Why are we taught in school its called THE Holocaust?

Question

when there were many death camps all over europe and many russian gulags

Answer 1

Good question . Hitler modelled his holocaust on the persecution and massacre of the Armenians by the Turks during WW1.

Answer 2

The Holocaust refers to " The Final Solution " , Hitler's planned extermination of the Jews.
In European death camps and Russian gulags people of all races and religions were interned or killed there.

Answer 3

"The" is a definite article, specifying an assumed reference to one specific thing.

If we say "The president," we usually mean either the current one, or in some situations an ex-president who is in close proximity, or the topic on an ongoing discussion; "the" implies a commonly agreed upon starting point for discussion.

If someone were to talk about a general era of time, one might say, "a president," such as "a nineteenth century president had little choice but to..." referring to one of any number of presidents that could be referred to. Saying "the" president of the nineteenth century would only be confusing, as there were so many; even to assume Lincoln one would need to specify with description: "the greatest president of the nineteenth century" might be one of the options to do this.

Thus when in the west we hear of "the" Holocaust, we immediately assume the Hitler-created holocaust out of al lthe possible holocausts is the one being referred to; it gets the most attention in our culture, and was perhaps the fist to be singled out as such.

Answer 4

the holocaust is a word meaning thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire. We are taught it is called THE holocaust because in this time in history we considered Hitler's holocaust to be the most profound. just like we refered to WWI as THE world one before there was a WWII. my guess is the if we have another major Halocaust (which hopefully will never happen) it would be called the first Holocaust.

Answer 5

It goes back to times when "The War" meant World War 2,.. guess what they said during WWI... I'll give you a hint,.. Americans aren't very creative and that name was used before WWI for other wars. XD

So for some Americans, way back when, they found out or were invovled in "The Holocaust".

Go to another Country and maybe they have the same system and when they say 'The Holocaust" they are talking about a different one that hit closer to home.

I wonder how long until "The War" is renamed WW3,.. think maybe when another "The War" comes along?

It's just about what you're involved in or what hits closest home to you.

It's kinda like how " The Dog" is YOUR dog or someone close to you physically or emotionally Dog. And when you go back to "The House" you know what you are talking about. Strangers don't know the location and when they use "The House" it may vary from situation to situation. But still we say "The House" and "The Dog".

Answer 6

The Holocaust is a sweeping term that refers to the totality of the massacre of the Jews during World War II, not specifically to the German concentration camps. "Holocaust" means a sacrifice or a burnt offering, reflecting the idea that the Jews were essentially martyred for their religious beliefs. Because the term is inherently religious in nature and specific to the practices of early Jewish faiths, it is not used as a general phrase to talk about other episodes of genocide, except in a comparative sense (ie - the massacres in Rwanda are similar to/different from the Holocaust because...)

Some further reading, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The Holocaust (from the Greek holókauston from holos "completely" and kaustos "burnt"), also known as Ha-Shoah (Hebrew: השואה), Churben (Yiddish: חורבן), is the term generally used to describe the killing of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany led by Adolf Hitler.[2]

While there were other groups of people killed by the Nazi regime, scholars typically do not include them in the definition of the Holocaust, defining it as the genocide of the Jews,[3] or what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Taking into account all the victims of Nazi persecution, the death toll is estimated at between 9 and 11 million.[4]

The persecution and genocide were accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were used as slave labour until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where the Third Reich conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings.[5] Jews and Roma were crammed into ghettos before being transported hundreds of miles by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, the majority of them were killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics of the mass murder, turning the country into what one Holocaust scholar has called "a genocidal nation."[6]"

Answer 7

Although they were scattered everywhere, they were still under Hitler's reign and his socialist party.

Answer 8

partly cause it was the biggest, partly cause of politics