Why do people use the word "Holocaust" when it's a poor reflection on the persecution of Jews?

Question

What about all the others persecuted? Do the museums cover them? Isn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki a more accurate description of Holocaust, a completely burned sacrifice?

Can I ask who was sacrificing the jews?
And who were they being sacrificed to? or for?

Personally, I think the word "Shoah" makes more sense.

Opinions? Comments? Corrections?

Answer 1

Language has a way of getting away from us.
It is all arbitrary, until we assign it meaning.
I can see from the few answers here that you have a very valid point in the way you perceive the word,
and that you automatically assign it a certain significance.
I think that while you may be advancing an important idea in how the world SHOULD define the word, and what new one to use,
you are still at odds with the very nature of language itself.
So, when people use words in their own arbitray fashion, please just try to understand that it takes an awful lot to get everybody on the same page, and that no one person can know everything. Therefore, there is no intent on their part to offend you...
And if you do understand that, then I truly wish you good luck in helping to change the world one person at a time.

Answer 2

The term "Holocaust or "Shoah"is exclusively a jerwish biblical term in the bible. Anyone who uses the term "Holocaust"for others not jewish is a misnomer. Thet really mean genocide. That term was not coined until 1947 . and adopted by the UNited Nations.So, reference to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, may be as bombardment under wartime conditions. For taht matter, it was Nazi germany who fuirst bombed civilian population centers in l940, Rotterdam. Previously it also bom,barded civilian populations in Poland which was invaded by Germany and started World war Two. So, sadly , once more , Germany is responsible for the precedence of bombing civilians. I t actually strated it in the Spanish Civil War when it s air force destroyed Guernica, . indiscriminately killing civilians

Answer 3

You can't change the name of an historical event.

And please note that the persecution of the Jews is NOT what is called the Holocaust. The Holocaust is something that happened in a long history of Jewish persecution.

When things happen, they get named. That's why it's call The Holocaust, with a capital H. Like, the Battle of the Bulge, or Vimy Ridge, or Wreck of the Hesperus, or the Armenian genocide. You can't call it something else. That's what it's called.

It doesn't need to fit exactly in with the dictionary definition, because it has come to mean it's own separate thing. It is its own proper noun now.

So deal with it.

Answer 4

Jews in Biblical times would offer burnt offerings to God. The term holocaust applied to these offerings, an in that manner ofmeaning the term holocaust was applied ot the Jews who were killed, and often cremated during the holocaust.

It is a poor term, but than again so is anti-semetic. Both are quite sloppy, but they are what are used today.

Answer 5

From the Merriam Webster Dictionary,

"holocaust



Main Entry: ho·lo·caust
Pronunciation: \ˈhō-lə-ˌkȯst, ˈhä- also -ˌkäst or ˈhȯ-lə-kȯst\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston, from neuter of holokaustos burnt whole, from hol- + kaustos burnt, from kaiein to burn — more at caustic
Date: 13Th century
1: a sacrifice consumed by fire
2: a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire
3 a often capitalized : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II — usually used with the b: a mass slaughter of people"

While usually associated with the Nazi attempt to destroy Jews, the Holocaust covers ALL who were mistreated at the hands of the German State.

"Can I ask who was sacrificing the jews?"

Are you serious? The German State as headed by Adolph Hitler. Don't they teach history were you are at?

Answer 6

Blame the 1978 television miniseries!

Personally I prefer the term "Final Solution" as it was the Nazis' own term (coined by Adolf Eichmann), and avoids any theological complications.

As long as a term also implicitly includes political dissidents, Soviet POWs, Polish intellectuals, the disabled, the Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men, I'm satisfied. And I doff my hat to anyone using "Porajmos", "Churban Europa" or "Samudaripen".

Answer 7

i am a jew, ok history lesson! hitler told the public that the jews were steeling money and bankrupting companies, so he wanted to kill them. the public belived him because that was a very poor age for the economy. we jews were shoved out of our houses and put in cars for three days straight, so if you had to go to the b. room go in your pants, need to sit?, no chairs so you had to go and sit in other people's urine and ... you know. they had us gassed, shot, hung, strangled, or starved. 6 million jews were killed. the US and poland,were allies they helped us get out.