Design: A Go-Ahead for Bad Manners

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Some Washington officials have suggested that such a place does not belong in the nation's capital, that Nazi genocide is not, after all, an integral part of the American story. But Congress settled that argument when it authorized the museum in 1980 (to be built with $45 million to $50 million in private funds). Some of the critics now suggest the structure ought to be redesigned as a much smaller, less conspicuous museum. No: a nice little Holocaust memorial would be worse than none at all. "This building," Freed says rightly, "has to have something indigestible about it."