The Drama over London’s Proposed Holocaust Memorial

On the banks of the Thames in London lies a small, manicured park known as Victoria Tower Gardens. The only green space in the vicinity of Parliament and Downing Street, the park is (or was, pre-coronavirus) a hub for officegoers at lunchtime and a playground for local children. It is dotted, seemingly at random, with, in the words of the Royal Parks website, “memorials celebrating freedom.” These include a dull, bronze statue of the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, a more emotive sculpture by Auguste Rodin commemorating the Siege of Calais in the Hundred-Years War between Britain and France, and the abstract Buxton Memorial, a gaudy water fountain named after the British parliamentarian Thomas Fowell Buxton that celebrates the British role in ending slavery rather than the end of slavery itself. These memorials are dwarfed by the towering Palace of Westminster, home to Parliament, and in my experience are largely ignored by the political and civil-service staffers that frequent the park for respite during the average workday. I must admit that, despite having walked past and through Victoria Tower Gardens dozens of times, I never really gave the memorials much thought myself, until recently.

Victoria Tower Gardens is not so ignored today. Here in this park, at this hearth of British freedoms, the government has proposed to build a new Holocaust memorial. The $140 million project, the brainchild of the former prime minister David Cameron, would involve both a Holocaust monument and learning center, the idea being to connect Britain’s democracy to the events of the Holocaust. It would seem to be an innocuous goal, hard to oppose. This is not the case.

In fact it is hard to understate just how much of a big deal the memorial has become, both in light of its enormous cost, the time and political clout that the government has invested in it, and the fervent opposition arising from interest groups ranging from the local governing council to major British heritage organizations to Jewish politicians and Holocaust survivors themselves.