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The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession With a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate

by Puchner, Martin

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About

Centuries ago in middle Europe, a coded language appeared, scrawled in graffiti and spoken only by people who were "wiz" (in the know). This hybrid language, dubbed Rotwelsch, was a language of the road, of vagabonds, travelers, Jews, and thieves that blended Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Romani, and other European languages. This renegade language unsettled those in power, especially the Nazis.

As a boy, Martin Puchner learned this secret language from is father and uncle. Only as an adult did he discover, through a poisonous 1930s tract on Jewish names buried in the archives of Harvard's Widener Library, that his own grandfather had been a committed Nazi who despised this "language of thieves." Interweaving family memoir with an adventurous foray into the mysteries of language, Puchner crafts an entirely original narrative. In a language born of migration and survival, he discovers a witty and resourceful spirit of tolerance that remains essential in our volatile present.
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