Holókauston
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
What does the word holocaust actually mean? Certainly the Holocaust is the genocide of the Jewish people. But where did the word come from? What does it actually mean?
Its earliest form is Holokauston, from holos meaning “whole”, and Kaustos meaning “burned”. Kaustos coming from kaiein, which means burn. Holokauston originally was a sacrifice, where the items where completely burned to ashes. This definition held through to the Latin holocaustum.
What some people may not know is that the word in its Latin form, holocaustum, was actually used before World War II. It was in the 1190’s when the term was used in specific reference to the massacre of Jewish people by the chroniclers Roger of Howden.
The word Holocauste is the French form, which was brought up during the war, and in the 1960’s the term Holocaust was appropriated by scholars to refer to the genocide of the Jewish people.
The Jewish community had disregarded the word holocaust instead, referring to the event by the biblical word Shoa, meaning “Calamity”.
Obviously the word carries a lot of weight for a lot of people, and its history is a very interesting one.
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