- holocaust
- mid-13c., "sacrifice by fire, burnt offering," from Gk. holokauston, neut. of holokaustos "burned whole," from holos "whole" (see safe (adj.)) + kaustos, verbal adj. of kaiein "to burn." Originally a Bible word for "burnt offerings," given wider sense of "massacre, destruction of a large number of persons" from 1833. The Holocaust "Nazi genocide of European Jews in World War II," first recorded 1957, earlier known in Heb. as Shoah "catastrophe." The word itself was used in English in reference to Hitler's Jewish policies from 1942, but not as a proper name for them.
"Auschwitz makes all too clear the principle that the human psyche can create meaning out of anything." [Robert Jay Lifton, "The Nazi Doctors"]