The secular word HOLOCAUST: scholarly myths, history, and 20th ...

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JON PETRIEevent with meaning, and the meaning carries deep religious, Judeo-Christianconnotations … Holocaust means sacri ce, God, purpose.” And the WiesenthalCenter claims: “The term ‘Holocaust’—literally meaning ‘a complete burnedsacri ce’—tends to suggest a sacri cial connotation to what occurred.” 3The rst objective of this essay is to demonstrate that “holocaust” was inbroad secular use well before World War II and that for the last 90 years or so“holocaust”—within a secular context and unmodi ed by religious words—hasnot carried any connotations of Judeo-Christian religious sacri ce. A majorclaim of this essay is that much of the scholarly writing on the connotations andhistory of the word “H/holocaust” is perniciously misleading or perniciouslyincorrect. Berenbaum and others, do state that our conscious and unconsciousunderstanding of the term “H/holocaust” affects how we understand the Jewishcatastrophe, or, in other words, that the term “H/holocaust” is a subtly distortinglens through which we view the tragedy. If this statement is accepted then itfollows that misrepresentations of the word’s history and connotation propagatedwithin the Holocaust Studies community have subtly in uenced the historiographyof the Jewish catastrophe, distorting the lens and “falsif[ying] the event.”Central to this essay and its attempt to overturn, refresh, and broadenunderstandings of the past and current meanings of “H/holocaust” is the idea thatthe name given to an event together with the understanding of that namesigni cantly effects the perception and understanding of the event. An experimentin the 1970s demonstrated the falsifying effects of a name on perception.Groups of 50 were shown a lm of a car accident and immediately afterwardsquestioned about the speed of the colliding vehicles. Those asked, “About howfast were the cars going when they smashed each other?” gave a mean speed 30percent higher than those asked, “About how fast were the cars going when theyhit each other?” A week later the viewers of the lm were asked if they had seenbroken glass at the accident scene. About a third of those asked the “smashed”question the week before remembered having seen broken glass; those asked the“hit” question were half as likely to remember broken glass. (No broken glasswas visible in the lm of the accident.) 4In the opinion of this writer, the implicit denial within the Holocaust Studiescommunity that “holocaust” had a signi cant secular history prior to its employmentas a referent to the Nazi Judeocide helps to support the idea that“h/Holocaust” can only be legitimately applied to the Nazi killings which, inturn, supports the pernicious ahistorical idea that since other massacres requirea different vocabulary, other massacres are incomparable to the Judeocide. Andthe repetition of the phantasm that the word “holocaust” carries “deep religiousJudeo-Christian connotations” helps to mystify the destruction of EuropeanJewry, subtly supporting a pernicious intellectual climate in which a well-regardedHolocaust historian can wonder if “the Holocaust … [is] an event whosemysteries were … meant to be understood.” The statements in the previous twosentences may not resonate with some readers but they are congruent with theresults of the “hit” and “smashed” experiment and they do mirror statements byscholars who, while perpetuating the idea that “H/holocaust” carries “Judeo-32
THE SECULAR WORD HOLOCAUSTChristian sacri cial overtones,” deplore what they claim are the effects of those“sacri cial overtones.” For example: “To turn the Jewish genocide into asacri ce makes it a ‘biblical’ event rather than an event of our time—a mythrather than a reality … ‘The Holocaust’ should not be isolated, labeled as suigeneris, the cataclysmic event, the discontinuity in history—all those things thatnecessarily follow when the Holocaust is seen as ‘The Holocaust.”’ 5That “holocaust” was in broad secular use before the Nazi killings is fairlyeasily shown, but to demonstrate convincingly the absence of Judeo-Christiansacri cial connotations in such secular use requires an extensive sample ofquotations. Presented below is a complete list of secular book and booklet titlescontaining “holocaust” published between 1900 and 1959 as per the WorldCatdata base and the British Library on-line catalogue. 6 This list is immediatelyfollowed by 14 quotations: every use of “holocaust” in the Palestine Post fromDecember 1937 through December 1938, and a small but representative samplingof later uses in the Palestine Post. 7 (The Palestine Post is on searchableCD-ROMs, so every use can be readily accessed. Excluded from the 1940sPalestine Post selections below are instances where “holocaust” denotes Jewishsuffering and death.)IThe Young Turks and the Truth about the Holocaust at Adna (1913—massacreof Armenians in 1909).The Holocaust and other Poems (1914—“Holocaust” in this title refers to theSan Francisco earthquake and re).The Holocaust in Minnesota (1918—great forest re).Fire from Holocaust to Bene cence: The Romance of Aryano and Semita(1918—“Holocaust” refers to a volcanic eruption; Aryano tames re).The Holocaust: Italy’s Struggle with the Hapsburg (1919—the oppression ofItaly in the 1800s, suffering and dying patriots).The Last Ditch: … the Minnesota holocaust … (1920—drainage and irrigationlaw, inequalities, the destruction of water resources).The Holocaust (1922—poem in memory of the Armenian massacres).The Smyrna Holocaust (1923—destruction of Christian neighborhoods by arson;the massacre of Armenians).Holocaust Poems (1944—World War II’s effects on England and the English).Holocaust at the Bar X (1952—potboiler Western).Holocaust at Sea (1956—account of a 1942 naval battle, the sinking of thebattleship Scharnhorst).World Law or World Holocaust (1957—address before the Oklahoma BarAssociation).Jungle Holocaust (date uncertain but 1950s—World War II in New Guinea).Holocaust! (1959—account of a 1942 re. A contemporary headline description:“Boston re death toll 440; night club holocaust laid to bus boy’s lightedmatch”—The New York Times, November 30, 1942, p 1).33
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