Commemorating Days of Remembrance

  • Published
  • By Master Sergeant Paul Gomez
  • 163d RW/Equal Opportunity Office
MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, CALIF. --  The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust and created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent living memorial to the victims. 

This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day is Tuesday, April 21. The Holocaust was Hitler's idea for the deliberate and systematic execution of the Jewish race. In 1935, Hitler stripped away the rights of all Jewish citizens by enacting the Nuremburg laws. 

On November 9, 1938 violence against Jews broke out across the German empire. It appeared to be unplanned, set off by German's anger over the assassination of a German official in Paris by a Jewish teenager, all carefully organized German propaganda. 

Within a few days, over 1,000 synagogues were burned and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were looted. By 1942, six large extermination camps were located in Poland. 

By the end of the war, there were an estimated 15,000 work and death camps. The combined death toll, including all races and religions affected, is estimated between nine and eleven million. 

Remembrance obligates us not only to memorialize those who were killed, but also to reflect on what could have been done to save them. 

Those who survived tell us that as many faced their deaths, their last words were "Remember us. Tell our story." 

Survivors promised that they would and that never again would the world stand silent or look the other way. 

Please take a moment to remember and honor those who died in this great tragedy. 

(Information gathered from the Holocaust encyclopedia)