WHEREAS, the Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, when more than six million Jews were murdered and millions of other people suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny; and

WHEREAS, 2018 marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a pogrom organized by Nazi officials and paramilitary forces against Jewish communities throughout Nazi Germany that took place on November 9-10, 1938; and

WHEREAS, during Kristallnacht, hundreds of synagogues in Germany and Austria were burned and destroyed, businesses and homes were ransacked, and scores of innocent Jews were killed and thousands of others were arrested and sent to concentration camps; and

WHEREAS, commonly translated as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht took its name from the shards of broken window glass littering the streets after the horrific attacks; and

WHEREAS, a major escalation of existing anti-Semitic policies at the time, Kristallnacht was the first coordinated assault on the Jewish population and served as a prelude to the greatest horrors of the Holocaust, a campaign of systematic mass murder on a scale never before witnessed in human history; and

WHEREAS, Kristallnacht and the entire reign of the Nazi government mark one of the darkest periods in the civilized era and are stark reminders of how easily hatred and bigotry can proliferate and erode societal norms; and

WHEREAS, the 80th anniversary of this unprecedented tragedy offers a solemn opportunity for all Virginians to keep alive the memory of the millions who perished during the Holocaust, more than one and a half million of whom were innocent children; raise awareness of the dangers of bigotry and intolerance; and work to ensure that acts of genocide such as Kristallnacht never occur again; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the Senate, the House of Delegates concurring, That the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht be remembered in 2018; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, requesting that the organization further disseminate copies of this resolution so that members of the community may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly in this matter.