Ohio to remember Holocaust victims, survivors and liberators

Driving the news: Hosted by the Ohio Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission, the program will feature speakers like retired Maj. Gen. Deborah Ashenhurst, director of the Ohio Department of Veteran Services, and Barry Jackisch, professor of Judaism and Jewish biblical studies at the University of Toledo.

• Attendees will conclude the ceremony by laying stones at the Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial in memory of those who died in the Holocaust.

Flashback: The Statehouse memorial was unveiled in 2014 and honors the memory of Ohioans who survived and liberated the Nazi death camps.

• The state's commission was created in 2020 to build educational tools for schools, develop Holocaust memorial events in all 88 counties and catalog testimony from genocide survivors living in Ohio.

What they're saying: Commission executive director Andrea Brookover tells Axios there "has perhaps never been a more urgent time" for the commission's work.

• "As we lose more and more survivors every day, it rests on us to tell their stories and preserve their legacies and their memory, so that we might prevent future atrocities such as the Holocaust from ever happening again."

Worthy of your time: The commission's recent newsletter highlights Morris Dach, an Auschwitz survivor who later settled in Columbus.

• Dach often shared his story with local organizations and classrooms before his death in 2003.
• His daughter, Debbi Sugarman, is now a board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Columbus and tells his story at schools.

What we're watching: Monday's ceremony will be livestreamed on the Ohio Channel at 11am.