Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Carry_Okie
I'm not sure of the point you are trying to make.

I would say that the Jewish Holocaust was a disaster that killed 6 million Jews. It seems that you would accept the word "Shoah" to describe this.

I would say that the Abortion era has been a disaster that has killed 50 million people. Would I be justified in using the term "Shoah" for this disaster? Could I use the word "holocaust"?

On a strictly numerical basis, one might say that the Abortion disaster is nearly ten times greater than the Jewish Holocaust -- but numbers are not everything, and I see no advantage to anyone saying this atrocity is worse than that atrocity. These atrocities are simply terrible and neither needs to win "the prize" of being the worst.

I am also reminded of the child sacrifices to Moloch, and how people who did not know God would throw children into the flames as burnt offerings.

Personally, I think that Mike Adams is justified in calling the Abortion disaster a "holocaust".

12 posted on 03/19/2012 6:55:55 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy ("And the public gets what the public wants" -- The Jam)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]


To: Carry_Okie; Kaslin; ClearCase_guy
You assert that that the word "holocaust" to describe the Nazi mass-murder of Jews was "a cynical invention of an anti-Semitic media."

Evidence shows that the origins of this term, as applied to the Jews, are neither cynical nor anti-Semitic.

The term 'holocaust' was used as early as 1852, to mean masses of people killed in a revolution; it was used in 1867 referring to all of the Africans horribly slaughtered in the name of European imperialism.

In 1943, in an ad taken out in the New York Times, the New Zionist Organization of America demands the establishment of a free, Jewish state in Palestine. They note that Jews around the world are fighting alongside the Allied forces in this "holocaust of blood and sweat and tears." This usage of holocaust refers more to the war in general rather than to the specific actions taken by the Nazis against the Jews.

The first mention of the holocaust to refer specifically to the slaughter of the Jews occurs in an obituary the deceased Benjamin Winter, who tirelessly worked on behalf of Polish Jewry. Written in 1944, this obituary decries the fact that the Jews were suffering immensely "during the present holocaust which has destroyed more than two millions of its number."

So for almost 100 years, English-speaking people have been using the word "holocaust" simply to mean atrocious slaughter or mass murder.

No irony, no anti-Semitism implies.

The same slaughter in mid-20th-century, when capitalized and using the definite article ("The Holocaust") means the same as "the Shoah," "the Churban" (a rare Yiddish usage) or "The Final Solution".

34 posted on 03/19/2012 8:53:06 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Mit brennender Sorge)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

To: ClearCase_guy

” Would I be justified in using the term “Shoah” for this disaster?”

Yes.


52 posted on 03/19/2012 4:27:26 PM PDT by Jewbacca (The residents of Iroquois territory may not determine whether Jews may live in Jerusalem.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson