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The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an annual eight-day period designated by the United States Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust. The annual DRVH period normally begins on the Sunday before the Israeli observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and continues through the following Sunday, usually in April or May. A National Civic Commemoration is held in Washington, D.C., with state, city, and local ceremonies and programs held in most of the fifty states, and on U.S. military ships and stations around the world. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designates a theme for each year's programs,[1] and provides materials to help support remembrance efforts.
A House Joint resolution 1014 designated April 28 and 29 of 1979 as "Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust". Senator John Danforth of Missouri, who originated the resolution, chose April 28 and 29 because it was on these dates that American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp and a number of its satellite camps in 1945, as well as rescuing hundreds of Jewish-ethnicity camp inmates driven southwards from Dachau by the Nazis on a death march only days later.
In 2005, the United Nations established a different date for International Holocaust Remembrance Day,[2] January 27—the day in 1945 when the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp—but the Yom HaShoah date of Nisan 27 on the Hebrew calendar continues as the date for the determination of the 8-day DRVH commemoration. This date also links the DRVH to the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.[3]