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What a fascinating article.

>  But the idea of evil doesn’t enhance responsibility; it evades it, lifting the crimes away from the human plane where they belong.

This is something I think the National Holocaust Memorial in DC nails, the human plane. The room full of shoes, two stories of ghostly family pictures you normally see on a fireplace mantel. The whole place really brings home that it was normal humans perpetrating horrible, horrible acts on other normal humans. That it could have happened yesterday, that it could happen tomorrow.

>That it could have happened yesterday, that it could happen tomorrow.

Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and countries like North Korea for instance. Middle east and parts of Africa. Balkan. So many other and far more recent outbursts of inhumanity than the holocaust. You would think we learn... Not sure why the US always tends to focus on Israel and the holocaust though; I am from NL, I have family of Anne Frank in my family (by marriage) who obviously lost all their family and we must never forget (I make a point of educating myself and others about it), there are things happening now and recently happening that are somehow taken less seriously or are not known at all than something that happened 75 years ago. It is always hard to say this without creating the feeling I am/want to diminish something, I am not, but the fact you say 'could have happened' and 'could happen' shows that you miss(ed) some things were, because of religion or other ideologies, people were/are tortured and exterminated far after WOII and on quite a scale (in tiny Cambodia a few million(!) people were killed and tortured for instance in the late 70s; you were rounded up if you had glasses as you were a filthy intellectual for instance).

How does showcasing the humanity of the victims provide any commentary on the humanity of the perpetrators?
It wasn't showcasing the humanity of the victims that provided the commentary, it was the commentary on how the anti-semitism rose to a level within the general population that reenforced for me the humanity or "normalness" of the perpetrators.
What if normalness and humanity are not synonyms? Could it be our responsibility to evaluate what's good and what's bad for society independent of other' opinions?
Perhaps you have to have already accepted that as fact, and then seen the exhibit which makes it even more real.