"Bombing Auschwitz” has become a metaphorical catchphrase for the moral test that the Free World failed during World War II — and then failed all over again during several other genocides that blighted the post-Holocaust world ever since. Had the Allies bombed the gas chambers and crematoria — or at least the railway lines leading to Auschwitz — the Nazi killing machine would have been interrupted. Many Jews likely would have survived. And the Allies would have delivered an unmistakable message that preventing mass murder was a vision they wished for the world that survived.

The most unspeakable crime of the 20th century — or any century, for that matter — actually inspired a lot of people to speak about it. It’s the great paradox of the Holocaust. The mere thought of the genocide of European Jewry both paralyzes and demands action. It summons the silence and the scream. The contradictions are endless but understandable. The Holocaust is ineffable, and yet everyone wants to hear about it. It is unimaginable, and yet that never stopped artists from reimagining it.