Bill Text: VA SJR468 | 2019 | Regular Session | Enrolled
Bill Title: Commending the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond.
Spectrum: Bipartisan Bill
Status: (Passed) 2019-04-03 - Bill text as passed Senate and House (SJ468ER) [SJR468 Detail]
Download: Virginia-2019-SJR468-Enrolled.html
WHEREAS, in 2018, the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond and other organizations throughout the Commonwealth and the United States marked 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, Kristallnacht is considered a major turning point in the Holocaust, 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, 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; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED by the Senate, the House of Delegates concurring, That the General Assembly hereby commend the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond for its solemn work to preserve memory of the millions who perished during the Holocaust, more than one and a half million of whom were innocent children, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht; and, be it
RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the Senate prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond as an expression of the General Assembly's admiration for the importance of confronting bigotry and hatred in all forms and working to ensure that acts of genocide like Kristallnacht never occur again.
