holocaust [ME] A holocaust was originally a sacrificial offering burned completely on an altar, from Greek holokauston, from holos ‘whole’ and kaustos ‘burned’. From the 18th century it could also mean ‘a great slaughter or massacre’, and this is the sense most widely known today. The Holocaust was the mass murder of more than 6 million Jews and other persecuted groups under the German Nazi regime between 1941 and 1945. The term was introduced by historians during the 1950s, but as early as 1942 newspapers were referring to the killing of Jews by the Germans as ‘a holocaust’. The Hebrew equivalent is sō'āh or Shoah, literally ‘catastrophe’, which is sometimes used in English.