BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 09:40 PM

This thread was closed, but I'm gonna squeeze in one more post and close it again.

When I was a Theology student in the 1960s, "holocaust" was a specific term used to denote the most solemn of the sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem, in which the victim was completely burned. It was a Greek translation of the Hebrew word " 'ola." The Greek word, holocaust, was used in many places in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures in 150 B.C.E. The connection to the extermination and incineration of Jews during World War II is obvious and powerful.

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No one was disputing that, Joe. We simply were discussing when it took on the meaning it has today. The McBride quote was a really good post to end this thread on. ---mudelf

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Whatever. But the fact remains that the thread was closed before anybody had time to mention that the term had a specific and important use and meaning at least as far back as 150 BCE. I was gone over the weekend and unable to participate except for a brief comment on my phone. I hate to see Mudcat become a place where loudly-stated "opinion" has more value than documented fact. But maybe I'm old-fashioned about that. -Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 02:55 PM

"For Arthur McBride, it all happened again
And again
And again
And again
And again..."


There is a bit of devolution occurring in this thread. Rather than get into the nitty gritty with various comments that will spread more light than heat:

Words in any language not yet under command control, and I don't know of any, evolve like birds flocking, they can come to a word meaning that is specific, and then they can wander again.

'Holocaust' for the time being tends to refer to the Nazi genocides 1933-1945, and typically concentrates on the Jews, which were a prominent part of explicit Nazi policy. It is or should be well understood that millions of other groups of people were targeted and liquidated along with Jews.

The Hebrew word Shoah is not a preference, it is the word in Hebrew , originally meaning 'catastrophe' that is understood to mean the same thing as the English word 'Holocaust'. It seems to have evolved in a similar manner.

The uncapitalized word 'holocaust' has not lost its definition. But its use might be less common in comparison to the capital'H' version.

Using holocaust as reference to the nuclear bombings of Japanese cities sounds like a personal preference. I have not heard it used unambiguously in this sense, although it is justifiable not as a genocide reference, but as a physical description of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945.

I believe the word 'genocide' originated in a description of what happened to millions of Armenian civilians as a policy decision of the Turkish government during and after WWI. The book "A Problem From Hell" by Samantha Power refers to it. At the end of WWII the United Nations gave a criminal definition to it. Beyond Samantha Power's book there is enough material for a whole encyclopedia on the subject.

Other cultures typically are not interested in horning in on 'Holocaust'. They have their own references. The Irish have long had their own references to the potato blight that starved, impoverished and exiled a high proportion of their population in the mid 1800s. The Ukrainians have their own word, Holodomor, for what the Soviet government did to them in the 1930s. For Cambodians there is the mass killing of a vast proportion of their own population at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The racial/ religious cutting down of hundreds of thousands often by neighbors in Rwanda in the 1990s. And then there are the sad cases which actually exist in North Korea, present day Russia, and present day China, that simply cannot be referred to because the government that created the starvation of millions of their own citizens are still in power and are still employing the policy that the sufferers are required to praise the government that preys on them.

What King Leopold did to the indigenous inhabitants of the Congo probably has a bunch of names still in use in those lands. I can't recommend the book "The Ghost of King Leopold" enough.


"For Arthur McBride, it all happened again
And again
And again
And again
And again..."

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 01:46 PM

Well you didn't sleep well last night,John, so I'll let your professorial uncalled-for insult go if you like.

This:

"Beyond hair-splitting, word usage are the highly controversial topics of the Catholic Church and the Holocaust and the actions of various Caribean and Latin American nations."

...makes no sense. As it's presumably about how we use words, that's quite ironic.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 01:34 PM

No insult intended, Steve, simply a statement of fact.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 12:58 PM

Beyond hair-splitting, word usage are the highly controversial topics of the Catholic Church and the Holocaust and the actions of various Caribean and Latin American nations.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 12:48 PM

Dictionaries don't dictate, John, neither do they judge (and they seldom all agree).   They reflect. My posts on this are my opinions and my readings of the current sense of how the word is used and how I see its nuances. I should be able to state those things without being insulted, thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 12:46 PM

I'm no Simon Wiesenthal who was a survivor and Nazi hunter. As a third-generation Nazi hunter all three Nazis I found were in nursing homes and in very poor condition. They deserved exposure but were allowed a merciful nonprosecution treatment.


