Days of Remembrance: Yom HaShoah Resources for Faith Communities
Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters
April 11, 2010 (Yom Hashoah) - Sunday, April 18, 2010
Days of Remembrance — the annual commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust — is observed by state and local governments, military bases, workplaces, schools, and faith communities across the country. This year’s theme, Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters, commemorates the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has created a new Planning Guide and Resources for Holocaust Commemorations, a CD/DVD set that provides a variety of resources for Days of Remembrance observances in diverse communities. This Planning Guide and Resources will be a valuable resource for clergy and other leaders in planning religious ceremonies
Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust: Background
The United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s legislation mandates Holocaust educational programming throughout the country in both religious and secular contexts. Because the religious community has a special interest in the Holocaust, a Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust was established to engage the various Christian organizations in the United States to fulfill that mandate.
Comprised of clergy and lay people from major church bodies and academic institutions, the Committee serves as a resource for individuals and groups grappling with the ethical and philosophical issues raised by the Holocaust and contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. The Committee provides information, feedback, and guidance to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council based on its experience working with the concerns of religious groups. The Committee takes special interest in how Christianity, Christian institutions, and the non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust are presented in the exhibitions and educational programs of the Museum.
What we do
The Committee assists churches and related organizations in developing educational and commemorative materials addressing the historical aspects and profound moral implications of the Holocaust. It seeks to assist schools, colleges, universities, and community organizations that sponsor special courses or programs on the implications of the Holocaust, and investigates the relationship of the Holocaust to the past history and future potential of Jewish/Christian relations.
The Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust is an integral part of the Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The Center is a related scholarly organization of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).
In March 2008, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois visited the Museum with a delegation of bishops from the French Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Vingt-Trois has been a leader in the education and formation of clergy in France and a leading voice in France for interreligious understanding and dialogue. Read the text of his remarks made at the Museum.
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Understandably and appropriately, the recent uproar about the Vatican’s rehabilitation of four bishops from the Society of St. Pius X has centered on the outrageous remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson and how best to respond to such blatant Holocaust denial and antisemitism. Read “On Faith” post by Victoria Barnett, staff director, Church Relations, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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The Holocaust confronted Christian leaders at the time and after 1945 with grave ethical and theological questions. This article examines the historical record of Christian responses between 1933 and 1945, and the ways in which Jews and Christians since the Holocaust have confronted this history and their altered relationship.
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On November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis staged vicious pogroms — state sanctioned, anti-Jewish riots — against the Jewish community of Germany. These came to be known as Kristallnacht (now commonly translated as “Night of Broken Glass”), a reference to the untold numbers of broken windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned stores, community centers, and homes plundered and destroyed during the pogroms. These events sparked a wave of outrage among U.S. religious leaders. In the weeks following November 9, 1938, there were numerous editorials, radio broadcasts, and sermons. Learn more about the response of Christian religious leaders in the United States to the November 1938 pogrom.
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2005 is the 40th anniversary of one of the most significant breakthroughs in Jewish-Christian relations, the ratification in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council of Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
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To provide background information on the subject of Christian Persecution of the Jews, the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust asked Fr. Gerard Sloyan to address this sensitive subject. Fr. John Pawlikowski, Chairman of the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust, provides an introduction to the excerpted piece.
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In December 2003, the Center organized two programs with recognized experts who explored antisemitism in the context of Holocaust history and its troubling resurgence today.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the few church leaders who stood in courageous opposition to the Fuehrer and his policies. To honor his memory, the Church Relations department of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum asked Victoria Barnett to write an essay about Bonhoeffer spanning the years from the rise of Nazism until his death in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in 1945...
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Contact the staff
Additional information about the activities of the Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust is available from:
Victoria Barnett Staff Director Committee on Church Relations and the Holocaust
Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW
Washington, DC 20024-2126
Tel.: (202) 488-0469
Fax: (202) 479-9726
E-mail: vbarnett@ushmm.org
Museum