holocaust

hol·o·caust

H0243400 (hŏl′ə-kôst′, hō′lə-)n.1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.2. a. Holocaust The genocide of European Jews and other groups by the Nazis during World War II: "Israel emerged from the Holocaust and is defined in relation to that catastrophe" (Emanuel Litvinoff).b. A massive slaughter: "an important document in the so-far sketchy annals of the Cambodian holocaust" (Rod Nordland).3. A sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames.

[Middle English, burnt offering, from Old French holocauste, from Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston, from neuter of holokaustos, burnt whole : holo-, holo- + kaustos, burnt (from kaiein, to burn).]

hol′o·caus′tal, hol′o·caus′tic adj.Usage Note: Holocaust has a secure place in the language when it refers to the massive destruction of humans by other humans. In our 1987 survey 99 percent of the Usage Panel accepted the use of holocaust in the phrase nuclear holocaust. Sixty percent accepted the sentence As many as two million people may have died in the holocaust that followed the Khmer Rouge takeover in Cambodia. But because of its associations with genocide, people may object to extended applications of holocaust. The percentage of the Panel's acceptance drops sharply when people use the word to refer to death brought about by natural causes. In our 1999 survey 47 percent approved the sentence In East Africa five years of drought have brought about a holocaust in which millions have died. Just 16 percent approved The press gives little coverage to the holocaust of malaria that goes on, year after year, in tropical countries, where there is no mention of widespread mortality. The Panel has little enthusiasm for more figurative usages of holocaust. In 1999, only 7 percent accepted Numerous small investors lost their stakes in the holocaust that followed the precipitous drop in stocks. This suggests that these extended uses of the word may be viewed as overblown or in poor taste.Word History: Totality of destruction has been central to the meaning of holocaust since it first appeared in Middle English in the 1300s, used in reference to the biblical sacrifice in which a male animal was wholly burnt on the altar in worship of God. Holocaust comes from Greek holokauston, "that which is completely burnt," which was a translation of Hebrew 'ōlâ (literally "that which goes up," that is, in smoke). In this sense of "burnt sacrifice," holocaust is still used in some versions of the Bible. In the 1600s, the meaning of holocaust broadened to "something totally consumed by fire," and the word eventually was applied to fires of extreme destructiveness. In the 1900s, holocaust took on a variety of figurative meanings, summarizing the effects of war, rioting, storms, epidemic diseases, and even economic failures. Most of these usages arose after World War II, but it is unclear whether they permitted or resulted from the use of holocaust in reference to the mass murder of European Jews and others by the Nazis. This application of the word occurred as early as 1942, but the phrase the Holocaust did not become established until the late 1950s. Here it parallels and may have been influenced by another Hebrew word, šô'â, "catastrophe" (in English, Shoah). In the Bible šô'â has a range of meanings including "personal ruin or devastation" and "a wasteland or desert." Šô'â was first used to refer to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in 1939, but the phrase haš-šô'â, "the catastrophe," became established only after World War II. Holocaust has also been used to translate ḥurbān, "destruction," another Hebrew word used as a name for the genocide of Jews by the Nazis.

holocaust

(ˈhɒləˌkɔːst) n1. great destruction or loss of life or the source of such destruction, esp fire2. (Historical Terms) (usually capital) Also called: the Churban or the Shoah the mass murder of Jews and members of many other ethnic, social, and political groups in continental Europe between 1940 and 1945 by the Nazi regime3. (Ecclesiastical Terms) a rare word for burnt offering[C13: from Late Latin holocaustum whole burnt offering, from Greek holokauston, from holo- + kaustos, from kaiein to burn] ˌholoˈcaustal, ˌholoˈcaustic adj

hol•o•caust

(ˈhɒl əˌkɔst, ˈhoʊ lə-)

n. 1. a great or complete devastation or destruction, esp. by fire. 2. a sacrifice consumed by fire. 3. the Holocaust, the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. 4. any reckless destruction of life. [1200–50; Middle English < Late Latin holocaustum (Vulgate) < Greek holókauston (Septuagint), neuter of holókaustos burnt whole]

holocaust

1. a burnt offering or sacrifice.
2. large-scale destruction by fire or other violent means.See also: Killing

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	holocaust - an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire); "a nuclear holocaust"destruction, devastation - the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists
	2.	Holocaust - the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime from 1941 until 1945final solution

holocaust

noun1. devastation, destruction, carnage, genocide, inferno, annihilation, conflagration A nuclear holocaust seemed a very real possibility in the '50s.2. genocide, massacre, carnage, mass murder, ethnic cleansing (euphemistic), annihilation, pogrom a fund for survivors of the holocaust and their families

Translations

大屠杀大毁灭

holocaust

(ˈholəkoːst) noun great destruction, usually by fire, especially of people's lives. 大毁灭，大屠杀 the Holocaust the annihilation of six million Jews during the second world war. 大屠杀（指纳粹对犹太人的种族灭绝）

Holocaust

(hŏl`əkôst', hō`lə–), name given to the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany. Romani (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and others were also victims of the Holocaust. Although anti-Semitismanti-Semitism
, form of prejudice against Jews, ranging from antipathy to violent hatred. Before the 19th cent., anti-Semitism was largely religious and was expressed in the later Middle Ages by sporadic persecutions and expulsions—notably the expulsion from Spain under
..... Click the link for more information. in Europe has had a long history, organized persecution of German Jews began with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Jews were disenfranchised, then terrorized in anti-Jewish riots (such as KristallnachtKristallnacht
[Ger.,=night of crystal], in German history, the night of Nov. 9, 1938, a night of violence against Jews and of destruction of the businesses and other property belonging to them. The name is a reference to the broken glass that resulted from the destruction.
..... Click the link for more information. ), forced into the ghettos and had their property seized, and finally sent to concentration campsconcentration camp,
a detention site outside the normal prison system created for military or political purposes to confine, terrorize, and, in some cases, kill civilians.
..... Click the link for more information. . The concentration camp system was in existence for 12 years and included 27 main camps and more than 1,000 subcamps. The camps were established and were under the control of Heinrich HimmlerHimmler, Heinrich
, 1900–1945, German Nazi leader. An early member of the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) party, Himmler took part in Adolf Hitler's "beer-hall putsch" of 1923, and in 1929 Hitler appointed him head of the SS, or Schutzstaffel,
..... Click the link for more information. and the SS.

