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. Our challenge today is to insist that time will not become the Nazis‘ friend, that time will not fade our sense of specificity, the uniqueness of the Holocaust, that time will not lead us to make the Holocaust into an abstraction. Liberation depicts an American soldier carrying a survivor out of a concentration camp.

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Period of commemoration in the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DRVH

In 1984, the long-term efforts of a Navy Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, to convince the Department of Defense to participate in the national DRVH were successful. Also participating were World War II veterans from every state in the Union, who had served in divisions that helped liberate Nazi concentration camps.A book based on this conference, The Liberators of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1945, was published by the Council in 1987. Each year, the USHMM designates a special theme for DRVH observances, and prepares DRVH materials to support observances and programs throughout the nation. And you who have survived evil know that the only way to defeat it is to look it in the face and not back down.

Discuss these DRVH abbreviations with the community:

We must learn not only about the vulnerability of life, but of the value of human life. „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. 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. 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 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.

• The first Council-sponsored DRVH national civic commemoration was held on April 30, 1981, in the White House.
• 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.
• In 1984, the first official year of military involvement, Rabbi Seymour Siegel, Executive Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, met Vice Admiral Edward Martin, Commander, United States Sixth Fleet.
• From the Holocaust we can examine humans as victims and executioners, oppressors and liberators, collaborators and bystanders, rescuers, and witnesses.

Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust

In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration, ceremonies and educational programs during the week of the DRVH are regularly held throughout the country, sponsored by Governors, Mayors, veterans groups, religious groups, schools, and military ships and stations throughout the world. You who bear the tattoos of death camps hear the leader of Iran declare that the Holocaust is a myth. 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. 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. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designates a theme for each year’s programs, and provides materials to help support remembrance efforts.

DRVH

Our challenge today is to remember the Holocaust, for if we remember we will, as our soldiers did, look its evil in the face. Liberation is a testament to the Americans who liberated the camps, and it is a memorial to those who perished. Later, the Department of Defense, in cooperation with the United Holocaust Memorial Council, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, created the official Department of Defense Guide for remembrance ceremonies on all U.S. military ships and stations. In addition, government organizations often sponsor programs of their own, including an annual Federal Interagency Holocaust Remembrance Program, in Washington, D.C.

• 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.
• In addition to coordinating the National Civic Commemoration, ceremonies and educational programs during the week of the DRVH are regularly held throughout the country, sponsored by Governors, Mayors, veterans groups, religious groups, schools, and military ships and stations throughout the world.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Military participation

So this museum serves as a living reminder of what happens when good and decent people avert their eyes from hatred and murder. He said, „We are in the presence of a crime without a name.“ It is an apt description of the evil pinup aviator that followed the swastika. And these walls remind us that the Holocaust was not inevitable; it was allowed to gather strength and force only because of the world’s weakness and appeasement in the face of evil.

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. The Department of Defense (DOD) used this definition as the foundation of goals for DRVH programs. 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 DOD Guide included background information on the history of the DRVH and a sample ceremony for military installations. In 1984, the first official year of military involvement, Rabbi Seymour Siegel, Executive Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, met Vice Admiral Edward Martin, Commander, United States Sixth Fleet. Support for continued military involvement in this effort included the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, and both the first and second editions of the Department of Defense Guide included signed Presidential letters endorsing the effort. To document evidence of the Holocaust, so that, Eisenhower said, the time would never come when such atrocities could be denied, and reports about them could be regarded as mere propaganda.

These walls help restore the humanity of the millions who were loaded into trains and murdered by men who considered themselves cultured. From the Holocaust, we are reminded that humans can exhibit both depravity and heroism. From the Holocaust we can examine humans as victims and executioners, oppressors and liberators, collaborators and bystanders, rescuers, and witnesses. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 remember the terrible price paid for bigotry and hatred and also the terrible price paid for indifference and for silence….

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 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. 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.

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. For a number of years he had been making the case at many levels of military leadership that General Eisenhower had already initiated a remembrance program when, after U.S. forces liberated Ohrdruf (a sub-camp of Buchenwald), Eisenhower called for reporters from the U.S. and U.K. The first Council-sponsored DRVH national civic commemoration was held on April 30, 1981, in the White House. 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. 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. 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.