Columbus Dispatch
Remembering inhumanity
Ohio’s Holocaust Memorial will be a testament against hate
Sunday June 1, 2014 7:22 AM

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...

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