Ohio’s Holocaust Memorial will be a testament against hate

Remembering inhumanity

It is hard to wrap one’s mind around the enormity of the horrors of the Holocaust, the organized murder of 6 million Jews and nearly as many Catholics, homosexuals and others. How to do so? Ohio’s new Holocaust and Liberators Memorial at the Ohio Statehouse, to be dedicated on Monday, does this with beauty: a stunning monument of stone, granite, bronze and steel designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, a son of Holocaust survivors.

And with simple words: Etchings in the stone tell the story of cousins who survived the Auschwitz concentraion camp, one saving the other with quick thinking.

And with instruction for future generations: Remember. Act. As Judaism commands, choose life. Inscribed on a wall of Ohio limestone is the Talmudic declaration, “If you save one life, it is as if you saved the world.”

The memorial pays lasting tribute to those who perished, those who survived and those who fought to liberate them.

With the passage of time, fewer people are around to provide living testimony and warn newer generations of what happens when people dehumanize and demonize others.

After touring the Ohrdruf and Buchenwald concentration camps in April 1945, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower described the atrocities as “beyond the American mind to comprehend.” He ordered every resident of the town of Gotha to personally tour the camp, after which the town’s mayor and the mayor's wife hanged themselves.

This memorial was proposed by Gov. John Kasich three years ago.

“The goal of the memorial,” Kasich said, “is to drive us all to contemplate the great evil perpetrated in the Holocaust against Jews and many others, and be ever vigilant against the hatred and intolerance that inevitably leads a society to death and division.”

The memorial is a gift to all Ohioans, paid for by private donors who raised $2.145 million.

Visitors to the memorial will see a granite plaza, low limestone walls with inscriptions and 18-foot-high structures forming a broken Star of David — in this context, an emblem of Nazi persecution of the religion.

Having a memorial designed by an architect of Libeskind’s caliber will draw many to our city. Born in Poland, he is the master designer of America’s most visible memorial to victims of intolerance and murderous hatred: the new World Trade Center site.

Among his other highprofile projects are the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Grand Canal Theater project in Dublin, Ireland, and the Harmony Tower in Seoul.

Kasich will preside over the noon dedication inside the Ohio Theater.

The program will feature, among others, an international Holocaust expert, the Israeli consul general, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders, the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman and philanthropist Abigail Wexner, who helped bring Libeskind to the project.

Barbara Turkeltaub of Canton, a Holocaust survivor, and Johnstown resident Donald Jakeway Sr., a liberator, will help lead a candlelighting ceremony.

The architect said at the start that this would be an important project, not because of its size, but because of its aspiration.

“I think people are going to be moved,” Libeskind said. “It will change them once they see it.”