TRANSIT

Language is never neutral. In Germany, placement in DaZ classes (Deutsch als Zweitsprache) signals who belongs in mainstream education and who is marked as an outsider. I was exempted from DaZ, a privilege that shaped my schooling yet came at the cost of my family languages remaining largely inaccessible. Drawing on personal experiences and my work on the oral history project Dersim 1937/38, this essay examines how translation mediates memory, trauma, and power. The movement of testimonies across Zazakî/Kurdish, Turkish and German reveals that linguistic practice is inseparable from histories of displacement, repression and survival. Language, whether in the classroom or the archive, is never innocent; It is a marker of inclusion and a field where power operates both in visible and subtle ways.