Proclamation 4652

by Jimmy Carter

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Thirty-four years ago today the United States Armed Forces liberated the Dachau concentration camp during the closing days of World War II in Europe. Words alone cannot convey the shock and horror that accompanied this tangible evidence of the Nazi regime's systematic program of genocide.

Dachau and other death-centers like Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Treblinka were the means by which the Nazi regime murdered six million Jewish people and millions of other victims in a planned program of extermination. These crimes have few if any equals in history. Their legacy left deep moral scars on all humankind. No one who participated in the liberation of these camps or who has studied their history can ever forget-least of all the quarter-of-a-million survivors who found a home and built a new life in this country after the war.

During my recent trip to Israel, I visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. I vowed then, and I repeat now, that the world must never permit such events ever to occur again.

We must never forget these crimes against humanity. We must study and understand the record of the Holocaust. From this, we must learn to remain eternally vigilant against all tyranny and oppression. We must rededicate ourselves to the principle of equality and justice for all peoples, remembering the terrible fruits of bigotry and hatred.

A joint resolution of the Congress (H.J. Res. 1014) approved September 18, 19711, authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation designating April 28 and 29, 1979, as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust."

Now, THEREFORE, I, JIMMY CARTER, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate April 28 and April 29, 1979, as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust." I ask the people of the United States to observe this solemn anniversary of the liberation of Dachau with appropriate study, prayers and commemoration as a tribute to the spirit of freedom, justice and compassion which Americans fought to preserve.

On the recommendation of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, I also ask the people of the United States to note International Holocaust Commemoration Day of April 24, 1979.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and third.

JIMMY CARTER

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:513 a.m., April 2, 1979]