What is the origin of the word Holocaust?
Names of the Holocaust
The word "holocaust" originally derived from the Greek word "holokauston", meaning "a completely ("holos") burnt ("kaustos") sacrificial offering," or "a burnt sacrifice offered to a god." In Greek and Roman pagan rites, gods of the earth and underworld received dark animals, which were offered by night and burnt in full. The word "holocaust" was later adopted in Greek translations of the Torah to refer to the olah, standard communal and individual sacrificial burnt offerings that Jews were required to make in the times of the Beit HaMikdash (Temple in Jerusalem). In its Latin form, "holocaustum", the term was first used with specific reference to a massacre of Jewish people by the chroniclers Roger of Howden and Richard of Devizes in England in the 1190s.
Moshe Meiselman
Following the opinion of some Haredi thinkers in the area of Holocaust theology, Meiselman has argued that the Holocaust was the result of Jewish cultural assimilation in Western Europe in the early twentieth century. He writes that "the turning away from the status of an "'am ha-nivhar", a chosen people, and the frightening rush toward assimilation were, according to the rules that govern Jewish destiny, the real causes for the Holocaust".