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Ausrotten means "to kill"
1. Deniers claim that the German verb "ausrotten", used in many Nazi documents, including the Himmler Posen speech about the Final Solution, does not mean "to kill", but rather has a more benign meaning such as "wipe out" or "eradicate", that does not necessarily mean to actually physically kill, but rather to eliminate, such as to wipe out a superstition.
2. These quick facts show that not only do deniers misrepresent the facts, but even well-known denier Ernst Zündel disagrees with them.
- "Ausrotten" has two meanings in German, depending on whether it refers to a living thing or an abstract concept, such as an idea. In both cases, it means to eradicate or completely eliminate the thing to which it refers. Obviously, when one eradicates an idea or a superstition, it goes away, but nothing is physically killed. However, when one eradicates a person or a group of persons, or plants, or insects, the result is that they are dead.
Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Herausgegeben von Ulrich Goebel und Oskar Reichmann. Begründet von Robert R. Anderson, Ulrich Goebel, Oskar Reichmann. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1994. Band 2. ISBN 3-11-014035-7
Put more simply, if "ausrotten" refers to a an abstract thing (an idea, a belief, a superstition), it means to eradicate it. If it refers to a living thing (a person, group of persons, plant, insect), it means to kill it.
- This is complicated somewhat when one needs to translate the word for non-German speakers. Whereas the meaning of the word is understood by German speakers depending on the context, translation into English requires that different words are used depending on the context.
An example of this is the different way in which the English verb "drive" is translated into German depending on the context. "To drive a nail [into a piece of wood]" is translated as "einen Nagel einschlagen" whereas "to drive a car" is translated as "ein Auto fahren". The same verb "drive" results in two different German verbs when translated. No English speaker would think that "to drive a nail" means to drive it down the road, nor would they think that "to drive a car" means to drive it into a piece of wood. The context makes it clear.
"Ausrotten" is an example of a German verb that requires two different English verbs when translated, depending on the context. "Einen Aberglaube ausrotten" [wipe out a superstition] and "das jüdische Volk ausrotten" [exterminate the Jewish people] require two different English verbs. No German speaker would think that "einen Aberglaube ausrotten" means "to kill it", nor would they think that "das jüdische Volk ausrotten" means to wipe out a concept. The context makes it clear.
- What deniers try to do to confuse things is to apply the abstract translation of "ausrotten" (wipe out) to the living thing context (exterminate). As has been shown, that is clearly ridiculous and in fact, dishonest.
- Perhaps most embarrassing for deniers is that their chicanery is contradicted by none other than long-time German denier Ernst Zündel. As his website shows:
4. The Revisionist claim: Official state policy towards the Jews in the Third Reich was emigration, not extermination.
http://www.zundelsite.org/english/101/english1014.html
4. Behauptung der Revisionisten: Die offizielle Politik des Dritten Reiches gegenüber den Juden war Emigration, nicht Ausrottung.
3. It is clear that the denier claim that "ausrotten" has a benign meaning in respect of the extermination of the Jews is rubbish.