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WHEREAS, the Holocaust Center of Greater Pittsburgh is Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio and Northern West Virginia's only educational resource center on the Holocaust and whose mission is to heighten public awareness and honor survivors by utilizing the events of the Jewish Holocaust experience as a means to teach tolerance to middle and high school students. The Holocaust Center also engages the community and collaborates with other organizations, individuals and institutions around programming and conversations as to the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust ; and,
WHEREAS, each spring, the Holocaust Center of Greater Pittsburgh presents a community wide program called Yom Hashoa, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is the day set aside to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, giving the community the opportunity to gather and remember the suffering, dignity, courage and resistance of the victims of Nazi atrocities ; and,
WHEREAS, Yom Hashoa was originally inaugurated in 1959, anchored in a law signed by then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and is a national memorial day and a public holiday in Israel ; and,
WHEREAS, this year, Yom Hashoa in Pittsburgh will be about Remembering the Athletes of the 1936 Nazi Olympics and will include a candle lighting ceremony with candle lighters comprised of local survivors, community members and lay leaders.
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NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of the City if Pittsburgh does hereby commend and recognize the Holocaust Center of Greater Pittsburgh for working to memorialize and commemorate the legacy of those whose lives were impacted by the events of the Holocaust ; and,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Council of the City of Pittsburgh does hereby declare Tuesday, April 9, 2013, to be "YOM HASHOA DAY" in the City of Pittsburgh.