Located next to Holocaust hero Oskar Schindler’s factory and mere miles from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Krakow's Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAK) continues to feature as part of an art exhibit - a video showing naked men and women playing tag in a "gaschamber".
The 9-minute film, entitled "Berek - The Game of Tag," created in 1999 by Polish artist Artur Zmijewski, claims that part of it was filmed in an actual gas chamber. The video ispart of an exhibition entitled, "POLAND-ISRAEL-GERMANY: The Experience of Auschwitz”.
DISCLAIMER: BEFORE CONSIDERING WATCHING, PLEASE KNOW THIS VIDEO IS HIGHLY OFFENSIVE AND INAPPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN.
Earlier this summer, SWC Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and SWC Israel Director and Chief Nazi Hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff:
· Visited the Museum and met with Museum officials, as well as local leaders and the US Ambassador to Poland urging the removal of the
offensive video –
it is still being shown today
· Were given a letter by Museum director, Maria Anna Potocki, to Yad Vashem in which she claimed that the video, "is not shown directly at the exhibition but via a videolink” – this is not the case
· Have learned that, following the SWC’s protest, and those of many others, the video had been temporarily removed – it has since been reinstated behind a wallwith sign declaring "adult content-controversial"
·
Urged the intervention of Dr. Sebastian Rejak, Poland’s official in charge of relations with World Jewry
during a meeting in Warsaw
In 2012, the video was removed from an exhibition in Berlin because it was found, "not respecting the dignity of the victims of the Holocaust". Earlier this year, the exhibitionwas displayed in an art gallery in Estonia where protests by Dr. Zuroff, and the Estonian Jewish community led to the permanent removal of the video.
As MOCAK receives much of its budget from the City of Krakow, we need the Mayor to take actionto stop this desecration of and assault on Memory.
