Holocaust, Hebrew Shoʾah, Yiddish and Hebrew Ḥurban (“Destruction”), the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this “the final solution to the Jewish question.” The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing program—the extermination camps—the bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires.

Robert Jay Lifton - "Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Doctors and the Holocaust"

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•Sep 18, 2014

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OSU - School of History, Philosophy, and Religion

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Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College, City University of New York, is renowned in three disciplines: history, psychology, and sociology. His honors include the Gandhi Peace Award (1984), the National Book Award for sciences (1969), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history (1987). Among Lifton's more than twenty books are two major contributions to Holocaust literature: The Nazi Doctors and The Genocidal Mentality. In his lecture during HMW 1996, Lifton combined insights from these two works.