Who used the term holocaust first before using it for killing of Jews?

Answer 1

As far as can be established, the word 'Holocaust' (actually 'a holocaust', not 'the Holocaust') was first used in the (London) News Chronicle in November 1942 to describe the extermination of the Jews.

The word 'genocide' was first used in print in 1944. However, the term Holocaust was not widely used for the Nazi genocide of the Jews till the late 1970s following the broadcast of the TV miniseries with that title. (It is sometimes said the use of the term for the Nazi genocide of the Jews was popularized by Elie Wiesel from the late 1950s on).

Note the term Holocaust does not refer only to murder in death camps, but also to mass open-air shootings (of which there were many in Eastern Europe) and to deliberate starvation in ghettos.

Answer 2

The first death camp in the sense of an extermination camp designed specifically and only for the Holocaust was Chelmno (Kulmhof), which used mobile gas vans. It became operational on 8 December 1941.

These two extermination camps were based on existing concentration camps:

• Auschwitz-Birkenau
• Majdanek (which was used as a back-up 'facility')

These three were built specifically for the mass murder of Polish Jews, but other victims were also murdered there:

• Treblinka II
• Belzec
• Sobibor

In addition, during the war conditions at many "ordinary" camps deteriorated, but they didn't carry out large-scale, routine gassings.

An extermination camp was a concentration camp with facilities designed for mass murder and served no other purpose.

Answer 3

It seems that it was first used in this sense in English in December (?) 1942, by the London News Chronicle in an article on the sytematic Nazi massacre of the Jews, but at that stage it was not as a proper noun with a capital letter. Dictionaries of etymology don't credit anyone with the first recorded use ... (It was also used of the Ottoman massacres of the Armenians).

Elie Wiesel is sometimes credited with having coined or at least popularized the word in the late 1950s in its modern sense as a noun referring specifically to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. However, the word (in this sense) was not widely used till after the airing of the TV miniseries in 1978 entitled "Holocaust".

Answer 4

"The word itself was used in Eng. in ref. to Hitler's Jewish policies from 1942, but not as a proper name for them". http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=holocaust&searchmode=none The word was first used as a proper noun for the Nazi genocide of the Jews in 1957 but was not widely used till the late 1970s. Genocide itself did not become a word until 1944!

Answer 5

The word has been in use for centuries in English two senses: # Great destruction, especially fire. # Whole burnt offering, burnt sacrifice. There is no known first user.