What does the word Shoah mean?
Names of the Holocaust
Names of the Holocaust vary based on context. "The Holocaust" is the name commonly applied in English since the mid-1940s to the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. The term is also used more broadly to include the Nazis' systematic murder of millions of people in other groups, including ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, gay men, and political and religious opponents,[1] which would bring the total number of Holocaust victims to between 11 million and 17 million people.[2] In Judaism, Shoah (שואה), meaning "calamity" in Hebrew, became the standard term for the 20th-century Holocaust (see Yom HaShoah). This is because 'Holocaust' connotes a sacrifice, and Jewish leaders argue there was no sacrifice.
William Schabas
Schabas argues that the legal term "genocide" is a loaded one that should not be used to describe every atrocity involving mass killings. He argues that, in the strict legal sense, the only true "genocides" in recent history were the Armenian Genocide, the Jewish and Gypsy Holocaust, and the Rwandan Genocide. In his book "Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes" (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2009) he supports the view that Stalin's atrocities in the Ukraine, the killings of Slav and Soviet citizens under the Nazi occupation, and the Holodomor were not, legally, genocide. He has been criticized for denying the internationally recognized Srebrenica Genocide. In his book he summarizes the legal opinions regarding the status of the atrocities committed in Bosnia, deeming them ethnic cleansing and not genocide, stating that "Ethnic cleansing is also a warning sign of genocide to come. Genocide is the last resort of the frustrated ethnic cleanser." Schabas also criticises the United Nations General Assembly for recognising ethnic cleansing as genocide.