Khurbn

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The Hebrew word khurbn ({{langx|he|חורבן}}) means a "cataclysmic, utter destruction",{{sfn|Spinner|2012|p=160}} and is used in Yiddish to describe several major catastrophes of the Jewish people, starting with the destruction of the first and the second temples,{{Cite book|url=https://academic.oup.com/liverpool-scholarship-online/book/37624/chapter-abstract/331919589?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false|title=Midrash Unbound: Transformations and Innovations|first1=Jacob|last1=Elbaum|first2=Chava|last2=Turniansky|chapter=The Destruction of the Temple: A Yiddish Booklet for the Ninth of av |editor-first1=Michael A.|editor-last1=Fishbane|editor-first2=Joanna|editor-last2=Weinberg|date=December 31, 2013|publisher=Liverpool University Press|pages=0|doi=10.3828/liverpool/9781904113713.003.0020 |isbn=978-1-904113-71-3 |via=Silverchair}} pogroms in Russia during the First World War, and the Holocaust.{{Cite web|url=https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/vault/pogrom-literature-and-collective-memory|title=Pogrom Literature and Collective Memory | Yiddish Book Center|website=www.yiddishbookcenter.org}}

Writer and social activist S. An-sky's, who was a relief worker during the First World War, wrote a book titled Khurbn Galitsiye ({{langx|he|חורבן גאליציע}}, The Destruction of Galicia).{{sfn|Spinner|2012|p=160}}{{sfn|Zavadivker|2013|pp=94–95}}

After World War II, the word khurbn is often used as a synonym to the Holocaust,{{cite journal |last1=Rothenberg |first1=Jerome |title=Khurbn and Holocaust: Poetry After Aushwitz |journal=Dialectical Anthropology |date=1999 |volume=24 |issue=3/4 |pages=279–291 |doi=10.1023/A:1007008429092 |jstor=29790609 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29790609 |issn=0304-4092|url-access=subscription }}{{cite book |last1=Gellman |first1=Uriel |last2=Heilman |first2=Samuel |last3=Rosman |first3=Moshe |last4=Sagiv |first4=Gadi |last5=Wodziński |first5=Marcin |last6=Biale |first6=David |last7=Assaf |first7=David |last8=Brown |first8=Benjamin |title=Hasidism: A New History |date=4 December 2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-8919-8 |pages=652–672 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400889198-032/html?lang=en |language=en |chapter=Khurbn: Hasidism and the Holocaust |doi=10.1515/9781400889198-032 |quote=the Holocaust, or what the Hasidim (together with other ultra-Orthodox Jews) call khurbn (Yiddish for destruction).}} (also khurbn eyrope ({{lang|yi|חורבן אײראָפּע}})), and is sometimes used in the titles of memorial books (yizkor books) about the destroyed shtetls, like Khurbn Proskurov,{{Cite book|url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book.61466|title=Project MUSE - Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939|date=2018 |doi=10.1353/book.61466 |isbn=978-0-8143-4451-4 }} Rakhel Feygenberg's A pinkes fun a toyter shtot (khurbn dubove) (Chronicle of a Dead City: The Destruction of Dubove), Max Kaufmann's early (1947) history of the genocide in Latvia, Khurbn Letland,Kaufmann, Max, Die Vernichtung des Judens Lettlands (The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia), Munich, 1947, English translation by Laimdota Mazzarins available on-line as [http://www.jewsoflatvia.com/ Churbn Lettland -- The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110207131230/http://jewsoflatvia.com/ |date=2011-02-07 }} or Yehoshue Perle's Khurbn Varshe.{{cite journal |doi=10.1215/0094033X-2010-028 |title=The Oyneg Shabes Archive and the Cold War: The Case of Yehoshue Perle's Khurbn Varshe |date=2011 |last1=Rose |first1=Sven-Erik |journal=New German Critique |volume=38 |pages=181–215 }}{{cite web |url=https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/article/1125 |title=Perle, Yoshue

|first=Nathan |last=Cohen |work=The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe }} Raul Hilberg's most important work was titled The Destruction of the European Jews.Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (3rd edition) Yale University Press, New Haven, CT 2003. {{ISBN|0-300-09557-0}}

The Holocaust studies are sometimes called khurbn-forshung (lit. "destruction research").{{cite journal |last1=Fisher |first1=Gaëlle |title=Jockusch, Laura (ed.): Khurbn-Forshung. Documents on Early Holocaust Research in Postwar Poland (Archive of Jewish History and Culture, Vol. 6), 853 pp., Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2022 |journal=Neue Politische Literatur |date=1 November 2023 |volume=68 |issue=3 |pages=346–348 |doi=10.1007/s42520-023-00525-3 |language=en|doi-access=free }}{{Cite book|url=https://academic.oup.com/book/4304/chapter-abstract/146205235?redirectedFrom=fulltext|title=Collect and Record!: Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe|first=Laura|last=Jockusch|chapter=Khurbn-Forshung: History Writing as a Jewish Response to Catastrophe |editor-first=Laura|editor-last=Jockusch|date=September 20, 2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=0|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.003.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-976455-6 |via=Silverchair}}

"Khurbn Yiddish" refers to the sociolect shaped by Yiddish speakers' experience during the Holocaust, who developed new words and slang, particularly relating to theft, protest, and sexuality.{{cite book |last1=Pollin-Galay |first1=Hannah |title=Occupied Words: What the Holocaust Did to Yiddish |date=September 3, 2024 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=9781512825916}}{{cite web |title=Yiddish Language During the Holocaust |url=https://yivo.org/Yiddish-After-the-Holocaust |website=YIVO Institute for Jewish Research |access-date=2 January 2025 |language=en}}{{Cite web|url=https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2023/6122|title=The Verbal Inheritance of Genocide | Zeithistorische Forschungen|website=zeithistorische-forschungen.de}} It is also called khurbn-shprakh. Historian Nachman Blumental described it:{{cite book|doi=10.5771/9783835344198-185 |chapter="Gornisht oyser verter"?! Khurbn-shprakh as a Mirror of the Dynamics of Violence in German-Occupied Eastern Europe |title=The Holocaust in the Borderlands |date=2019 |last1=Schulz |first1=Miriam |pages=185–208 |isbn=978-3-8353-4419-8 }}

{{quote|text=When I found myself within the borders of Eastern Poland in mid-1944, meeting the few Jews that I found there, I was almost unable to understand their language (loshn). So many modifications had occurred in the short period of my absence—in those roughly three years.}}