The unspeakable horrors of German Nazism, antisemitism, and the labor and death camp system during World War II (WWII), are simultaneously “Not Long Ago” and “Not Far Away,” the bi-line of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (RRPLM)’s ongoing Auschwitz exhibition contends. Although the proximity of WWII and the Holocaust continues to weigh heavily upon our contemporary historical consciousness, it is the latter assertion—the unprecedented crimes of the Holocaust are “Not Far Away”—which caught my eye as I repeatedly passed by the exhibition’s promotional billboards along California’s Highway 118 in Ventura County, where the RRPLM is located. Why, I wondered, did this particular institution consider the horrors of interwar European ultra-nationalism, racially motivated violence, and, worse still, organized mass murder to be possibilities on our collective horizon? And what did the RRPLM, moreover, have anything to do with the historical memory surrounding Auschwitz? These were the guiding questions which...

You do not currently have access to this content.