Just in time for Holocaust Education Month, Ottawa is one step closer to erecting a National Holocaust Monument.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is in the final stages of selecting the National Holocaust Monument Development Council, Joseph Lavoie, press secretary for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, said in an email.
The volunteer council will lead fundraising efforts to cover the planning, construction and maintenance of the memorial, says the National Holocaust Monument website.
Baird made a statement in late August seeking nominations for the council, which will have up to five members.
“Canada remembers the suffering of the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust,” he said in the statement.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored killing of about six million Jews, homosexuals, disabled persons and other minorities by the German Nazi regime during the Second World War. So far, Canada is the only allied nation without a national monument to the tragedy in its capital.
This effort began last December after Edmonton-area MP Tim Uppal’s private member’s bill passed in the House of Commons.
Laura Grosman, a fourth-year Public Administration student at the University of Ottawa focusing on Canadian Jewish Studies, was instrumental in passing the bill.
Grosman says she hopes the monument teaches Canadians about the Holocaust.
“My goal is that, once it’s in place, there will be lots of students from across Canada coming to visit the monument.”
The site for the monument has yet to be decided. Centretown residents would likely welcome such a development, says Centretown Citizens Community Association president Jordan Charbonneau.
“To have the addition of such a memorial (in Centretown), especially one that recognizes something as important as the Holocaust, would certainly be a good addition,” he says.