COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – A representative of Ohio’s Jewish communities says locating a Holocaust memorial on the Statehouse grounds will be a fitting reminder.
Ohio Jewish Communities executive director Joyce Garver Keller attended the rainy groundbreaking ceremonies Wednesday. She says the remembrance to Holocaust victims and survivors and their liberators belongs on public grounds because the Holocaust began “in the halls of government,” not in concentration camps.
A religious freedom group and the former head of a panel that oversees Statehouse grounds have raised concerns about the separation of church and state in regard to the $1.8 million, privately funded project.
Wednesday’s groundbreaking included Gov. John Kasich and the monument’s designer, New York artist Daniel Libeskind, the son of Holocaust survivors.
Ohio’s is among the first such memorials at U.S. Statehouses.