Originally I had assumed that the term "holocaust" was associated exclusively with what, for lack of a better term, we all know of as "THE holocaust". I was reading Call of Cthulu today which as far as I know was written in the mid 1920s and stumbled upon the word "holocaust". It perplexed me that it predates Hitler's regime and yet had what appeared to be similar usage, and was wondering where and when the term originated from and how it exclusively got to be known in the context of Nazi Germany.