April 15, 2015 -- Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany and Americans across the nation are observing the weeklong 2015 Holocaust Remembrance Days, April 12-19, with April 16 as the Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators,” states the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, www.ushmm.org.
The base community may pick up a packet about the Holocaust at MCLB Albany’s Library.
Librarian Amos Tookes said he puts together information so patrons will know about the Holocaust.
“As time passes, we have a tendency to forget (and) I wanted to make sure at least here through the Library that we remember,” Tookes said. “Maybe we can impact change in regard to how we view people and different cultures around the world.”
Brig. Gen. Robert Castellvi, commanding general, Marine Corps Installations East, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, encouraged people aboard the installations that fall under MICEAST, of which MCLB Albany is one, to learn from the Holocaust.
His message on the 2015 Holocaust Remembrance Days is below:
“The national days of remembrance is a weeklong observance that recognizes the cruelty and deaths of an estimated 6,000,000 people at the hands of a tyrant whose system of injustice and intolerance permeated Germany from 1933-1945.
“The week of April 12-19 reminds us that we must be ever vigilant to guard against injustices of all origins, less we may again witness the atrocities, polarization and genocide of a group of people. This year's theme, 'Learning from the Holocaust: choosing to Act,' is symbolic of our individual responsibility to one another, our Corps and our nation.
"As a band of brothers and sisters in arms, it is our moral duty to be the example of active bystanders and to treat everyone with the human dignity and respect they deserve.”
The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust, according to the museum’s website. The internationally-recognized date for Holocaust Remembrance Day corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah.