The controversy over Britain’s planned Holocaust memorial

BUILDING A MEMORIAL to the victims of the Holocaust is something Britain might be expected to do quite well. Its cities are endowed with many magnificent monuments, after all. Yet nearly a decade after the government drew up a plan to build a new memorial and learning centre in central London, the project is beset by rancour and delay. In January, at a hearing of a parliamentary committee to consider the plan, Ruth Deech, a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords, asked why the government was “so determined to push this project through when it has alienated so many people, it adds nothing, costs a fortune?”