Let's get rid of the word "Holocaust"

This has bothered me for years, but this is the first time I have seen it addressed anywhere. I was not sure if Jews knew what the word "holocaust" meant or not. I figured they were entitled to call the nearly successful attempt to exterminate them from the face of the earth whatever they chose.
But now I feel justified in refusing to misuse the word "holocaust" ever again. It is "Shoah" from now on.

As we recall the defeat of the Nazis and their collaborators sixty years ago it is also appropriate that we take a look at the single word that has come to define many of the horrendous events of that period -- Holocaust. Why? Because the word "Holocaust" is an inappropriate description of what occurred, an insult to the memory of those who were murdered, and a theological affront to Jews. Despite the fact that the English language calendar notes that "Yom HaShoah" translates to "Holocaust Remembrance Day", the Hebrew word "shoah" and the word "holocaust" (which comes from Greek) do not mean the same thing -- not even close. Shoah means a calamity or catastrophe, something devoid of the presence of God. It was this word, along with the word "hurban" (Hebrew for destruction), that was used by contemporary European Jews to describe what was happening all around them. Jewish documents and reports of that era also use the word shoah as did the pre-Israel Jewish government, the Jewish Agency for Palestine. And it is the word used in Israel today to describe the events. But the word holocaust means something very different. According to the Oxford English Dictionary holocaust is derived from the Greek words "holos" (whole) and "kaustos" (burnt). The first definition listed is "a sacrifice wholly consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering." The earliest uses of the term to describe the mass murder of the Jews of Europe goes back to the 1950s, although some sources can pinpoint such a use in the mid-1940s. The key words for this discussion are "sacrifice" and "offering" and as such this definition is fraught with theological implications. In using the word holocaust to describe the death of millions of Jews, for the crime of being Jews, the word holocaust really begs three very disturbing and interrelated questions: Who is being sacrificed; for what reason; and to whom? Are we to infer that millions of Jews were sacrificed to God? Did God accept this sacrifice? For the sake of argument, if the answers to the first two questions are "yes", we must then assume that the sacrifice had a purpose. If the answers to the first two questions are "no" we are left to wonder why we are using the word holocaust.

Right on so far, but the author's limitations become evident when she begins ruminating on Christianity.

Among Jews, for whom the end to the practice of human sacrifice was codified in the Book of Genesis when God provided Abraham with a ram in place of his son Isaac, the very notion of millions of lives given as an offering for any reason, and the acceptance by God of such an offering is not only abhorrent, it is theologically untenable. Yet for Christians, the idea of human sacrifice, or more accurately, one human's sacrifice for a higher purpose, is at the core of their belief. From the Christian perspective does the death of so many Jews have a higher purpose? Was it God's plan that Jews should continue to be punished for the crime of refusing to accept Jesus as their Messiah? Can the Christian belief in the sacrifice of the Jew who has come to be known as Jesus of Nazareth, and his transcendence through death, be extended down through the centuries to include every Jew, perhaps his familial, but not his theological descendants? Christians are comfortable with the concept of physical and spiritual destruction and rebirth. Indeed Christians might feel at ease with the premise that so many Jews were destroyed and then reborn in the form of the State of Israel. Not only does it absolve them of complicity in the Shoah and the centuries of persecution, murder, segregation, and forced conversions to Christianity that preceded it, but it serves as a means of fulfillment of their prophecies.

UGH! That seems to be a particularly offensive twisting of Christian belief, (Quick! Call the Anti-Catholic Defamation League!) but that is the way the world works. The important point is we should not misuse "holocaust", regardless of the reason.