Close your eyes and don't listen. It's all too familiar.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 12:36 PM

I'm not listening. Neither are you. You failed to read my post properly.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 11:51 AM

Sincerely, Steve, it is not I that is killing you, mortal or otherwise.
It is time and ego philosophy. Convincing yourself that you are a good person is easy. Teaching others is by deed and kindness.

America is a white nationalist nation is a notion that all white people are enhanced by systemic racism in every quarter of law and practices.
Those that belong to Militias are not the only white nationalists. They are a tip of an iceberg. It only sounds like hyperbole that we are all racists and sinners to some degree. Self-reflection is hard to do from the inside out especially for people who insist upon not understanding.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 11:19 AM

My case rests - Holocaust/holocaust - definitions

What Professor Know-it-All thinks is completely irrelevant, except within the confines of his own over-inflated ego.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 10:53 AM

If you'll stick to the subject and stop sniping at members of the discussion it will move forward more smoothly.

This from the start of that New Republic article gillymor posted:

In the course of reporting "A Liberator, But Never Free," about the recent discovery of the late Dr. David Wilsey’s letters home from the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, one intriguing semantic anomaly transfixed every expert consulted: the Spokane anesthesiologist’s persistent use of the word “holocaust” to describe the horrors all around him.

There has long been a rigorous debate among etymologists and historians as to when the lowercased “holocaust,” generically defined as a large-scale calamity usually involving fire, became the proper noun used specifically to name the period of Nazi genocide against European Jews. Yet there is little debate that that formalization occurred years after the war’s end.

“I immediately wrote it down the first time I saw him using this word,” said historian Patricia Heberer-Rice of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “There’s a bit of a conundrum about when this word was first used.” Harold Marcuse, a Holocaust historian at University of California San Diego and author of Legacies of Dachau, said, “The fact that he’s using it right then, in that context, makes it a very interesting historical fact that will contribute to scholarship.”

Read the rest of it at the link above.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 10:33 AM

Well I thought I was arrogant!

It's Anne Frank, by the way, not Ann Frank. These things matter.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 10:29 AM

I could also have said that a powerful weapon in our armoury would be to stop the disaffected being the disaffected. Inequalities in society, the rich getting richer and the poor getting food banks, are a recipe for encouraging people to resort to the fringe far-right groups, who will promise the earth (including, among other things, getting rid of foreigners and other members of The Other). We've just had a tax giveaway in the UK that overwhelmingly benefits the already-rich and which gives the poor next to nothing - right in the middle of the worst cost-of-living crisis we've had for decades. Millions of people are facing astronomical energy bills and inflation is rampant (you don't need "official figures": you need a walk down your nearest supermarket aisles...). There's little control over landlordism and you're bloody lucky if you've got any job security at all. All grist to the mill of the far-right jam-tomorrow brigade...

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 10:17 AM

I often use sarcasm to demonstrate that we are not all white supremacists. Yes, it could be misconstrued by Jews just as some white supremacists could be offended by the mere question "Are you a white nationalist"?
Perhaps some are victims of their education. My question is for victims to learn something new. I speak of the true victims of white nationalism who were murdered and can not ask for people to rethink their warped prejudice. I will do it for them.

“As I've told you many times, I'm split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things."
Quote: Ann Frank

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 10:10 AM

I don't think that most people who voted for Trump are white supremacists. Clearly there are fringe organisations on the far right that will jump aboard if they see that they won't immediately be kicked straight back over the side. They find a mouthpiece in the mainstream, often displaying false decency and false moderation, but there are plenty of stern voices opposing them. Ever since WW2 there have been fringe neofascist groups in European countries. There have always been people in Spain who would have Franco back in a heartbeat. Germany and Austria have endured far-right factions almost forever. We're very likely looking at Italy electing a far-right leader today. France has had the Le Pens, we've had the NF or the BNP and other such nasties, and there's that idiot in Hungary, and Poland doesn't exactly have a Mr Nice-guy either. They will always appeal to the disaffected, but that doesn't make the disaffected fascists or white supremacists. The biggest and best weapons we have are democracy and the rule of law. The EU insists on its members abiding fully with those concepts as well as with rules on human rights and justice systems, and those dodgy leaders or would-be leaders must abide by them. We've had dire threats about the ascendancy of the extreme right ever since the end of WW2, but countries that hang on fiercely to democratic values will generally prevail. The biggest current enemy of democracy is populism. Populism depends on appeals to the lowest instincts of people and relies on their political ignorance. Tens of thousands of people in the UK who had supported decent Labour values all their lives voted for Boris Johnson last time fer chrissake. You had a not dissimilar problem when Trump came to prominence. I'm fairly confident that our system will eventually see off the populists (though we could do with a better leader). We look at the US two years after Trump tried to start an insurrection and some of us are appalled by your paralysis. What happens in your country in the next months or years may well define the future direction of the world. It's as important as that.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 09:52 AM

