Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust

The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an annual eight-day period designated by the United States Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust. The annual DRVH period normally begins on the Sunday before the Israeli observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and continues through the following Sunday, usually in April or May. A National Civic Commemoration is held in Washington, D.C., with state, city, and local ceremonies and programs held in most of the fifty states, and on U.S. military ships and stations around the world. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designates a theme for each year's programs, and provides materials to help support remembrance efforts.

A House Joint resolution 1014 designated April 28 and 29 of 1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust". Senator John Danforth of Missouri, who originated the resolution, chose April 28 and 29 because it was on these dates that American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp and a number of its satellite camps in 1945, as well as rescuing hundreds of Jewish-ethnicity camp inmates driven southwards from Dachau by the Nazis on a death march only days later.

In 2005, the United Nations established a different date for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27—the day in 1945 when the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp—but the Yom HaShoah date of Nisan 27 on the Hebrew calendar continues as the date for the determination of the 8-day DRVH commemoration. This date also links the DRVH to the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

Background 6/22/1978 – OFFICIAL TITLE AS INTRODUCED: A resolution designating April 28 and 29 of 1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust". Senator John Danforth of Missouri, whom I commend for having originated the resolution, chose April 28 and 29, because it was on these dates, in 1945, that American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp

A resolution designating April 28 and 29 of 1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust". Senator John Danforth of Missouri chose April 28 and 29, because it was on these dates, in 1945, that American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

On 1 November 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed an Executive Order establishing the President's Commission on the Holocaust, to be chaired by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration in their memory.

Executive Order 12093, November 1, 1978: 1-201. The Commission shall submit a report to the President and the Secretary of the Interior containing its recommendation with respect to the establishment and maintenance of an appropriate memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust. 1-202. The Commission's report shall examine the feasibility of obtaining funds for creation and maintenance of the Memorial through contributions of the American people. 1-203. The Commission shall recommend appropriate ways for the nation to commemorate April 28 and 29, 1979, which the Congress has resolved shall be called "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust".

On April 24, 1979, in anticipation of the Commission's report, the first National Civic Commemoration was held in the Capitol Rotunda, with the address delivered by President Carter:

"Although words do pale, yet we must speak. We must strive to understand. We must teach the lessons of the Holocaust. And most of all, we ourselves must remember.

We must learn not only about the vulnerability of life, but of the value of human life. We must remember the terrible price paid for bigotry and hatred and also the terrible price paid for indifference and for silence....

To truly commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, we must harness the outrage of our memories to banish all human oppression from the world. We must recognize that when any fellow human being is stripped of humanity; when any person is turned into an object of repression; tortured or defiled or victimized by terrorism or prejudice or racism, then all human beings are victims, too.

The world's failure to recognize the moral truth forty years ago permitted the Holocaust to proceed. Our generation—the generation of survivors—will never permit the lesson to be forgotten."

On September 27, 1979, the Commission presented its report to the President, recommending the establishment of a national Holocaust memorial museum in Washington, D.C. with three main components: a national museum/memorial, an educational foundation, and a Committee on Conscience.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Council (USHMC) was established in 1980 by Public Law 96-388 to coordinate an annual, national civic commemoration of the DRVH in Washington, D.C.; to oversee the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and to provide support for State and local civic ceremonies in each of the fifty states. Since 1984, the United States military has also taken part in DRVH ceremonies.Days of Remembrance: A Department of Defense Guide for Annual Commemorative Observances, Second Edition, March 1989.

The first Council-sponsored DRVH national civic commemoration was held on April 30, 1981, in the White House. President Ronald Reagan, making his first public appearance after recovering from an attempted assassination, said:

"We remember the suffering and the death of Jews and all those others who were persecuted in World War II. ... We commemorate the days of April in 1945 when American and Allied Troops liberated Nazi death camps. ... The tragedy ... took place ... in our life time. We share the wounds of the survivors. We recall the pain only because we must never permit it to come again. ... Our spirit is strengthened by remembering and our hope is in our strength".

