Today’s word of the day, thanks to WordReference.com, is flay, a verb that means “‘to strip the skin off an animal or a person’ or ‘to strip the outer covering off something.’ Figuratively, it can mean ‘to strip of money or property,’ although this sense is now rare. Flay can also mean ‘to criticize harshly’ or ‘to scold severely’” (https://daily.wordreference.com/2024/01/19/intermediate-word-of-the-day-flay/).

The Modern English verb derives from “Old English flean ‘to skin, to flay’ (strong verb, past tense flog, past participle flagen), from Proto-Germanic *flahan (source also of Middle Dutch vlaen, Old High German flahan, Old Norse fla), from PIE root *pl(e)ik-, *pleik– ‘to tear, rend’ (source also of Lithuanian plėšti ‘to tear’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=flay). As a reminder, the asterisk before a word or a root indicates that we know this word because we recreated it from linguistic clues, that we do not have direct evidence of the word.

Now, looking at this etymology, I wondered if the past participle perhaps gave us the word flog and if the PIE root perhaps gave us the word pluck, as in to pluck a chicken. But flog, according to the etymonline website, has an uncertain origin, though some scholars think it may be “a schoolboy shortening of Latin flagellare ‘flagellate’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=flog) and so is unrelated to flay. Pluck is from “Middle English plukken, ‘pull (something) off or out from a surface’ (especially hair or feathers, but also teeth), from late Old English ploccian, pluccian ‘pull off, cull,’ from West Germanic *plokken” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=pluck).

On this date in 1942, Nazi leadership brgan the Wannsee Conference, a meeting of high-ranking Nazi officers to discuss the “Final Solution,” a euphemistic term for the murder of all European Jews. The conference was organized by General Reinhard Heydrich, one of Heinrich Himmler’s deputies. Major General Heinrich Müller represented the Gestapo. Lt. General Adolph Eichman, the chief of the office of Jewish Affairs attended. Undersecretary of State Martin Luther represented the foreign office (no, not that Martin Luther; he lived in the 16^th century. And others.

According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “The ‘Final Solution’ was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Adolf Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder. Heydrich convened the Wannsee Conference

• to inform and secure support from government ministries and other interested agencies relevant to the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’
• to disclose to the participants that Hitler himself had tasked Heydrich and the RSHA with coordinating the operation

The men at the table did not deliberate whether such a plan should be undertaken, but instead discussed the implementation of a policy decision that had already been made at the highest level of the Nazi regime” (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/wannsee-conference-and-the-final-solution).

According to the website, “Heydrich announced that ‘during the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the fruit of natural selection, they are to be regarded as the core of a new Jewish revival.’”

As we all know, the Holocaust killed approximately 6 million Jews. But the goal, according to Heydrich, was eleven million, so in that sense, the Wannsee Conference ultimately failed. Still, the Holocaust was perhaps the most barbaric act of genocide in human history. And if I were not a firm opponent of the death penalty in all cases, I might say that Holocaust deniers should all be flayed alive.

Today’s image is a public domain photo of children from the Lodz Ghetto being rounded up for deportation to the Chelmno death camp. Over 300,000 Jews were gassed to death at Chelmno.