Why did I study the Holocaust for 65 years? Why did I hunt and find Nazis in the US?
3/4 of my relatives on one side of my family were murdered and I wanted to know why. It is a very strong motivation to find out why.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 09:43 AM

You will know them by their colors and the myth of American
Exceptionalism beliefs are the well dressed versions of white nationalism.
So deeply seduced are many fascists they do not see their own seduction. If they ask you to close your eyes, it is an indication of who they really are. Opening eyes is what I am about.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 09:26 AM

That gillymor does not recognize 1 in 3 Americans having white supremacist values makes him a sympathizer of fascism. That he is willing to take my words out of context for his purpose he becomes an advocate for evil in my eyes. For evermore I know which camp he has pitched his tent. The UK folks are quibbling over pet peeve words. I speak of the main issue and history of an ongoing genocide.

I could continue to teach history many of you were deliberately not taught. The most recent slaves are white people enslaved by the Nazis.

What is the first country to be founded from a slave revolution leading to a free nation???

No it was not Spartacus in Italy. It was Haiti. It has been attacked by the US ever since, in quiet but insidious ways.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 08:56 AM

And yeah a lot of white supremacists have come out into the open with the ascension of trump and trumpism but to characterize America as "a nation of white supremacists" is another gross exaggeration by the local gadfly in his desperate quest for attention and is a slap in the face of of large amount of Americans who are offended by and oppose that manner of bigotry.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 08:44 AM

I USED the word LATTER about THE INDUSTRIAL KILLING METHODS at the end stages of fascism listed and the early forms of incremental murder. It was susceptible to misinterpretation.

We in America are in the early and repeated descent into acceptable inhumanity. The hope of a victorious Civil War would have led to the darkest human desires for fascism. Extermination of all the brutes continued to kill Native Americans after the Civil War.
There are many names for this ethnic purity over the last 200 years..

Purity of blood statutes were laws that went back to European Christianity and the crusades. Ethnic purity still exists there and here. America is now having a war against teaching history with laws to prohibit cRt.

My POV is that it is very late in the day in the push to rule by fascism, extermination and unspeakable violence.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 08:44 AM

Here's a 2015 article published in the New Republic on the use of the term- When "Holocaust" Became "The Holocaust"

The author notes earlier uses of the term to describe the Nazi genocide but cites the 1978 TV event "Holocaust" for the advent of the term's wide spread usage, complete with graph. From the article-

"Yet for decades after the war, the genocide lacked any formal title in English except, perhaps, “The Final Solution,” the term the Nazis used. In Hebrew, the calamity quickly became known as “Shoah,” which means “the catastrophe.” But it wasn’t until the 1960s that scholars and writers began using the term “Holocaust,” and it took the 1978 TV film Holocaust, starring Meryl Streep, to push it into widespread use."

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 08:34 AM

Using a different word would ALWAYS make it clear.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 08:14 AM

I agree that the capitalisation of the H draws a line between the genocide of the Jews and other forms of mass slaughter, but you can't capitalise it in speech unless you say clumsy things such as "the Holocaust with a capital H."

Context will normally make it clear.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 06:38 AM

I would never use "holocaust" to characterise the Grenfell fire and haven't heard it used that way, except by the Holocaust-denier and antisemitic conspiracy theorist Tahra Ahmed, who said that the 71 people who died in the disaster were “burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice”.

She also believes the 9/11 terror attack was faked by Jews.

According to The Times, Ms Ahmed told reporters that the Grenfell fire was a “holocaust”.

[source: The Tablet, The Jewish Chronicle and elsewhere]

For this reason alone I think the word should be utterly avoided in connection with Grenfell. More widely, the easiest thing, in order to avoid seeming to be deliberately contentious, is to avoid the word *almost* entirely unless you're referring to the Nazi outrage. There are plenty of alternative words available.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 05:53 AM

If you say “The Grenfell Tower holocaust”, nobody - NOBODY - would genuinely believe you mean ‘the mass murder of Jews at Grenfell Tower”, everyone would understand that you were referring to the devastating fire there which killed 72 residents.

