The Pentagon this week announced it will tear down Camp X-Ray, the first temporary facility at Guantánamo where “enemy combatants” were imprisoned in 2002. Despite a US federal court’s preservation order, the Pentagon argued it did not need to preserve the physical site because the FBI has created a 3D digital reconstruction.

Such a virtual tour is in no way a substitute for preserving the original site. Destroying the physical structure of Camp X-Ray would destroy both vital legal evidence and the foundation of our future conscience.

Across the world, governments and grassroots communities alike have recognised that preserving sites of their most shameful or contested histories is critical for building democracy. Auschwitz and other concentration camps were preserved within two years of the end of the second world war; the Argentinian government, under pressure from civil society, saved hundreds of clandestine detention sites as part of its transition from military dictatorship; South Africa even constructed its first democratic constitutional court on the site of an apartheid-era prison, so that decisions about the future of justice in the country could be made with this physical reminder of past struggles. In 2005, the UN commission on human rights established the “duty to preserve memory” as an obligation of states to combat impunity.

Guantánamo has been forgotten before, with disastrous policy consequences

Some might argue that these sites represent histories their societies have universally denounced, and which are firmly in the past, whereas Guantánamo remains a lightning rod for controversy and is still in active use. But it is even more important to preserve sites of contested memory. Contested sites of violence and trauma become vital places to visit and provide an opportunity to revisit the forensic evidence of what actually happened, as understanding evolves with new study and technologies. But perhaps even more importantly, the physical sites and structures have unique capacity to catalyse ongoing dialogue on the implications of what took place there.

Preserving Camp X-Ray is critical no matter what you believe about Guantánamo. Camp X-Ray must be saved not because there is consensus about what happened there and what it means – but precisely because there isn’t. A government-commissioned digital reconstruction is insufficient should someone wish to demonstrate examples of humane treatment of detainees at Camp X-Ray, or contest allegations of torture there, or open real dialogue on lessons of the war on terror.

Guantánamo has been forgotten before, with disastrous policy consequences. America’s aggressive amnesia about the site has enabled more than a century of use, reuse and abuse of the US naval base. In the 1990s, Guantánamo was even “closed” twice to great public fanfare. After a massive social movement and legal battle, a US district court judge in 1993 declared the Haitian refugee tent city on Guantánamo a “HIV prison camp” and ordered it shut. Barely a year later, another camp went up to house an even greater influx of Cuban refugees, also trapped in indefinite detention. In 1996, after an intense public campaign led by US-based Cuban exiles, including with a concert on the base by Gloria Estefan, the last refugee was released. Prescient refugee journalist Mario Pedro Graverán observed: “We must remember that the camps of Guantánamo are closing, but Guantánamo Bay is a painful story that’s not over yet.” Six years later, the first “enemy combatants” were brought to Camp X-Ray, to facilities first constructed for Haitians.

Preservation need not be impractical. Guantánamo’s detention facilities are extensive and sprawling. But other governments who faced the challenge of preserving vast prison complexes for posterity, from Northern Ireland and South Africa to Argentina, chose to save specific buildings, preceded by careful study and evidence collection.

Several of Guantánamo’s key facilities have already either been demolished or are slated for demolition. In the Guantánamo death penalty trials of those accused of planning 9/11, the military judge recently approved the secret destruction of a CIA black site, despite an existing court order preserving it. That site is presumably lost forever.

Donald Trump signs executive order to keep Guantánamo Bay open Read more

Only the Pentagon can stop the bulldozers. But responsibility for remembering Guantánamo falls on all of us. None of the places we now take for granted, from Auschwitz to Robben Island, were saved without a fight. In the face of so many immediate crises – including the fate of the 41 captives who remain at Guantánamo – it can be hard to focus on building the conscience of future generations. But without the foundation of sites like Camp X-Ray, we’ll never have the chance to try.

• Liz Ševčenko is director of the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers University-Newark and the founding director of the Guantánamo Public Memory Project