Should we let Auschwitz rot?

There is some debate on what to do with Auschwitz. A crucial site in one of the worst crimes in human history is slowly decaying into the earth. And some wish to preserve it, others feel that it should dissolve away into nothing.

I don't know what to feel. I have some sympathy with the idea that whilst there are still some living survivors of the Holocaust then the site should be kept as a means of closure, for those who suffered so much during that awful period of human history. Yet I can also see how it is almost perverse to wish to maintain a site of such utter carnage. Somehow, letting that scene of evil dissolve away with the years might be a poetic way of letting the human race move on from the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis. And that's move on, rather than forget.

The simple truth is that the horror of the Holocaust will never been forgotten. The scale and the deliberate nature of the millions of murders carried out in the name of Nazism means that the Holocaust is burned onto the psyche of humanity in perpetuity. Aside from assorted far right lunatics, just the mention of the word Nazi is enough to provoke a shiver down the spine, or a wince, or a moment of anger. Nazism means mass murder, and few political ideologies have been as utterly debunked as the ideology expounded by Hitler and his dreadful, ignorant ilk. Do we really need to have such a reminder of the horror of the Nazis such as Auschwitz when the very word stands as a testament to the mindless evil of that regime?

And, anyhow, can anyone actually argue that such reminders achieve anything practically, other than being a source of pain and misery? After all, Auschwitz still standing has done nothing to prevent subsequent outbreaks of mass murder - in the USSR, in Cambodia, in North Korea, in Rwanda and in Zimbabwe - to name but a few. Hell, as I write this, we even have a man standing trial in the Hague for turning kids into rapists and murderers! Just a brief look at human history since the liberation of Auschwitz shows that the lessons have not been taken on board, and the killings continue.

So I'm tempted to say let the remains of Auschwitz crumble away to nothing. The horror of the Holocaust will still be remembered, and there will be further examples of the appalling, murderous underside of human nature as the history of our race rolls on. But I am genuinely interested to hear what other people have to say on the topic. So, as the title of this post asks, should we let Auschwitz rot?