Mr. Carl Michael von Hausswolff you have stolen the ashes of JewishHolocaust victims from the crematoria of Majdanek, where thousands perished in the gas chambers.
You have diluted their ashes in water to produce a painting on canvascurrently displayed as "Memory Works" in the Martin Bryder Gallery ofLund,Sweden. Perhaps you are unaware that your paintbrush has violated a core value,of monotheistic religious faiths inherited fromits Jewish sources:respect for the sanctity of human life and for its vessel, its mortalbody fashioned in the image of its Creator.
Judaism consider the body as inviolable through its terrestrial journey,its user has no right to deface it or take its life. Its corpse iswashed andprepared for burial within hours of its decease to return tothe Creator from whence it came.
The paroxysm of Nazi Jew-hatred was not satisfied with the victim'smurder but required the physical debasement and effacement of his humanremains.
Mr. von Hausswolff, you, like the Nazis' use of human skin forlampshades and fat to produce soap have similarly twice murdered thebodiesthat were once the ashes you have desecrated, turning art intoabomination. Hitler,as an aspirant painter, would havesurely applauded. Some might ask, "is your necrophilia a mental sickness or a commercialdesign?"
This is hardly relevant. What you have done transcends your personalperversity. In stripping all dignity from the dead of a grandparentgeneration, you have encouraged the young to choose barbarism overconscience,the dark ages over civility.
Mr. von Hausswolff, we recommend two gestures to attempt to assuageyour damage:
- return your painting to the Majdanek camp authorities forre-burial of the diluted ashes in its mass grave. - endow your own mortal ashes for use by a young painter as a workin your own image to be cremated.
From dust to dust.
Shimon Samuels is Director for International Relations of the SimonWiesenthal Centre
