It was a bad summer for Holocaust commemoration. In Berlin, poor construction has led to the disintegration of the huge memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. In Russia, a neo-Nazi film was distributed on the Internet documenting the murder of two minority members at the foot of a swastika flag. Dozens of Jewish tombstones in cemeteries throughout the world have been desecrated. Budapest has not prohibited the activities of the neo-Nazi Hungarian Guard, which sees itself as the successor to the Arrow Cross that aided and abetted the Germans in hunting down Jews to send to Auschwitz. The government of Poland continues to allow the Catholic broadcast "Radio Mary" that incites anti-Semitism, and Pope Benedict XVI has even received the priest who heads the station for a photographed interview at the Vatican.

And in Israel this summer, the memory of the Holocaust was recalled again and again in vain. Sixty years after the liberation of the concentration camps, the government determined that the suffering of those who were saved from the Nazis was worth about NIS 84 a month. Following public outcry, however, it reversed its decision - but this was only one of its disgraceful actions, and perhaps not the worst. Money, however disgraceful the amount, can be negotiated; the gap between the offer and what's needed disgraces the maker of the offer more than the victim.

The greatest disgrace of all was the attempt to turn orphans, refugees and partisans who fought the Germans into voters for the ruling party by declaring them survivors of the extermination camps, in which their families were killed.