Why is the holocaust called Holocaust?

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Tequila

Jews tend to use the term Shoah.
This is from an article by an expert on the English language, William Safire: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE3D6143AF933A1575AC0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
" . . . In English, the word holocaust (from the Greek holokaustos, ''burnt whole'') first appeared in the language around 1250, in a biblical song telling the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering to God. In its application to the Nazi era, the capitalized word was used first in this specific sense in the title of a 1965 book of memoirs about the Warsaw ghetto by Alexander Donat, ''The Holocaust Kingdom.''
"However, the word holocaust, even when capitalized to refer to the specific Nazi era, has been used to encompass more than the murder of Jews. From the casualties in our Civil War (then described as ''a holocaust of lives'') to the wholesale murder of gypsies in World War II to later genocide in Cambodia, the coverage of the term has not been limited to any single group; hence, Jews sought a term for their particular tragedy. Shoah, a Hebrew word, has filled that need; Claude Lanzmann used the word to title his powerful 1985 documentary, a nine-hour oral and visual history of the killing. "

Sean Warsch addresses your question here. http://www.jewishmag.com/107mag/holocaustword/holocaustword.htm
"My aim is to trace the evolution of this word, starting before World War II when the word solely referred to destruction by fire, tracking its usage during World War II, when it was used in the previous manner and also as a term to specifically describe the Nazis killing of the Jews, and finally how the common usage of the noun has diminished greatly while its proper usage, the Holocaust, has increased."

This scholarly article at JSTOR also answers the question, but requires membership as a researcher to access the full text. (It can perhaps be found in some university libraries when you are overseas.) http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-1114%28198905%299%3A2%3C197%3AWDWCTH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3&size=SMALL&origin=JSTOR-reducePage

I can't ignore the comment regarding burning. On this point, you have erred. Many people were burned alive.
(My own great grandmother, her daughters, and her little grandson were sealed inside a building and burned alive. I don't have a link for that. ) http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/jedwabne/yed999.html

Here's testimony regarding Auschwitz from an exchange between prosecutor and a Polish witness, S. Smaglewska, before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946.
"When the extermination of the Jews in the gas chambers was at its height, orders were issued that children were to be thrown straight into the crematorium furnaces, or into a pit near the crematoriu, without being gassed first."

Prosecutor: "How am I to understand this? Did they throw them into the fire alive, or did they kill them first?"

Witness: "They threw them in alive. Their screams could be heard at the camp. It is difficult to say how many children were destroyed in this way." http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.014

" . . .when the crematoria became too full to accommodate the thousands of Jews streaming into the camp, he had trenches dug, which were then filled with gasoline and set ablaze. Both the dead and the living, adults as well as children and infants, were thrown bodily into these pits to be destroyed under Mengele's supervision."
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/history/mengele/4b.html

In numerous sources, witnesses described the extent to which smoke from the oven chimneys turned the sky black in European towns adjacent to concentration camps. Further, the stench of burning flesh was everpresent while the cremetoria functioned. Years after the war, survivors of such camps can not stomach the smell if someone accidentally burns a chicken while cooking.
Survivor testimony by A. Bubnic: " . . . we were also forced to stomach the putrid-smelling smoke entering our cells. There was such a stench of burnt human flesh that you could hardly breathe, and it turned your stomach."
http://www.deportati.it/english-risiera_survivors.html

The smell still lingered in the air when allied soldiers entered the camps.
"The stench was so terrible. After one or two minutes, the stench of feces, urine, the acrid smoke of burning flesh â€“ indescribable, unbelievable. I couldn't stand it much longer, so I went out, retching."
http://www.goforbroke.org/etorch/featuredvet_20060426.asp

paperback_writer

Hi 'h' :)

Many Jews refer to it as 'Shoah' which means 'calamity' in Hebrew.

To answer your question, in fact the best and most concise response I've ever seen was offered by a non Jew, in the R&S forum, two days ago!

He stated: 'Any religious group that has lost six million of their members purely because people were determined to exterminate them all, has earned the right to call that event whatever they want and to memorialise it in any way they see fit.'

