Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Ohio lawmakers vote to launch Holocaust education commission

(JTA) — Lawmakers in Ohio have launched a Holocaust education commission for the state amid increased concern about Holocaust awareness in the United States.

The Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission would “help cultivate knowledge and understanding of one of the most tragic occurrences in the world’s history,” the state Senate said in nearly unanimously approving the bill on Dec. 9. The state House of Representatives followed suit last week in a 77-7 vote.

The 12-member commission, which includes top state educational officials, will “promote public awareness of issues relating to Holocaust and genocide memorial and education through public education programs.”

Studies have shown that Holocaust awareness among Americans is diminishing.

Ohio Jewish Communities, an umbrella body for the state’s Jewish organizations, lobbied for the bill.

“The lack of Holocaust knowledge today is glaring,” its director, Howie Beigelman, said in testimony this month. “Not only are neo-Nazi groups increasingly active, but recent research confirms that basic facts about the Holocaust are unknown by far too many while others are misappropriating lessons of the Holocaust.”

Congress this year approved $10 million in spending for Holocaust education.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.