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Michael
Mills, of Canberra,
Australia, writes on Sunday, October 29, 2000
Apparent
mistranslation by Christopher Browning
Sunday, October 29, 2000
YOU may be interested in what
appears to be an egregious mistranslation by
Browning, occurring on page 75 of his recent
book Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German
Killers.
It involves his use of material drawn from page
495 of the book by Praeg and Jacobmeyer,
Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen
Generalgouverneurs in Polen 1939-1945. Browning
mistakenly identifies the material as the entry for
5 May 1942; in fact it is the entry for 11 May
1942.
Browning writes:
'Buehler feared that using
Jewish labor in large camps would destroy the
existing organizational forms within which Jews
were working and damage their "multifaceted use"
("Mehrfaches des Nutzes").'
Reference to page 495 of Praeg/Jacobmeyer shows
that Buehler's reported words were
".......mit einer Verwirklichung dieses
Planes [accommodating working Jews in large
concentration camps] der Schaden, der durch
die Zerstoerung bisheriger Organisationsformen
entstehen werde, EIN MEHRFACHES
DES NUTZENS betragen werde, den man sich
von einer solchen Massnahme verspreche".
The meaning of these words is quite clear; the
damage caused by the destruction of existing
organisational forms would be "many times greater
than the benefit" promised by the plan. Browning's
mistranslation of "ein Mehrfaches des Nutzens" as
"multifaceted use" is a real howler, and one is
left wondering how he could possibly have arrived
at it.
I am reminded of something Browning said in his
evidence at your libel action against Lipstadt, in
relation to Professor Burrin's rendering of
Schrecken as "ominous report" in the
latter's explanation of Hitler's
reported words "es ist gut, wenn uns der
Schrecken vorangeht, dass wir das Judentum
ausrotten". Browning claimed that this must have
been a mistranslation by an incompetent translator,
and said that he himself had had the experience of
being the victim of such incompetence.
One wonders whether Browning has once again
fallen victim to an incompetent translator. On the
other hand, in his introduction he makes no
reference to having received assistance in
translating from German, although he does thank two
people who translated material for him from Polish,
Yiddish and Hebrew. One is forced to the conclusion
that this egregious mistranslation is of Browning's
own making.
Michael
Mills
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