The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance (http://bit.ly/18zNMF) as America's annual commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust and created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a permanent living memorial to those victims. In accordance with its Congressional mandate, the Museum is responsible for leading the nation in commemorating the Days of Remembrance, including the national Days of Remembrance ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, and for encouraging and sponsoring appropriate observances throughout the United States.

From April 19 through April 26, the Museum lead the nation in remembering the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, as well as the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution. Observances were held in communities, state houses, city halls, churches, and synagogues across the United States and at military installations worldwide. At the Museums national ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Thursday, April 23, 2009, the speakers included President Barack Obama, Museum Founding Chairman Elie Wiesel, and Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield.

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"). The pogroms marked an intensification of Nazi anti-Jewish policy that would culminate in the Holocaust—the systematic, state-sponsored murder of Jews.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/kristallnacht/

Whenever genocide has occurred, individuals have risked their own lives to save others. This film focuses on Damas Gisimba, director of a small orphanage in Rwanda that was besieged by militias during the 1994 genocide. Learn how Gisimba, with the help of American aid worker Carl Wilkens, managed to protect, care for, and save some 400 people.