‘The Holocaust’ = the murder of six million Jews and other minorities by the German Nazis in the 1930s and ‘40s.

‘a holocaust’ = destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

It seems perfectly simple to me and, I’d venture to suggest, most other rational people. End of, AFAIC.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 05:28 AM

Well we've had only ever had two nuclear holocausts and they were almost contemporaneous with the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis. It's perfectly understandable that the word would have been used at the time (and stuck) for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I agree that the capitalisation of the H draws a line between the genocide of the Jews and other forms of mass slaughter, but you can't capitalise it in speech unless you say clumsy things such as "the Holocaust with a capital H." I can't agree that you can use the word in any context you like these days without invoking thoughts of the Nazi atrocity. Perhaps we should all have been using "Shoah" from the get-go, but the reason we haven't has everything to do with the inexorable evolution of language, not with deliberate co-opting, appropriation or cornering of the market. Always remember that Hebrew prefers Shoah.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 09:34 PM

When I see/hear ‘The Holocaust’ (upper case first letters), I have no doubt whatsoever that what is being referred to is specifically the murder of, predominantly, Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

However, when I see/hear reference to ‘a holocaust’ (lower case first letters), that to me is a general reference to destruction or slaughter on a mass scale - e.g. ‘a nuclear holocaust’, or ‘the Grenfell Tower holocaust’.

The capitalisation or not makes all the difference. And I’m certain that the vast majority of people recognise the difference and have no difficulty understanding what is meant in each case.

All just my opinion only.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 09:09 PM

I don't "want" the word to have one meaning but I do argue for the democratic evolution of language and the words therein. I'm very uncomfortable with your notion of European Jews "cornering the market." For the third time, the Hebrew language prefers Shoah to Holocaust, so there's no "cornering" going on from their perspective. More widely, there is a perceived issue this side of the pond that you yanks like to play rather fast and loose with some terminology that we Europeans are a bit more reticent about (you and your "free speech..."). That is not for this thread, though it seems to reflect in your attitude here, but I'll gladly take you on another time...

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 08:51 PM

Steve, You may want the word "Holocaust" to have one meaning, but just try enforcing it. I don't happen to think that European Jews can corner the market on that kind of genocide and misery. As has been noted (or I noticed somewhere else in my reading while working on this) the Armenians slaughtered by Turks at the turn of the last century have used the word also. And in other corners of the world (to say nothing of the slaughter of the native populations in the US) many may have dibs on that term. And quibbling about "widely" or not, is up to you. I stand by my earlier statements.

There are way more White Supremacists here in the US than I ever thought possible—but Trump open that Pandora's box and they came pouring out. What they kept privately to themselves before they openly reveal in public now. It is astonishing.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 02:23 PM

"America is a nation of white supremacists", that exaggeration definitely qualifies as bullshit so it's in the right section.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 02:21 PM

You didn't say "not *widely* used," Maggie. Twice in this thread you've said it wasn't used until the 1970s (it's there in your posts). However, I'm not sticking with this because I want an argument (I would rather not argue with you in the open), but because I think it's important to acknowledge that the use of "the Holocaust" to characterise the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis goes back much further than the 1970s, even if the greater exclusivity of that usage took time to set in. As I said, that is how language evolves and it is not a case of co-option or appropriation. If we accept, incorrectly, that the word wasn't used in this way until the 1970s, we might just be suggesting that there's something a bit trendy about it and that it's thereby just grand to keep bandying the word round in unrelated contexts - I for one don't think it is, and I think that would be seen in some circles as disrespectful and even vexatious. I repeat: the Hebrew language prefers "Shoah." If there's any opportunism in adopting "the Holocaust" for the slaughter, it doesn't come from the Jews.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 02:04 PM

Oh, Donuel, rethink that. We are not in the "latter stage with our treatment/murder of Black kids by police and the systemic lack of treatment for black infants and mothers." We may be in the *beginning* stages but we have not yet been desensitized. Saying or believing otherwise is just another instance of belittling the 'great sadness'.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: robomatic
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 01:58 PM

Power Corrupts. So Does Weakness.

Regarding "Holocaust". I grew to awareness of this unhappy history as a youth in the 60s. I specifically remember (and by 'remember' I mean in the personal sense) being emotionally involved by a documentary called "Let My People Go" narrated by Richard Basehart. This was in the 60s and the "H" word was NOT used. It was in the late 60s that I first heard this association which as far as I know evolved as opposed to being specifically labeled as THE WORD for it. The Hebrew word "Shoah" came much later for me, closer to when the movie of the same name came out.

