from 1899, when Adolf Hitler would've been 10 years old. This is how
Ausmerzung" was defined:
Source: https://archive.org/details/muretsandersenzy21mureuoft/page/208/mode/2upAs we can see, this word doesn't mean "eradicate" whatsoever. The only thing that comes close is "eliminate" and it is just one among a number of words used to define what it means.
It could be asserted that the National Socialists
did use the word to mean "eradicate", that we cannot know they meant it in a rather benign way in comparison. But you could only
prove it was used in a malignant fashion if you believed and could prove that the Germans wanted and did carry out a plan to kill all the Jews of Europe. Yet again showing us how debating over words is pointless, when it is only really the historical events themselves that can help us determine the context of how these words were used. Without well-founded historical context, these arguments about words really tells us nothing, and proves nothing.
