The U.S. Congress established Days of Remembrance Week as the nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust - a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany murdered six million European Jews and countless others in a vast system of concentration camps during World War II. This year, Days of Remembrance Week is observed from April 28 through May 5, 2019.
Prior to Germany's surrender and the end of World War II in Europe, the US Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany on April 11, 1945, exposing to the world the full scope of the unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps. Between July 1937 and April 1945, 250,000 persons from all countries of Europe were imprisoned in Buchenwald where at least 56,000 male prisoners were murdered. Upon liberation, the small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move.
We encourage all personnel to take part in their local Days of Remembrance commemoration to honor the memory those who perished as well as the US Soldiers who liberated those camps and defeated Nazi Germany.
Like those battle-hardened American Soldiers during World War II who defeated Hitler's much-feared Army and brought freedom to Europe, Soldiers in Eighth Army must always remain ready to "Fight Tonight" along "Freedom's Frontier."
Pacific Victors!
MICHAEL A. BILLS
Lieutenant General, USA
Commanding
JASON SCHMIDT
CSM, USA
Command Sergeant Major
Related Documents:
Days of Remembrance Observance Message (pdf) [PDF]
Social Sharing