Should Abu Ghraib Be Destroyed or Preserved?

May 26, 2004 -- Iraqis have long known the Abu Ghraib prison as a place of torture, suffering and fear. But should it be torn down?

That's what President Bush has proposed, provided the Iraqis agree. Demolishing the sprawling complex outside of Baghdad would be "a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning," Bush said in a speech this week outlining his plans for handing over power to the Iraqis.

For decades, the prison was notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein. And this spring, it came to light that it was also the site of alleged prisoner abuse by U.S. troops — much of it documented in gruesome photographs that have been shown around the world.

The decision to obliterate such a reviled symbol would seem to be an easy one — but the case to have it destroyed may not be that clearcut.

All around the world, human beings have found more use in preserving sites of tragedy and human suffering than erasing them altogether.

"People derive a lot of feeling knowing that places like that can be visited," said James McGaugh, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in war and trauma.

Memorials to the Dead

The sites of some of the world's worst atrocities have been preserved, rather than demolished, so they stand as reminders of dark periods of history.

Auschwitz in Poland was the site of the murder of more than 1 million people – Polish intellectuals, Soviet prisoners, Jews and Romany during the 1940s. After World War II, it fell into disrepair — but in 1989, Jewish American businessman Ronald Lauder established an international foundation to preserve, and in some cases, rebuild the camp.

Khiam prison was a detention and interrogation camp, notorious for torture, during the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon beginning in 1985. But after the Israeli army withdrew in 2000, Lebanese authorities turned the prison into a museum, frequented by Lebanese and other Arabs.