etymology - Who coined the term "Holocaust" to refer to the Nazi "final solution" for the Jewish people?


Before World War II the word "holocaust" referred most often to a huge inferno. Who first used the term to describe the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews? When and where?



Answer



In the sense of ‘the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis in the war of 1939–1945’, the OED says



The specific application was introduced by historians during the 1950s, probably as an equivalent to Hebrew ḥurban and shoah ‘catastrophe’ (used in the same sense); but it had been foreshadowed by contemporary references to the Nazi atrocities as a ‘holocaust’.



The earliest of those contemporary references is from this newspaper report in 1942:



Holocaust . . . Nothing else in Hitler's record is comparable to his treatment of the Jews . . . The word has gone forth that . . . the Jewish peoples are to be exterminated . . . The conscience of humanity stands aghast.


---News Chronicle, 5 December 1942, UK



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