SENATE BILL No. 315

March 13, 2001, Introduced by Senators MC COTTER and LELAND and referred to the

Committee on Government Operations.

A bill to establish Holocaust remembrance week in the state

of Michigan.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN ENACT:

1 Sec. 1. (1) The legislature recognizes that the horrors of

2 the Holocaust should never be forgotten. The Holocaust was the

3 state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of

4 European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933

5 and 1945. In addition to the murder of some 6,000,000 Jews, mil-

6 lions more, including the handicapped, Poles, Gypsies, homosexu-

7 als, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, and political dissi-

8 dents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi

9 tyranny.

10 (2) A key date in the history of the Holocaust is April 19,

11 1943, the beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, when Jews,

12 using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted

02087'01 * KDD

2

1 death camp deportation by the Nazis for 27 days. This date,

2 which in the Hebrew calendar is the twenty-seventh day of Nisan,

3 has been established by the United States congress as a national

4 Holocaust remembrance day, and the week surrounding this date has

5 been established as the Days of Remembrance.

6 (3) The legislature declares that the twenty-seventh day of

7 the month of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar shall be Holocaust

8 remembrance day, and that the period beginning on the Sunday

9 before that day through the following Sunday shall be the Days of

10 Remembrance in this state, in memory of the victims of the

11 Holocaust, and in honor of the survivors, as well as the rescuers

12 and liberators.

13 Sec. 2. The legislature encourages individuals, educational

14 institutions, and social, community, religious, labor, and busi-

15 ness organizations to pause on Holocaust remembrance day and

16 during the Days of Remembrance and reflect upon the terrible

17 events of the Holocaust, so that as a society we will remain vig-

18 ilant against hatred, persecution, and tyranny and actively

19 rededicate ourselves to the principles of individual freedom in a

20 just society.

02087'01 * Final page. KDD