It comes from the Greek word holokauston, which means "wholly burned", and is used to describe Jewish burnt animal sacrifices. Incidentally, some scholars of the Holocaust prefer to use the Hebrew word Shoah, which means "ruin" or "destruction", because they do not view the destruction of the Jews as a sacrifice, which the term "holocaust" implies.

"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."

"The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλÏŒκαυστον (holókauston): holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as (Ha-)Shoah (Hebrew: השואה), Churben (Yiddish: חורבן), is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a programme of deliberate extermination planned and executed by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) regime in Germany led by Adolf Hitler." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust Many AB questions and answers dealing with it here: http://www.answerbag.com/c_view/1732

Based on the origin with its meaning of "sacrifice by fire", the Holocaust as it pertains to WW2 is used completely out of context. The sacrifices that were being made during the holocaust rituals were 1) voluntary sacrifices by Jews, and 2) the sacrifices were animals. The context of the "Holocaust" as it pertains to WW2 is that the Nazis were the ones doing the "sacrificing" and the Jews were the "sacrificial animals" - and their participation was anything but voluntary. Obviously, this is completely opposite of the intended meaning of "holocaust". Yet, it's the Jews (Zionists, actually) that are pushing this out-of-context event. Why would they place so much importance on something so grossly inaccurate? The answer is that it produces sympathy. You people who get caught up in the "poor Jews" narrative are having your emotions played like a fiddle. You're being exploited into supporting a political movement, not unlike Black Lives Matter in the way it works. Zionism feeds off of sympathy because sympathy is one of the most successful (and dangerous) tools for controlling how people think and act. If you truly care about the Jews and what happened to them you'd educate yourselves on what Zionism really is and how it was these "Jewish intellectuals" who threw the German Jews (and eventually Jews of other nationalities) under the bus.

The word is originally a Bible word for "burnt offerings," In Greek the word is "holokauston."