A group of Alexandria business and civic leaders is preparing to build a Holocaust Memorial in front of Rapides Regional Medical Center. Rabbi Arnold Task, president of the Alexandria Holocaust Memorial Fund, said the site also will recognize Alexandria’s unique history in helping liberate Europe. The massive Army training exercises and mock battles to prepare soldiers for World War II took place in central Louisiana.
"Many of the troops who were trained in Louisiana Maneuvers were directly involved in the discovery of what had gone on at Dachau prison camp, and several others, that were part of the network of the extermination and concentration camps the Nazis had," Task said.
It will become the second Holocaust memorial in Louisiana. The other is in New Orleans.