R 161932Z APR 20
MARADMIN 237/20
MSGID/GENADMIN/CMC WASHINGTON DC MRA MP//
SUBJ/2020 HOLOCAUST DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE//
REF/A/PUBLIC LAW 96-388/07Oct80/AN ACT TO ESTABLISH THE UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COUNCIL//
REF/B/UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM/WWW.USHMM.ORG//
REF/C/JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBRARY/WWW.JEWISHVIRTUALLIBRARY.ORG/“HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF DACHAU”//
REF/D/VIDEO/U.S. MILITARY DOCUMENTARY FILM/“NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS” (1945)//
REF/E/VIDEO/NETFLIX SERIES/TITLE: “FIVE CAME BACK”/EPISODE 3: “THE PRICE OF VICTORY”//
REF/F/VIDEO/WWW.YADVASHEM.ORG/EDUCATION/EDUCATIONAL-VIDEOS/TITLE: “LIBERATORS AND SURVIVORS: THE FIRST MOMENTS”//
REF/G/VIDEO/WWW.USHMM.ORG/REMEMBER/DAYS-OF-REMEMBRANCE/RESOURCES/COMMEMORATION-THEMES/LIBERATION/TITLE: “WITNESSES TO THE HOLOCAUST: LIBERATION (1945)”//
POC/T. M. VELAZQUEZ/CIV/UNIT: MRA (MPE)/TEL: COM (703)784-9371/TEL: DSN (278)/EMAIL: THERESA.VELAZQUEZ@USMC.MIL//
GENTEXT/REMARKS/1.  For 2020, the Holocaust Days of Remembrance are from Sunday, April 19 to Sunday, April 26, 2020 with Holocaust Remembrance Day being observed on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.  In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called, “Yom Ha Shoah.”  The 2020 observance theme for the Marine Corps is: “Liberation.”
2.  The genocide now known as the Holocaust occurred between 1933 and 1945 when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (commonly known as the Nazis) and their collaborators carried out the systematic persecution and murder of 6 million European Jews.  The Nazi regime also persecuted and killed millions of others whom they considered politically hostile, racially inferior, or socially unfit.  This organized annihilation was largely accomplished through the Nazis incarcerating millions of victims within a system of approximately 15,000 labor, death, and concentration camps, which were spread across occupied Europe.
3.  The Nazis established the first regular concentration camp in March 1933 at Dachau from an abandoned munitions factory.  The factory was converted into what would become the Nazis’ model concentration camp through the slave labor of political prisoners and other undesired groups.  German Communists, Social Democrats, and other political adversaries were the initial groups incarcerated at Dachau followed by Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the handicapped, and recidivist criminals.  From 1937 to 1938, the enslaved detainees were forced to dismantle the old factory and build the camp’s facilities.  In the aftermath of Kristallnacht of November 1938, over 10,000 Jewish men were sent to Dachau for temporary internment periods lasting weeks to months.  Dachau was the central location for imprisoning Catholics and other Christians.  At least 3,000 Catholic religious, deacons, priests, and bishops were imprisoned.  In 1941, Dachau started holding thousands of Soviet Prisoners of War.  In August 1944, women prisoners were shipped to Dachau from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp establishing a women’s camp overseen by women SS guards. 
4.  By 1939, Dachau became the training center for SS concentration camp guards.  It also accommodated a leader school for economic and civil service and an SS medical school.  The actual concentration camp occupied less than half of Dachau’s whole complex, which consisted of barracks and crematoria sections.  The barracks section had 32 barracks with one barrack reserved for defiant clergy and another for conducting medical experiments on prisoners.  An electrified fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven manned guard towers encircled the camp.  The crematoria area was built in 1942 adjacent to the main camp.  In this area, the SS used a crematorium, a firing range, and a gallows to murder their prisoners.  There were two crematorium buildings; one equipped with a gas chamber known as Barrack X; however, the thousands of sick and weak prisoners who could no longer work were deported to a satellite killing center near Linz, Austria called Hartheim.  German doctors at the camp subjected prisoners to cruel medical experimentation leaving hundreds of people crippled and others dead.  Several satellite camps developed around Dachau to accommodate the Nazi regime’s escalating industrial and genocidal objectives.  The Dachau concentration camp and a major Dachau subcamp were liberated on April 29, 1945 by the U.S. 7th Army’s 45th Infantry Division and 42nd Rainbow Division along with the 20th Armored Division.  Approximately 32,000 starving and diseased prisoners were freed from Dachau.  An estimated 250,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau and its subcamps.  Incomplete records document that at least 32,000 people died at Dachau and its satellite camps, while countless others were deported by cargo trains to extermination centers.
5.  In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, ordered the gathering of film and testimonial evidence to document the atrocities found at the many liberated concentration and prison camps.  From March through May 1945, military film crews of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (led by Hollywood director-cinematographer, Army Lieutenant Colonel George C. Stevens) captured more than 80,000 feet of film evidence, of which, 6,000 feet were compiled and submitted to the authorities conducting war crimes tribunals at Nuremburg.  General Eisenhower visited Ohrdruf concentration camp with General Omar Bradley and General George S. Patton.  General Eisenhower wrote of his visit to this camp: “The things I saw beggar description… The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality, were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick… I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda’.”
6.  During December 1948, the United Nations formalized the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  Subsequently, genocide became recognized as an international crime.
7.  During this observance week, commanders are encouraged to observe the Days of Remembrance through online initiatives and to support opportunities to introduce and critically discuss the Holocaust and related topics such as the prevention of genocide, the protection of all human life, the preservation of diverse cultures, and the law of war.  Commanders are encouraged to sponsor online programs integrating two videos entitled, “Liberators and Survivors: The First Moments” per Reference F (https:/www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-videos.html) and “Liberation: Witnesses to the Holocaust (1945)” per Reference G (https:/www.ushmm.org/remember/days-of-remembrance/resources/commemoration-themes), and to promote remote participation in observance events within their commands and across their local communities.
8.  Release authorized by BGen D. L. Shipley, Division Director, Manpower Plans and Policy.//