„Własne nazwy” getta warszawskiego jako językowa reakcja na okupacyjną rzeczywistość

Abstract

The information about the creation of the ghetto in Warsaw was announced on 12 October 1940, and the final closure took place just over a month later. Ultimately, more than 400,000 people were imprisoned within the ghetto walls. The need to organise life in a reality that was completely different from that of the pre-war time led many Warsaw Jews to reflect on the essence of the ghetto and try to compare this phenomenon to other, often better, though usually only theoretically familiar places and spaces. Hence the large number of synonymous, entirely unofficial terms for the ghetto, referring to its various features. The most common terms include: labyrinth, trap, closed city, prison or camp, although apart from the most popular ones, both period sources and postwar memoirs contain many unobvious metaphors for the Warsaw Ghetto, its peculiar new “own names”, created from scratch, whether as a result of a deeper reflection or simply stemming from the need of the moment, as a reaction to what was happening around. A handful of the most interesting, least known and at the same time very telling names will be presented, together with the context of their creation.