I thought it was a very down to earth and good response!

EDIT *******************************

According to http://www.wiki.com/Q Eli Wiesel first used the term Holocaust. Try getting hold of his book 'Night'; it's a short but extremely powerful read.

hamarker

The word "holocaust" originally derived from the Greek word holokauston, meaning "a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering", or "a burnt sacrifice offered to a god". In Greek and Roman pagan rites, gods of the earth and underworld received dark animals, which were offered by night and burnt in full. The word "holocaust" was later adopted in Greek translations of the Torah to refer to the "olah", sacrificial burnt offerings that Jews were required to make.[1]

Since the mid-19th century, the word has been used by many authors to refer to large catastrophes and massacres, particularly those caused by immolation. According to the OED, the earliest attested such usage dates from 1671, but it became common in the 19th century. In 1833 the journalist Leitch Ritchie, writing about the medieval French monarch Louis VII, wrote that he "once made a holocaust of thirteen hundred persons in a church". This refers to his invasion of Vitry-le-FranÃ§ois in 1142 during which the 1,300 inhabitants of the town were burnt alive in the church.

By the early twentieth century the term was widely used to refer to massacres of Armenians in Turkey, particularly during World War I. The Armenian Genocide was called "The Holocaust" (1920) and "The Smyrna Holocaust" (1923).[2] In 1929, Winston Churchill referred to "helpless Armenians, men, women, and children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust" (The World Crisis).[3]

Even before the Second World War, the possibility of another war was referred to as "another holocaust" (that is, a repeat of the First World War). With reference to the events of the war, writers in English after it was over tended to use the term in relation to events such as the fire-bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima, rather than the Nazi genocide.[citation needed] The term was most commonly used to refer to the destructive consequences of nuclear war.[4]

By the late 1950s, documents translated from Hebrew sometimes used the word "Holocaust" to translate "Shoah", and some scholars began to use the word with this meaning -- usually with some qualification, such as "The Nazi Holocaust". It was not until the late 1970s that the Nazi genocide became the conventional meaning of the word, when used unqualified, and with a capital letter, a usage that also spread to other languages for the same period.[5] The 1978 television miniseries titled "Holocaust" and starring Meryl Streep is often cited as the principal contributor to establishing the current usage in the wider culture.[6] According to John Petrie "as an immediate consequence" of the broadcast "the capitalized and unmodified 'Holocaust' became the recognized referent to Hitler's Judeocide in an American society newly sensitized to that tragedy."[7]

The term became increasingly widespread as a synonym for "genocide" in the last decades of the 20th century to refer to mass murders in the form "X holocaust" (e.g. "Rwandan holocaust"). Examples are Rwanda, the Ukraine under Stalin, and the actions of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

In order to suggest comparison with Nazi murders other historical events have also been labeled "Holocausts", for example the oppression of lower caste groups in India ("Sudra Holocaust") or the slave trade ("African Holocaust"). Such usages are often heavily disputed.[attribution needed] Even more contested is the use of the word in the older sense of "immolation" to refer to Allied WW2 bombings, since this is sometimes adopted to imply equivalence between the Allied and the Nazi war record.[8]

edit: jews were burnt in crematoriums... their bodies for sure...

the "H"?- you mean y is it called "the Hollocaust" I think because it happened in almost all of Europe and was the biggest and most vicious and most ugliest and most murderess act in history between 9-11 milion ppl were murdered, and people never want to forget that so it won't repeat itself in the future..

but in Israel it's called the "shoa"

anyways if this really interests you and you want a precise answer write a letter to the officials and ask.

Michael J

Because the Holocaust was not just mass-genocide: it was a degree of dehumanization and ethnic cleansing never before seen on Earth and not seen since. The Holocaust was not just the wholesale murder of 6 million Jews and 5 million others. It was everything that happened: concentration camps, ghettos, forced labor for never coming freedom, starvation, disgusting treatment etc. It wasn't just riding into town, rounding up the Jews and killing them all; it was the methodical and dehumanizing aspect which sets it apart, and that is why the 'H' is capital.

