Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I appreciate Republican respect for the Jewish people. This day of 1981, President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation, Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust: 

"The Congress of the United States established the United States Holocaust Memorial Council to create a living memorial to the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Its purpose: So mankind will never lose memory of that terrible moment in time when the awful spectre of death camps stained the history of our world.

When America and its allies liberated those haunting places of terror and sick destructiveness, the world came to a vivid and tragic understanding of the evil it faced in those years of the Second World War. Each of those names – Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Treblinka and so many others – became synonymous with horror.

The millions of deaths, the gas chambers, the inhuman crematoria, and the thousands of people who somehow survived with lifetime scars are all now part of the conscience of history. Forever must we remember just how precious is civilization, how important is liberty, and how heroic is the human spirit.

Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it — and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples — the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.

As part of its mandate, the Holocaust Memorial Council has been directed to designate annual Days of Remembrance as a national, civic commemoration of the Holocaust, and to encourage and sponsor appropriate observances throughout the United States.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby ask the people of the United States to observe this solemn anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, with appropriate study, prayers and commemoration, as a tribute to the spirit of freedom and justice which Americans fought so hard and well to preserve."

Eight days later, in his first public appearance since an assassination attempt, the President said:

"This meeting, this ceremony has meaning not only for people of the Jewish faith, those who have been persecuted, but for all who want to prevent another Holocaust.

It was the Pope at the end of World War II when the world was so devastated, and yet, we alone remained so strong, who said, 'America has a genius for great and unselfish deeds, and into the hands of America, God has placed an afflicted mankind.' I think that that was a trust given to us that we should never betray. It is this responsibility as free people that we face today. It's this commitment among free people that we celebrate."

Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more Democrats will worry about the future of theirs. For more information, see www.grandoldpartisan.com. 

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Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

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