In early August, at the Mauthausen memorial in Austria, a young Jewish woman confronted a touring school group. One student wore a “Free Palestine” shirt, while some of his teachers and peers told her that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The confrontation ended when the site’s staff summoned the Austrian police. Who was right in that argument is the obvious question, and it will be asked everywhere. It is also the second question. The first is this: what is supposed to happen when a teenager walks through the gates of a Nazi concentration camp?

What that particular teacher told her students before the trip is unknown, and no intent should be attributed to her. But something was said out loud at Mauthausen, and it rests on a logic that is becoming self-evident in many places: that the site is available as an explanation for the present. Under that logic, the quarry, the barracks, and the crematorium are not only what happened there. They become what genocide looks like, and a group standing in front of them is looking at the present as much as the past. The past becomes a parable, and the present gets an illustration.

A memorial does not exist to provide imagery for political arguments. It exists on a concession: that some events must be learned from before they are used. That concession is the........

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