PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2017-01-23 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Is 'Snowflake' a Nazi Term for the Remains of Cremated Victims? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • In November 2016, the Collin's Dictionary included the term snowflake generation as one of its top ten words of the year (although technically, this is a phrase, not a word). It came with the following definition: Not long afterward, internet rumors appeared asserting that the etymology of the word snowflake (at least, as a semi-pejorative term rather than the politically neutral word for an an actual flake of snow) actually dates back to World War II, when it was used by Nazi soldiers to refer to the human remains of people who were incinerated in crematoriums: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum told us that they were not familiar with Nazi soldiers using the term snowflake, and the education team at the Illinois Holocaust Museum also said that they were unaware of the term being used during the Holocaust. So where did this rumor come from? The only source we could find that identified snowflake as a Nazi term was the Racial Slur Database: However, this entry is unreliable. The Racial Slur Database carries a disclaimer at the bottom of the web site stating that the entries were created entirely from data gleaned off the 'net and via submissions from people like you and your parents. It's supposed to be funny and/or informational. Calm down. While the movie Schindler's List did include a scene where human remains fall from the sky like snow, nobody used the term snowflake to derisively refer to people who were killed and cremated: Emily Brewster, lexicographer and associate editor at Merriam-Webster, said that snowflake has been used as an insult since the Civil War, but evolved from a different context and never had anything to do with Germany's National Socialists party: A related derogatory term, snowball, appears in in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms from 1848, but again, has nothing to do with Nazi Germany: We have found no record of the term snowflake being used by Nazi soldiers in reference to human remains. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url