Jewish Groups Seek Answers to 2015 Incident of Naked Tag in Nazi Death Camp

This day can’t get any more bizarre.

OH, wait… some “artists” apparently did a piece of performance art, that consisted of filming a game of naked tag in a Nazi gas chamber in Poland.

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Yes. Feel free to read that last sentence several times, to take in the full measure of bizarre.

The Times of Israel is reporting on this utterly disrespectful display, that apparently was filmed in 2015 in the Stutthof death camp, in Poland.

On Wednesday, the Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and several other groups sent the request for clarification to President Andrzej Duda in connection with a video that the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow displayed in 2015 without divulging any details on where it was filmed. The letter was sent after research revealed the location was Stutthof, near Gdansk, Poland.

Specifically, the organizations want to know what sort of rules of conduct are exist for the site, how those rules are enforced, and if this group of “artists” had permission to film within the camp.

Normally, there are very strict rules of solemn, sober conduct required at the sites used for Nazi-era atrocities, out of respect for the victims. If this site was under the same rules of conduct, then there was a serious breach.

Following protests by Jewish groups and community leaders, the Krakow museum pulled the exhibition but then reinstated it, defending it as falling under freedom of artistic expression.

The video was part of an exhibition titled “Poland – Israel – Germany. The experience of Auschwitz,” which opened in 2015 in Krakow, about the former Nazi death camp’s impact on public discourse. It was endorsed and sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Poland.

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Seriously?

After heavy (warranted) criticism from Jewish advocacy groups, however, they withdrew their support and called for its removal.

“The embassy has learned of criticism regarding the video in question and has contacted organizers with a request that the parts deemed offensive be removed,” Michael Sobelman, the embassy’s spokesman, told JTA at the time.

Did they even see the video before approving it?

There’s nothing of any redeeming artistic quality to it. Nothing.

In fact, I really question what’s passing as “art” these days.

“It is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi hunter, said in 2015 about the exhibition. “They lied about it. It is just revolting and a total insult to the victims and anyone with any sense of morality or integrity.”

It’s making light of the horrors that went on in that camp, in the name of so-called art, and freedom of artistic expression or not, it deserves to be rejected and vilified.

 

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