Exact matches only
//  Main  //  Menu

 

This is an archive of prayers composed for, or relevant to, the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust in the United States.

The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an annual 8-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 Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day in the State of Israel on the 27th of Nisan, 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, 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, in 1945, that American troops—including at least one ethnically segregated artillery battalion of the U.S. Army, many of whose own relatives were themselves interned during the war on American soil—liberated the Dachau concentration camp and a number of its satellite camps, as well as rescuing hundreds of Jewish-ethnicity camp inmates driven southwards from Dachau by the Nazis on a death march only days later.

If you have composed a prayer or prayer-poem for the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, please share it here.


Looking for something else?

For prayers composed for Kristallnacht (16 Marḥeshvan), please visit here.

For prayers composed for Yom haShoah in the State of Israel (27 Nisan), please visit here.

For prayers composed for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, please visit here.

For public readings selected for Holocaust & Genocide Memorial Days, go here.


Sorted Chronologically (old to new). Sort most recent first?

[Prayer on] the German Crisis, by Rabbi Norman M. Goldburg (3 April 1933)

תפילה לעזרת היהודים תושבי גרמניה | Prayer for German Jewry under Nazi oppression before and after Kristallnacht (Office of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1938)

Prayer on the Declaration of War [against Nazi Germany], by Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz (Office of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1940)

Prayer of Intercession [for Britain in the War against Nazi Germany], by Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz (Office of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1940)

Prayer for a Service of Intercession [for European Jewry during the Holocaust], by Lilian Helen Montagu (ca. 1940)

שִׁיר הַגְאוּלָה (החיינו אל) | Shir ha-Ge’ulah (Song of Redemption), by an anonymous author (1940)

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Israel Goldstein on 21 April 1942

זאָג ניט קײן מאָל | Partisaner Lid (the Partisan Song), by Hirsh Glik (Vilna Ghetto, 1943)

אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים | El Malé Raḥamim for Victims of the Shoah (the Netherlands, ca. late 1940s)

שְׁפוֹךְ אֲהָבָתֵךְ | Shfokh Ahavatekh (Pour Out Your Love), by Rabbi Ḥayyim Bloch (1948)

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Morris M. Shapiro on 8 April 1975

קִינָה עַל חֻרְבָּן הָאַחֲרוֹן | Lamentation on the Holocaust, by Shimon Zuker (1980)

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Seymour L. Essrog on 20 April 1982

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Isaac Neuman on 11 April 1983

Prayer at the National Civic Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, by Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff on 28 April 1987

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Barry Tabachnikoff on 24 April 1990

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. Senate: Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff on 29 April 2003

Prayer of the Guest Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives: Rabbi Manny Behar on 30 April 2003

‏אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים תְפִילָה לַנִּסְפִּים בַּשּׁוֹאָה | El Malé Raḥamim Prayer for the Victims of the Shoah, by Rabbi Yehoyada Amir

אֶפְתַּח פִּי לְךָ אָדוֹן | Eftaḥ Pi L’kha Adōn, a seliḥah for Kristallnacht by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer