From: hmemor@YOUTH.NET
Date: Mon Sep 02 2002 - 18:20:28 PDT
From: oni@uymail.com I was watching an old episode of star trek where Mr. Spock mentions a "Nuclear Holocaust", and I remembered when the term ceased to become a generic term for "fiery disaster" and became a specific reference to the genocide of Jews during WWII. Up until the 70's, the term was most often used to refer to the aftereffects of a nuclear war. Before that it simply referred to any conflagration, such as the Hindenburg, or Dresden, or Vesuvius; but in 1978, NBC released the mini-series "Holocaust" and the term quickly gained its current connotation. The demise of the term in reference to atomic war probably had a lot to do as well with the death of Brezhnev in 1982 and the corresponding winding down of cold war tensions. I watched the useage of the term change with interest, and I had supposed that the term was derived from a jewish or old testament mythology, so it seemed reasonable to me at that time that it had been appropriated for the current useage. That Star Trek reference sent me today to research the term on Google and I found that, "Holocaust" is Greek, not Hebrew, meaning roughly "totally burnt" (The roots are the same as those for Hologram and Caustic), and I found that there were simply thousands of web pages referring to the Holocaust, and nearly all of them had to do with the Jewish Genocide in one way or another. So the word had no intrinsic connection to Jews or genocide, but by now has become very strongly linked to both. I also found this discussion thread, which although pretty old by time of this posting, seemed so appropriate to me that I thought I would add the two cents worth of my own observations. In other words, if you are trying to identify the entry of the term "Holocaust" as a reference to the slaughter of Jews during WWII into the common vernacular, you need look no further than NBC, circa 1978. Llama256 oni@uymail.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> 4 DVDs Free +s&p Join Now http://us.click.yahoo.com/pt6YBB/NXiEAA/MVfIAA/r1FolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: timewitnesses-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/