Holocaust

Today the term is almost always used to refer to incarceration and murder of the six-million European Jews by the Nazi regime in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Bergen-Belsen.

The word is derived from two Greeks words, holo, "whole" and kaustos, "burnt," and was used in the Septuagint for the "burnt offering" (Lev 6:23). Figuratively, it referred to any wholesale sacrifice. Its use to refer to the Jewish catastrophe began in the late 1970's.

The holocaust raised many issues about evil and where was God when it happened. As one author put it, "After Auschwitz it is impossible to believe in God." An article discussing these and other related questions is being prepared.

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Resources:

The Open University (Open on Phone) offers a free course on the Holocaust, with a free statement of participation on completion of the course. If you wish to read the course material itself without signing up for the course, you can download the course's pdf (Open on Phone)

Michael C. Docker, "'Why Did He Lose Six Million Jews?'" Baptist Ministers' Journal 261 (Jan. 1998): 9-14.
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John J. Johnson, "A New Testament Understanding of the Jewish Rejection of Jesus: Four Theologians on the Salvation of Israel," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43/2 (June 2000): 229-246.
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John J. Johnson, "Should the Holocaust Force Us to Rethink our View of God and Evil?" Tyndale Bulletin 52.1 (2001):118-128.
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