Name: The Language of Thieves
ISBN: 9781324005919

Martin Puchner

Tracking an underground language from one family's obsession to the outcasts who spoke it in order to survive.

My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate

The Language of Thieves

Since the Middle Ages, vagrants and thieves in Central Europe have spoken Rotwelsch, a secret language influenced by Yiddish and written in rudimentary signs. When Martin Puchner inherited a family archive, it led him on a journey into this extraordinary language but also into his family's connections to the Nazi Party, for whom Rotwelsch held a particular significance. A riveting story of the mindset and milieu of Central Europe and of the way language can be used to evade oppression, The Language of Thieves is also a deeply moving reckoning with a family's buried past.

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