Évian Conference
The memorial's structures also deny any sense of collectivity. Some have interpreted this to reflect the lack of collective guilt amongst the German population. Others have interpreted the spatial positioning of the blocks to represent individual guilt for the Holocaust. Some Germans have viewed the memorial as targeting German society and claim the memorial is presented as "an expression of our – non-Jewish Germans' – responsibility for the past". The site is also enclosed by borders of trees and Berlin's city centre. The enclosure from these borders has often evoked feelings of entrapment. This can be understood as a symbolic representation of the closure of European and American borders following the Évian Conference that forced Jews to stay in Germany.