A core paradox of the memorialisation of the Holocaust is that its universal significance also makes it susceptible to being exploited for political ends. The political debates and considerations that have surrounded UNIHRD since its inception reflect a long history of political ‘framing’ of the Holocaust, that began even before the gates of the camps were sprung open. Ever since, public remembering has been fraught territory in any country that has attempted it.

Nazism, and this place above all, operates a double annihilation. Firstly, the crime is committed. People are violated, undone, with every device that malice can conceive, and then they killed in ways people outside can scarcely imagine. Then, secondly, one destroys the evidence.

We should discard arguments that suggest that Nazism was some sort of entirely ahistorical, anachronistic moment of madness or somehow a uniquely German production. In fact it was a consciously transnational, racially based movement with ideological roots in political antisemitism, pan-germanism and colonialism.