Viewers are free to enter the reconstructed ‘cage’ and sit. They are also free to take a newspaper and place it on the conveyor belt—perhaps a metaphor for time rolling ceaselessly forward or a more macabre reminder of the industrialised nature of genocide under the Nazi regime. The installation also includes a reproduction of Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus (The Angel of History as described by Walter Benjamin).

Through its specific elements, the installation connects philosophers Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt with Eichmann. It also introduces the notion of history as an angel looking back on the cataclysms of the past whilst heading towards the future. Eichmann and Benjamin stand in metaphorical relation to notions of death and entrapment: the former was responsible for the killing of millions and was executed for his crimes, whilst the latter killed himself in 1940. Arendt, in turn, becomes a kind of witness, someone speaking for a generation—she reflects on Eichmann’s trial in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, one of the most significant essays of the 20th century, and speaks for Benjamin in her famous `Introduction’ to his book Illuminations. The wall inscription “Port Bou – New York – Jerusalem” , connects three key places and figures. Port Bou is where Walter Benjamin took his own life. New York is where Hannah Arendt died—and is also a city that Walter Benjamin yearned to visit but never reached. And, ironically, it is in Jerusalem that Eichmann—accountable for the systemised organisation of the Holocaust—died. These three cities are linked by fragments of the same history, to which this work of art is dedicated..