“Der Draht ist gut, hält uns ab vom dummen Leben“. Ironisierung als kommunikativer Versuch des Umgangs mit Entwertungs- und Gewalterfahrungen durch jüdische Textproduzenten im Getto Litzmannstadt

Immediately after the National Socialist seizure of power, a comprehen-sive social, legal and ultimately existential exclusion of Jewish people began. The disturbing perception of the break-up of previous understandings of the world was intensified against the background of the acts of annihilation by the National Socialists. Countering this in a communicative form became an often agonizing challenge for Jewish speakers, but also a necessary need. This paper will focus on a communicative phenomenon that has been little researched in linguistics so far: The use of irony to counter experiences of devaluation and violence. By eval-uating ironic utterances in textual communications of the Litzmannstadt ghetto, the criticism of elements of National Socialist ideology will be tentatively made understandable, as well as the experiences of violence within the ghetto.