As to the recent documentary, I watched it and was very impressed, partly by its detail, its excellent writing and attention to detail, and the fact that I COULD watch it. Also that there was a lot to learn.
I think the Burns brothers have been brilliant by and large, and my initial reaction to the documentary is that it's as good as anything they've ever done, including my favorite, THE CIVIL WAR, (about the American Civil War 1860-1865).

I did not conclude the U.S. was an evil actor. I think they made many points about the overall complexity of the issue and that different people within and without the United States influenced events through their different perceptions and concerns.

I think the U.S. concern over the Holocaust is to our credit, as something so compellingly horrible in the human experience that it must be acknowledged and studied as part of the growth experience of our species. That is why We Americans have our own museums to it, with our own take on it, and the Israelis have Yad Vashem. And the Germans have theirs.

Power corrupts. So does weakness.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 01:38 PM

America is a nation of white supremacists with as many as 1/3 of us supporting right wing bigotry. Trump calls them 'my people'.
As I've mentioned, It Can Happen Here. Not suddenly but in stages, like it happened in Germany and Poland. It seriously starts in the Courts removing rights and citizenship. It didn't start with gas chambers and the Einsatzgruppen killing squads or even the Ghettos. Among loyal Nazis, as a real citizen, it became acceptable to be a Jewish baby killer. Shooting, throwing from heights or new original ways of murder was not uncommon and considered a 'minor' offense that punished adult Jews in multiple ways.

If you think about it the USA is in that latter stage with our treatment/murder of Black kids by police and the systemic lack of treatment for black infants and mothers. Their mortality rates are off the charts.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 12:39 PM

True, but they've made a dent. As of October 2019, Google celebrated 15 years of Google Books and provided the number of scanned books as more than 40 million titles. Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world, and stated that it intended to scan all of them.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 12:02 PM

This is starting to come back to me, after that mini-series I referenced above aired there was an explosion of interest in the Holocaust here in the U.S. and consequently a number of magazine and newspaper articles were written about it and Elie Wiesel started appearing on late night talk shows quite frequently. That's when the term first gained wide spread use in the DMV area. I remember being surprised at how many people had been unaware of what transpired in Europe in the 30's and 40's or only had a vague awareness of it until that television event appeared.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Rain Dog
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 11:51 AM

Google have not yet scanned every book in existence.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 11:22 AM

I did not need correcting, Steve. I was correct - it was not WIDELY used until the 1970s, regardless of what Wikipedia says about the incidental uses up until the 1970s. Before that, the term was specific to a few users. Until 1965 it was a flat red line. By the late 1970s, it gained traction. Again, look at the Ngram viewer. That is Google's scan of every book in existence and looking at the use of individual words. The word with the capital H was not in common usage in that form until much later than the Nazi genocide.

That Wikipedia page is probably maintained by the Holocaust Museum library staff, who have no interest or need in defining when the word went into common usage for their purposes. My university library maintains Wikipedia pages on the topics where we hold in important collections and we do try to influence what things are called (for example the "Mexican-American War" is actually most correctly termed the "US-Mexico War" because "American" can mean all of the New World, not just the US in particular). Clearly some readers here encountered capital H Holocaust earlier than others. It started being used in publications in the mid-1960s, barely a blip, but it rises in use through the 70s. The case can be made that the book gillymor mentioned was the published start of that usage.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 09:42 AM

Vernacular does not mean cast in stone.

Wikipedia is an excellent resource that simply has to be used wisely and with insight. No-one is claiming that it's the last word on anything or that it's complete or error-free. If you're prepared to put in the effort you can check the references to the Wiki entry mentioned by Joe and me. Two things there: first, don't diss it before you've checked, and second, don't diss it unless you're prepared to make that effort. Personally, I have no particular reason to doubt the entries we mentioned. If you have such doubts, let us know with your reasons.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 07:52 AM

Holocaust is in the vernacular. At what day and hour? Who knows.
Wikipedia/truth by committee - never struck me as the ultimate source when (facts) can be bombed by deniers. But things change.