With some few exceptions, the annual National Civic Commemoration has taken place in the Capitol Rotunda, chosen as the appropriate venue, as described in these words by Senator Robert Byrd, the U.S. Senate Minority Leader, delivered during the 1986 ceremony:

"Today the Congress of the United States pauses in its deliberations to take part in the Days of Remembrance of victims of the Holocaust.

As we briefly lay aside the problems and the promises confronting our nation today to memorialize the supreme tragedy of more than forty years ago, there is no more appropriate location in which to do this than here in the Capitol Rotunda. This Rotunda is the symbol of all that the unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust tried to eliminate: human rights, individual liberties, the independence of nations living in freedom.

Our holding this ceremony here symbolizes the ultimate triumph of these values, which other democratic nations also cherish, over the unspeakable negation of those principles embodied by the Holocaust."

At the close of the 1987 commemoration, the words of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff's prayer expressed the goals of the DRVH in spiritual terms:

So, from the Holocaust, we learn: when we deny humanity in others, we destroy humanity within ourselves. When we reject the human, and the holy, in any neighbor's soul, then we unleash the beast, and the barbaric, in our own heart.

And, since the Holocaust, we pray: if the time has not yet dawned when we can all proclaim our faith in God, then let us say, at least, that we admit we are not gods ourselves. If we cannot yet see the face of God in others, then let us see, at least,

a face as human as our own.James P. Moore, Jr., The Treasury of American Prayer, Doubleday, New York:2008,115.

Defining the Holocaust

In 1979, the President's Commission on the Holocaust provided the following definition to help guide the Council and its observances:

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of state during the Second World War; as night descended, millions of other peoples were swept into this net of death. It was a crime unique in the annals of human history, different not only in the quantity of violence—the sheer numbers killed—but in its manner and purpose as a mass criminal enterprise organized by the state against defenseless civilian populations. The decision to kill every Jew everywhere in Europe: the definition of Jew as target for death transcended all boundaries....

The concept of the annihilation of an entire people, as distinguished from their subjugation, was unprecedented; never before in human history had genocide been an all-pervasive government policy unaffected by territorial or economic advantage and unchecked by moral or religious constraints....

The Holocaust was not simply a throwback to medieval torture or archaic barbarism, but a thoroughly modern expression of bureaucratic organization, industrial management, scientific achievement, and technological sophistication. The entire apparatus of the German bureaucracy was marshaled in the service of the extermination process.

The Department of Defense (DOD) used this definition as the foundation of goals for DRVH programs. In its Guide for Annual Commemorative Observances, stressing that remembrance programs must remember the horror of the Holocaust in specific anti-Jewish terms, but not only in those terms: remembrance programs must understand that the lessons of the Holocaust include a rejection of all forms of discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and hatred:

The Holocaust and Anti-Semitism

The Holocaust was an event contemporaneous in large part with World War II—but separate from it. In fact, the Final Solution often took precedence over the war effort—as trains, personnel, and material needed at the front were not allowed to be diverted from death camp assignments.

On a very basic level, therefore, the Holocaust must be confronted in terms of the specific evil of anti-Semitism—virulent hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. An immediate response to the Holocaust must be a commitment to combat prejudice wherever it might exist.

The Holocaust and Humanity

From the Holocaust, we begin to understand the dangers of all forms of discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry; hatreds which, in their extreme forms, can lead to mass slaughter and genocide—and, on the personal level, can endanger our ethical being.

From the Holocaust, we can learn the way evil can be commonplace and acceptable—so that no one takes a stand until it is too late.

From the Holocaust we can examine humans as victims and executioners, oppressors and liberators, collaborators and bystanders, rescuers, and witnesses.

From the Holocaust, we are reminded that humans can exhibit both depravity and heroism. The victims of Nazi persecution demonstrated tremendous spiritual fortitude and resistance. There was also the physical and spiritual heroism of those who risked their lives to save others.

From the Holocaust, we must remember the depths to which humanity might sink; but then we must remember, as well, the heights to which we might aspire.

On April 18, 2007, in a DRVH ceremony held in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, President George W. Bush delivered an address that linked definitions and words—including the "new word", genocide, that had come out of the Holocaust experience—to the challenge to remember: