HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE WEEK
House Bill 4602
Sponsor: Rep. Marc Shulman
Committee: House Oversight and Operations
Complete to 4-20-01
A SUMMARY OF HOUSE BILL 4602 AS INTRODUCED 4-17-01
The bill would create a new act to establish the 27th day of the month of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar (or April 19) as Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the period beginning on the Sunday before that day through the following Sunday as the Days of Remembrance in this state, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and in honor of the survivors, as well as the rescuers and liberators.
The bill states:
The legislature recognizes that the horrors of the Holocaust should never be forgotten. The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to the murder of some 6,000,000 Jews, millions more, including the handicapped, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.
A key date in the history of the Holocaust is April 19, 1943, the beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, when Jews, using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted death camp deportation by the Nazis for 27 days. This date, which in the Hebrew calendar is the twenty-seventh day of Nisan, has been established by the United States Congress as a national Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the week surrounding this date has been established as the Days of Remembrance.
The bill says that the legislature encourages individuals, educational institutions, and social, community, religious, labor, and business organizations to pause on Holocaust Remembrance Day and during the Days of Remembrance and reflect upon the terrible events of the Holocaust, so that society will remain vigilant against hatred, persecution, and tyranny, and so that people will actively rededicate themselves to the principles of individual freedom in a just society.
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This analysis was prepared by nonpartisan House staff for use by House members in their deliberations, and does not constitute an official statement of legislative intent.