Sonderbehandlung

German

Etymology

From sonder- (“special”) +‎ Behandlung (“treatment”).

The Nazis used the word as code during the early stages of the Holocaust. By the time of the creation of the extermination camps it was already too widely understood and, as a codeword, replaced by terms such as Evakuierung (“evacuation”) and Durchschleusung (“channeling, passage”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈzɔndɐbəˌhandlʊŋ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

Sonderbehandlung f (genitive Sonderbehandlung, plural Sonderbehandlungen)

1. (literal) special treatment

   Es darf hier keine Sonderbehandlung für Einzelne geben, sondern gleiches Recht für alle.

   There mustn't be any special treatment for individuals, but one law for all.

2. (historical, Nazism, euphemistic) extermination, killing, extrajudicial execution

Usage notes

• The literal sense is widely used and per se unproblematic. However, it should definitely be avoided in any context that is somehow suggestive of Nazism or its victims.

Declension

Declension of Sonderbehandlung [feminine]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	eine	die	Sonderbehandlung	die	Sonderbehandlungen
genitive	einer	der	Sonderbehandlung	der	Sonderbehandlungen
dative	einer	der	Sonderbehandlung	den	Sonderbehandlungen
accusative	eine	die	Sonderbehandlung	die	Sonderbehandlungen

Further reading

• “Sonderbehandlung” in Duden online
• Sonderbehandlung on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de
• Sonderbehandlung on Wikipedia.Wikipedia