After the outbreak of World War II, Hitler established death camps to secretly implement what he called "the final solution of the Jewish question." Extermination squads were also sent to the fronts: In one operation alone, over 30,000 Jews were killed at Babi Yar (Ukr. Babyn Yar), outside Kiev. In all, some 1.7 million Jews were shot to death in Soviet Europe in 1941–42. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has documented a staggering 42,500 ghettos, slave-labor and concentration camps, brothels, and other facilities for the confinement and/or murder of Jews in German controlled areas (from France to Russia) in the years 1933–45—a much higher number than originally thought. It is estimated that from 15 to 20 million people were imprisoned or died at these sites. By the end of the war some six million Jews had been systematically murdered.

The main Jewish resistance was spiritual: observing their religion and refraining from suicide, while Zionists evacuated some to Palestine. After 450,000 Jews were sent from the Warsaw Ghetto to death camps, however, news of their fate led the last 60,000 to rebel (1943), fighting until they were killed, captured, or escaped to join the resistance. While the European churches were silent, some clergy and individual non-Jews saved many. The Danes sent most Danish Jews to Sweden in private boats while under German occupation. The Allies refused rescue attempts, and American Jews were warned against attempting them.

After the war Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes at Nuremburg, and West Germany later adopted (1953) the Federal Compensation Law, under which billions of dollars were paid to those who survived Nazi persecution. In the mid-1990s a number of suits were filed against Swiss banks that held accounts belonging to Holocaust victims but had denied the fact and failed to restore the money. A settlement reached in 1998 established a $1.25 billion fund to be used to compensate those who can document their claims and, more generally, Holocaust survivors, the latter as restitution for undocumented accounts and for Swiss profits on Nazi accounts involving Holocaust victims' property. Also in 1998, the Roman Catholic Church formally acknowledged Catholic complicity in the long-standing European anti-Semitism that was background to the Holocaust. Under the terms of an agreement signed in 2000 by the United States and Germany, a $5 billion fund was established by the German government and German industry to compensate those who were slave or forced laborers or who suffered a variety of other losses under the Nazi regime.

A vast literature consisting of histories, diaries, memoirs, poetry, novels, and prayers has emerged in an effort to understand the Holocaust in terms of its religious and secular implications. The secular materials have attempted to explain how it happened and the reactions of the victims; some have suggested that an underlying and pervasive anti-Semitism in Germany was fueled by a deep and complete despair combined with a corrosive and unacknowleged sense of worthlessness that had been created by crushing and humiliating hardships and the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. The religious materials have focused on the problem of whether one can still speak in traditional Jewish terms of a God, active in history, who rewards the righteous and who maintains a unique relationship with the Jewish people. Museums and memorials have been established in a number of cities worldwide to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. There are three main archives that contain materials relating to the Holocaust: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Hesse, Germany.

Bibliography

See M. Buber, Eclipse of God (1952); E. Wiesel, Night (1960) and Legends of Our Time (1968); R. L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz (1966); A. H. Friedlander, ed., Out of the Whirlwind (1968); L. S. Davidowicz, The War against the Jews (1975); D. S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust (1984); C. Browning, Ordinary Men (1992); I. W. Charny, ed., Holding on to Humanity—The Message of Holocaust Survivors (1992); R. Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (1992) and The Destruction of the European Jews (3 vol., 3d ed. 2003); D. J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996); S. Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews (2 vol., 1997–2007); W. D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue (1997); I. Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (1999); O. Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (2000) and Germany's War and the Holocaust (2003); R. Rhodes, Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust (2002); C. R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution (2004); P. Longerich, Holocaust (2010); G. Aly, Why the Germans? Why the Jews? (2014); S. Helm, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (2015); N. Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (2015); D. Cesarani, Final Solution (2016); P. Hayes, Why? Explaining the Holocaust (2017); O. Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide (2018). See also C. Lanzmann, dir., Shoah (documentary, 1985); Imperial War Museum, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (documentary, 2014).

Holocaust

a general term for the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party (see NATIONAL SOCIALISM) in Europe during World War II, and especially the systematic extermination of up to six million Jews in mass gas chambers and CONCENTRATION CAMPS. The term is derived from holo (whole) kauston (burnt) – ‘burnt whole’. The Holocaust was meant to be part of the ‘final solution’ (Die Endlosung) to rid Europe of Jews and other ‘undesirable’ groups by the Nazis. See also BAUMAN. See also FASCISM, RACISM, GENOCIDE.

Holocaust

Nazi attempt at extermination of European Jewry (1933–1945). [Jew. Hist.: Wigoder, 266–267]See: Genocide

holocaust

1. the. Also called: Churban, Shoah. the mass murder by the Nazis of the Jews of continental Europe between 1940 and 1945 2. a rare word for burnt offering
www.holocaust-history.org
www.nizkor.org

holocaust

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Synonyms for holocaust

noun devastation

Synonyms

noun genocide

Synonyms

Words related to holocaust

noun an act of mass destruction and loss of life (especially in war or by fire)

Related Words

noun the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime from 1941 until 1945

Synonyms