The Holocaust was the systematic, state-organized persecution and murder of at least six million Jews--as well as other targeted groups--by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. They slaughtered two-thirds of Europe's Jews and one-third of the world's Jewish population. In addition, Nazi Germany's genocidal policies destroyed millions of other defenseless people, including Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), Polish citizens, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other political and religious dissidents within Germany itself.

At least four terms name this immense tragedy, which continues to raise questions concerning why and how it happened. Masters of euphemistic language, the Nazis spoke of die Endlösung, the "Final Solution" of their so-called "Jewish question." In the early 1940s Eastern European Jews turned to Jewish scripture and used the Yiddish word churb'n, which means "destruction," or the Hebrew term sho'ah, which means "catastrophe," to name the disaster confronting their people.

Sho'ah is widely used in Israel, and the official remembrance day for the Holocaust is called Yom ha-Sho'ah. However, "Holocaust," a term that began to achieve prominence in the 1950s, remains the most common term in the English-speaking world. It derives from the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which employs holokaustos for the Hebrew olah. Those biblical words refer to a completely consumed burnt offering. While the destruction perpetrated by Nazi Germany must be named lest it be forgotten, the problematic religious connotations surrounding the term "Holocaust" suggest that no name can do it justice.