Mimi- Ù…ÙŠÙ…ÙŠ - ×ž×™×ž×™

The Jews got burned and the place where they were burned in was called the hot showers. I have got a movie about holocoust and I watched it twice. It is very sad.

Peace

diana

they did get burned!!!!!

A. Venger [Unconventional Bride]

The word "holocaust" means fire. The Holocaust was, in great sense, a huge fire..if not always physically, then metaphorically. that'd be why, I'm guessing.

ahmed k

See the modus operandi of killing or finishing of humamn life through the ages.
From fire to neuclear bombs.
Poisoning and crucification,imprisonment ,extradition ,gas chambers and what else.Ever somany heart breaking news like this.
Holocaust offering the soul and body to fire.
Only GOD shall save like that of EBRAHIM considered to be the father of the believers saved from fire .Finishing off as ordered by king namrood.
Jews are considered to be the sons of GOD.
GOD has special love for them ,un deniable truth.
They failed to follow the words of GOD to follow the messaiha from GOD.Waiting to correct their mistake,may GOD help them.
Any way it was a Holocaust in finishing of them from the world.

Axle

It may be capitalized to attempt to imply that it was somehow the most egregious instance of population cleansing. I agree w/ you, though, it shouldn't have been capitalized, but that's history. It's kinda like how we call Native Americans "Indians." Now, most people w/ a decent education know that they ain't from India, but good luck ever changing that. Sometimes, too, some Jewish people may exploit the holocaust guilt to further their agenda.

Remember, Jews weren't the only ones exterminated in WWII Deutschland. A big number of non-Jews were cleansed in death camps too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry

tuberk768

It was applied to the attempted genocide of the Jews in order to create a historical stigma that the Holocaust was somehow worse than any other previously committed genocidal acts. The word, "Holocaust," is simply used to influence public opinion.

Mr. X

dunno. sounds like a term from a western historian.

we jewish type folks do call it that, but more often the word we use is Shoah, a hebrew word.

it's just a word. it signifies meaning. that's all. the term was used for other things before, and is still used for other things today. it's not the word that's important, but what happened.

by the way, many jews were burned alive during ww2, especially near the end of the war, just for the record.

Jim Jo

they did get burned.. some where gased.. but mostly burned especially towards the end of the war.

timeline of burning starts during 1942 : http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html

thats the place they got burned :
http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blbuchenwald2.htm

Freedom F

You are referring to a name rather than a dictionary definition.

See The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein

" (Israel and Jewish organizations in America) have hijacked what has become known as the holocaust. And while Israel has exploited the holocaust as a weapon to deflect criticism, regardless how justified, American Jewish organizations have used the plight of supposedly needy survivors to extort staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This was done not for the benefit of survivors, but for the financial advantage of these organizations."

http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/185984488X/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197923900&sr=8-16

Here is an interesting story of zionist grasping associated with the Holocaust
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=108

Read this too

"I want the Germans to know where the money they gave Israel went," he said angrily. "I want the Germans to know that Israel took the money we should have received. I want them to answer one question: Where did our money go?"
A Holocaust surviver

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=3&ar=98

The Holocaust victims have been living in ersatz israel in absolute poverty. One old man wrote that he had to eat grass.

LEE DA

TO HAMARKER
============
Thanks a bunch for the "expose", I always thought the word is a hebrew term (tho in essence it is a hebrew over used term). I do appreciate the info.

To me the word encapses a gigantic propaganda ever spread in history.

Maya

It's the name of cheap American tv mini-series of the 70's - 1977 I beleive. Until then everyone called it Hitler's Final Solution. As far as the basic scenario goes,it worked well for a cheap mini-series - but a little less well as history.

Asherah supports Geert Wilders

no, not all of them were gassed. There were also children burnt alive.

My guess is that the term is written with capital, because of the huge numbers of Jews and other people being killed under the Nazi regime which had never happened before on such a large scale.

I think you're more wondering how to keep people's attention away from the Holocaust, so Jews have less of an argument to remain in Israel, why else this interest anyway?

george l

Holocaust sounds cooler

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