I remember the holocaust TV expose' in the mid 1950's.
Eisenhower must have had something to do with it. It was 'surreal' but I didn't know the meaning of that word at that age. I still can recall the images in black and white. My feelings were a frightened anger.
The feelings have not changed over the decades.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 06:39 AM

Holocaust TV mini series from 1978.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 06:25 AM

We were using holocaust to describe the Nazi genocide back in the sixties when I was a teenager in Montgomery County Maryland. I first encountered the term when a friend's mother gave me the book "Holocaust Kingdom" by Alexander Donat which was published in 1965 and is a surprisingly uplifting account of the author's journey through the terror. She was from Poland and survived the camps but most of her family did not. I don't think the term came into wide usage in the U.S. until some time in the 70's after the airing of a TV movie about it.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 05:24 AM

Thank you for gently correcting Maggie, Joe! Whilst it's true that "The Holocaust" unqualified has overwhelmingly been used since the 1970s only for the Nazi genocide of Jews, the word had been widely been used for that purpose since WW2, though perhaps not so exclusively. The wiki article mentions its use in the NYT in 1943 for the said genocide, for example. I'm not happy to see terms with slight pejorative undertones such as "appropriated" or "co-opted" to describe what is simply the evolution of language. In fact, in the Hebrew language the word "shoah" is the preferred term. Whether we approve or not, if we refer to "holocaust/the holocaust/The Holocaust" in almost any context today, it unavoidably invokes in the mind the Nazi genocide of the Jews. It's another example of how language works and the process is very democratic. We can all try to cling on to our sacred old meanings of words but it's generally a losing battle. In this case, I also think the loose use of "holocaust" in other contexts risks being disrespectful, as I say, devaluing the memory of the horrors of the Nazi genocide.

All just my opinion only.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Sep 22 - 02:50 AM

The Wikipedia article on the word is quite interesting. Holocaust (Greek for burnt offering) was used in 1895 to describe the massacre of Armenians, but it was used as early as 1939 to refer to the Nazi massacre of Jews.
Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning calamity, came into use about the same time..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust?wprov=sfla1

When I was a Theology student in the 1960s, "holocaust" was a specific term used to denote the most solemn of the sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem, in which the victim was completely burned. It was a Greek translation of the Hebrew word " 'ola." The Greek word, holocaust, was used in many places in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Scriptures in 150 B.C.E. The connection to the extermination and incineration of Jews during World War II is obvious. (edited 22 Sept 2022)

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 11:59 PM

I will have to disagree. "Holocaust" wasn't used in this context until the 1970s, decades after the genocides that Don referenced. The word was appropriated to this use and has stood the test of time, so it is The Word. But it wasn't always the word. Just like "gay" didn't always refer to the LGBTQ community. The current usage has largely coopted the word.

So says the English major, just mulling on the transition of the meaning of a particular word. If you click on the NGram link and look at the Case-Sensitive link (and then at the three words on the far right - holocaust, Holocaust, and HOLOCAUST) you'll see that difference I was talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 10:03 PM

I agree -totally- with Steve Shaw. No other word that we currently use so absolutely refers to one signal event. If 'shoah' becomes as immediately identifiable as this one I too will adopt it.

I object to any statement that brings up petty niceties, what-abouts and what-ifs in the conversation.

I referred to 'atrocities' in the opening post. That will do unless and until another such blanket moral catastrophe occurs.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 07:57 PM

That is, quite simply, a troll post. My sentiments in this thread are to be one hundred percent respectful to the victims, and the descendants of victims, of the Holocaust, as any reasonable person would see from my posts.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 07:24 PM

Then cease posting gay/happy/jolly/merry in a Holocaust thread.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 07:13 PM

My view is that we should fully respect the wishes of the descendants of those millions of victims of Nazi atrocities as to how they wish to refer to the event. Most of us know straight away what is being referred to when we speak of the Holocaust with the capital H. But if Shoah is the preferred term, we should respect that too.

Subject: RE: BS: The U.S. and the Holocaust
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 07:03 PM

The only word first introduced at the Nuremberg trials was the word 'genocide'. Genos--people, cide--death
In the years immediately after World War II, Yiddish-speaking Jews and survivors of Nazi persecution called the murder of the Jews the ?urban (“Destruction”), the same word used to denote the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.

In Israel and France, Sho?ah, a biblical Hebrew word meaning “catastrophe,” became the preferred term for the event, largely in response to director Claude Lanzmann’s influential nine-and-a-half-hour 1985 motion picture documentary of the same name. The term Sho?ah is also preferred by speakers of Hebrew and those wishing to be more particular about the Jewish experience or who are uncomfortable with the religious connotations of the word Holocaust.

In the US many liberals say "this is not who we are". Historically we have been anti-immigrant and murderous to other races. This is who we have been and in many cases, this is who we are.