The German and Allied bombing of Rotterdam in the Second World War caused thousands of dead and hundreds of missing, and severely damaged the Dutch port city. The joint destruction of people and their built environment made the ruins and rubble stand metonymically for the dead when they could not be mentioned in the censored press. The contiguity of ruins, rubble, corpses and human remains was not only semantic but also material because of the intermingling and even amalgamation of organic and inorganic remains into anthropomineral debris. The hybrid matter was dumped in rivers and canals to create broad avenues and a modern city centre. This article argues that Rotterdam’s semantic and material metonyms of destruction were generated by the contiguity, entanglement, and post-mortem and post-ruination agencies of the dead and the destroyed city centre. This analysis provides insight into the interaction and co-constitution of human and material remains in war.

第二次世界大战中德国和盟军对鹿特丹的轰炸造成数千人死亡，数百人失踪，并严重破坏了荷兰港口城市。人们和建筑环境的共同破坏使这些废墟和瓦砾在被审查的媒体中无法提及的情况下成为死者的代名词。废墟，瓦砾，尸体和人体残骸的连续性不仅在语义上而且在物质上都是重要的，因为有机残骸和无机残骸混杂在一起甚至融合为人类的碎片。混合物质被倾倒在河流和运河中，以创造宽阔的道路和现代化的城市中心。本文认为，鹿特丹的毁灭性语义和物质代名词是由连续性，纠缠，以及死者和被摧毁的市中心的验尸和毁灭后的机构。这种分析提供了对战争中人类和物质遗骸的相互作用和共同构成的见解。