Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime systematically persecuted and murdered six million European Jews as part of its promotion of antisemitic beliefs and its pursuit of what they referred to as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” (Although the term “holocaust” specifically refers to the mass killings of Jews, there were many other victims who were deemed domestic enemies or political opponents and were subjected to the same Nazi persecution as the Jews.) The “final solution” sought by Hitler and his followers occurred from 1941 to 1945, when most of the victims were murdered. The Holocaust ended in 1945 with the liberation of the concentration camps and “killing centers” established across Europe. The largest of these, Auschwitz-Birkenau, closed in January 1945.
In a resolution issued on November 1, 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and urged its member nations to “develop educational programmes that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.” The date chosen for this remembrance marked the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps by the Soviets. Here in Texas, as the result of Senate Bill 1828, Texas established Holocaust Remembrance Week in 2020, a time dedicated to educating students in public schools about the atrocities of the Holocaust and the value of human life. (See Tex. Educ. Code § 29.9072.) This year, Holocaust Remembrance Week is from January 23-January 27.
To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Week, the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library has partnered with the Boniuk Library at the Holocaust Museum Houston to create a display of books from the Boniuk Library collection that captures and examines the American response to the Holocaust. The centerpiece of the display is And Every Single One Was Someone by Rabbi Phil Chernofsky, a book that memorializes each of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust with one simple word: Jew. The word Jew is written six million times on each of its 625 pages. Additional titles in the display include Americans and the Holocaust by Daniel Greene and Edward J. Phillips, The Liberators: America’s Witnesses to the Holocaust by Michael Hirsh, and Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America by Eric J. Lundquist. For a complete bibliography of the titles on display, please click here.
Additional Resources
The Holocaust - Holocaust Remembrance Week - Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Council
Holocaust Remembrance Toolkit - Holocaust Museum Houston
Holocaust Remembrance Day - National Archives and Records Administration
International Holocaust Remembrance Day - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum