Architectural spaces designed for Holocaust museums and occasionally those to commemorate genocide have been instrumental in altering the design of the museum building, especially in advanced industrial societies where expense for museum space is an affordable luxury. Museums in the Western Hemisphere and Europe have changed from structures built simply to contain artifacts, art, and conceptual works to become memory forms in their own right. Because of the huge displacement of peoples in the twentieth century, which included many artists and architects who fled authoritarian regimes, the builders of museums to the crimes of genocidal regimes have felt the need to make the museum building itself a memorial space to the event.

Standing in contrast to the modern museum space, often built in a location where genocide itself did not occur, are the places of destruction themselves. The Auschwitz extermination camp, for example,...