Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1947, translation of German Endlösung, name given to Nazi Jewish policy from 1941.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (&lit final solution English) 2 (context historical English) The planned and attempted mass murder of the European Jews by the Nazis; the Holocaust.
WordNet
n. the Nazi program of exterminating Jews under Hitler [syn: Holocaust]
Wikipedia
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (, ) was a Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jews during World War II. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural terms by Nazi leadership on 20 January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust which saw the killing of 90 percent of Polish Jewry, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
No aspect of the Holocaust has been studied and debated as intensively as the nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp." Most historians agree, wrote Christopher Browning, that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental." In 1940, following the Fall of France, the Madagascar Plan was devised in order to relocate Europe's Jewish population to the French colony; the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons. In the first phase of the mass murder of Jews, wrote Raul Hilberg, the mobile killers pursued their victims across occupied territories; in the second phase, affecting all of Europe, the victims were brought to the killers at the centralized extermination camps built for this purpose.
Final Solution primarily refers to the Nazi plan to kill all the Jews in Europe which culminated in the Holocaust.
Final Solution(s) or The Final Solution may also refer to:
- The Final Solution (band)
- The Final Solution, a book written in 1953 by Gerald Reitlinger
- Final Solution (2001 film), a South African drama
- Final Solution (2003 film), an Indian documentary about the 2002 Gujarat Riots
- Final Solution (professional wrestler), a ring name of Robert "Jeep" Swenson
- The Final Solution (novel), a 2004 novel by Michael Chabon
- Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949, a 2016 book by David Cesarani
- Final Solutions, a 1993 play by Mahesh Dattani
- "Final Solution", a song by Black Label Society from The Blessed Hellride
- "Final Solution", a song by Rocket from the Tombs/ Pere Ubu
- "The Final Solution", a song by Sabaton from Coat of Arms
- Final Solution of the Czech Question, a Nazi Germany plan for a complete Germanization of Czech Lands
Final Solution is a 2004 documentary film directed by Rakesh Sharma concerning the 2002 Gujarat pogrom in which both Hindu and Muslims are targeted in the state of Gujarat by political extremists. In order to rationalize their violence, Hindu extremists had made the claim that their actions were in fact a "spontaneous response" to the Godhra Train Burning incident on 27 February 2002. But as the film proceeds with victims continuing to come forward and share their experiences, a more unsettling possibility seems to emerge- that far from being a spontaneous expression of outrage, the anti-Muslim violence had been carefully coordinated and planned.
An official estimate states that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed during the riots, with 223 more missing.
The documentary consists mostly of interviews, with both Muslims and Hindus, of multiple generations, and both sexes, with different views regarding the causes, justifications and the actual events of the violence that occurred, as well as their prospects for the future.
Final Solution is a 2001 film set in South Africa based on the real-life of Gerrit Wolfaardt, with themes of morality, tolerance, and forgiveness. Written and directed by Cristóbal Krusen, the title of the film comes from the Nazi Final Solution which was the inspiration of a plan with an apartheid motive in the film.
Usage examples of "final solution".
Do you suppose he cares how many imaginaries there are in the intermediate steps if they all square out into minus one in the final solution.
For instance, when, in 1990, world Jewish leaders convened at Wannsee, the lakeside villa where Hitler, Heydrich and others, nearly fifty years earlier, had drawn up the plans for their 'final solution' to the 'Jewish problem', the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wrote that the intention was to demonstrate that 'memory is stronger than its enemies .
If I were stocking a survival craft, would I offer a final solution?
And, like the Germans, they believe that the final solution must be arrived at by the Europeans themselves.
But without the final solution to do one more scouring and to replace the electrolytes in the brain, the microprocessor would not function properly.
That evening there would appear in all the evening papers a carefully worded account of how two Mordon scientists had been arrested and charged with murder and that the final solution of the theft of the Satan Bug was only hours away, and while it might, we hoped, lull the suspicions of the real killers, it wasn't advancing our cause very much.
That was what Broghuilio meant when he referred to the final solution.