Are we failing to learn lessons from the Holocaust?

Ninety years ago this week, the acting chief of the Munich Police Department held a press conference. The new man had been busy. On assuming office a few days earlier, the chief had tried to get to grips with what he saw as acute political unrest in the city by authorising a wave of mass arrests. The primary targets were leading figures in the Communist Party and paramilitary groups made up of trade unionists, liberals, and social democrats. According to the chief, it was no longer possible to guarantee the security of such people, and so scores of them were unceremoniously taken into so-called ‘protective custody’.

However, a new problem had emerged. The round-ups were performed with such zeal that the city’s prison cells were now bursting at their seams. A radical solution was required. The answer, the chief told the press that Monday, lay on the grounds of an old munitions factory in a town 12 miles north of the Munich.