שואה (sho'ah) — catastrophe; the Holocaust

Etymology

The word שואה derives from the root ש.א.ה, meaning to become desolate or emptied out. In biblical Hebrew the verb שָׁאָה appears in Isaiah 6:11 — "until cities are desolate without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate" — and the noun שׁוֹאָה appears in Zephaniah 1:15 in a list of terms for the day of divine wrath: "a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness." Throughout the medieval period the word continued to serve Hebrew writers as a poetic term for catastrophe and destruction. Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid, the great vizier of Muslim Granada, used it in a poem in the early 11th century, and it appears in an 1865 Jerusalem newspaper mourning a communal bereavement.

When Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933 and anti-Jewish decrees began, there was no single term for the unfolding catastrophe. Chaim Nachman Bialik, speaking in Tel Aviv in 1933 before departing for the operation from which he would not return, used שואה not for the persecution in Germany but for the hypothetical disaster that would befall the Yishuv if foreign labor replaced Jewish workers. The credit for first applying שואה specifically to the Nazi persecution of Jews belongs to writer and editor Yehuda Erez, who wrote in his column "Tzror Mikhtavim" in December 1938 (following Kristallnacht): "Our communities are shaken to the foundations because of the שואה that has descended upon German Jewry."

Before World War II even began, the word circulated in the ultra-Orthodox Hebrew press to describe the disaster befalling German Jews, and appeared sporadically in secular periodicals. When the war broke out and the persecution spread to Poland, שואה entered the mainstream secular press: Ha'aretz used it in September 1939, and the newspaper Davar used it in its editorial the same week. By the 1940s, as the full scale of the genocide became known and the Yishuv's leaders officially recognized what was happening, "השואה" became the established term.

Not everyone accepted the word. Poet Uri Zvi Greenberg dedicated his 1955 Bialik Prize acceptance speech to denouncing it as a secular evasion: "Secular feelings and desires of degenerate segments of the people drove them to cling to this wretched and false expression: Shoah." Despite his objection, Hebrew speakers continued using שואה — both for the destruction of European Jewry and for catastrophes in general, including the Armenian Genocide. The compound שואה אקולוגית (ecological shoah/holocaust) appeared in the 1960s as a calque of English "Ecological Holocaust." In more recent decades, the word has also entered colloquial Israeli speech as hyperbolic slang for trivial inconveniences ("What a Shoah — we're out of cornflakes!"). The English loanword "Holocaust," derived from Greek (holos "whole" + kaustos "burned"), became widely used in English after the 1978 television miniseries of that name.

Key Quotes

"יוֹם עֶבְרָה הַיּוֹם הַהוּא יוֹם צָרָה וּמְצוּקָה יוֹם שֹׁאָה וּמְשׁוֹאָה יוֹם חֹשֶׁךְ וַאֲפֵלָה יוֹם עָנָן וַעֲרָפֶל" — Zephaniah 1:15

"יישובינו מזועזעים עד היסוד בגלל השואה שהתחוללה על ראשי יהדות גרמניה" — Yehuda Erez, Tzror Mikhtavim, December 1938

"שואה מחרידה ירדה על מיליונים של יהודי פולין, שואה העולה בהיקפה ובמוראותיה על כל הניסיונות אשר נתנסינו בהם בשנים האחרונות" — Davar editorial, September 1939

Timeline

• Biblical period: שואה used to denote divine destruction and desolation (Zephaniah, Isaiah)
• Early 11th century: Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid uses שואה in poetry as a term for catastrophe
• 1865: Ha-Levanon, first Hebrew newspaper in the Land of Israel, uses the word for a communal bereavement
• 1933: Bialik uses שואה for hypothetical communal disaster — not for Nazi persecution
• December 1938: Yehuda Erez first applies שואה to the Nazi persecution of Jews
• September 1939: Ha'aretz and Davar adopt the word for the Nazi assault on Polish Jews
• 1940s: "השואה" becomes the standard term in the Yishuv for the genocide
• 1955: Uri Zvi Greenberg denounces the word in his Bialik Prize speech
• 1960s: שואה אקולוגית (ecological holocaust) enters Hebrew as a calque
• 1978: English "Holocaust" gains wide currency after the TV miniseries
• Recent decades: שואה used colloquially as hyperbole for trivial mishaps

Related Words

• חורבן — destruction, ruin (earlier Hebrew term for catastrophe; also used for the Temple's destruction)
• אסון — disaster, calamity
• שואת הארמנים — the Armenian Genocide (standard Hebrew phrasing)
• Holocaust — the English equivalent (Greek: "wholly burned")