What was the Holocaust ? Each year British society is invited to
observe 27 January as Holocaust Memorial Day. This date is the
anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp by the
Soviet Army on 27 January 1945. In Hebrew the stem of the word
Holocaust (olah) means 'burnt offering' and burnt offering is
translated into the Greek of the New Testament as holokautoma
(o]lokautwma). There have been implications in the past that
using the very word 'holocaust' or 'burnt offering' for the
atrocities of the Second World War could infer that the Jews
were sacrificed on behalf of the rest of the human race, thus
almost legitimising terrible acts of genocide. For this reason
many Jews prefer to use the word Sho'ah to describe the murder
of the Jews and other so called minorities during the Second
World War. The word Sho'ah simply means desolation, destruction
or catastrophe. During the war it is estimated that 2 million
Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen troops in the Soviet
Union, 3.5 million Jews were kill