COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Construction of a Holocaust memorial on the Ohio Statehouse grounds has been delayed by this year’s brutal winter weather, but is expected to be done in time for a June 2 dedication ceremony.
Crews have created concrete foots at the Columbus site while two companies elsewhere work on pieces for the $2.3 million project, originally slated for completion by April, The Columbus Dispatch (https://bit.ly/ObKfnz ) reported recently. Ohio’s will be among the first such memorials at U.S. Statehouses.
The 18-foot-tall memorial will feature upright panels positioned to reveal a broken, six-pointed Star of David cutout.
Cleveland Marble Mosaic Co. is preparing the stone memorial wall and carving inscriptions on parts of it. Meanwhile, the A. Zahner Co. in Kansas City, Mo., is fabricating bronze for the project, including an inscription on one face of it, said Amanda de Beaufort, a spokeswoman for the monument’s designer, New York artist Daniel Libeskind.
Libeskind, the son of Holocaust survivors, will supervise the assembly of the pieces one they are shipped to Columbus, de Beaufort said.
Ohio Jewish Communities is raising $2 million, and the site work will cost taxpayers $300,000.
“We’re very excited,” said Joyce Garver Keller, executive director of Ohio Jewish Communities. “This is the opportunity to take this vision and this mission and see it become real. … It’s going to be an amazing opportunity and something that will be there forever.”
The June ceremony is expected to include Nazi death camp survivors and American soldiers that aided in liberating them.
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