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Comments (0)A huge outdoor art poster that features Mickey Mouse’s image with a swastika and a nude woman’s body has outraged Jewish leaders and others in a Polish city.
The poster, which went up in June in the western city of Poznan just steps from a synagogue, is an Italian artist’s take on what he calls the “horrors” of the American lifestyle.
“NaziSexyMouse,” by Max Papeschi, is one piece in a contemporary art exhibition opening in the fall.
The head of Poznan’s Jewish community, Alicja Kobus, 64, said she was repulsed by the poster. She first saw the poster after taking Jewish visitors from Holland to the synagogue, which the Nazis turned into a swimming pool.
“It is a shock for people who are still scarred by the hell of the Holocaust,” she told The Associated Press.
Prosecutors say the poster is art and does not violate the country’s laws against glorifying Nazism.
City Council member Norbert Napieraj had asked prosecutors to ban the poster, saying that “This art provocation is a form of violence against the sensitivity of many people.”
The poster has been vandalized twice; on Tuesday it was no longer stretched across a building in the city center.
Gallery director Maria Czarnecka said she plans to put it back up.
“Art should be provocative and controversial,” she told AP, insisting that the poster does not seek to propagate Nazism but instead wants to explore “symbols and how they work.”
“The Mickey Mouse head and swastika are on the same level—they don’t mean anything and they are both part of the globalized world,” Czarnecka said.
Papeschi explains on his website that the series, which he dubs “Politically-Incorrect,” is intended as a commentary on the United States, revealing “all the horror of this lifestyle.”
“NaziSexyMouse” also was being shown this week in Berlin as part of an exhibition at a sister gallery, but the image has not been displayed publicly there and has sparked no outcry.
‘Dancing Auschwitz’ Video Gets Mixed Response
A YouTube video of a family singing and dancing at Auschwitz has received more than half a million hits and mixed reaction.
Australian artist Jane Korman filmed her 89-year-old father Adolek Kohn, a former inmate at Auschwitz, and her three children dancing outside the infamous death camp in Poland, as well as at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, Terezin in the Czech Republic and other Holocaust memorial sites in Europe to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
The video, which was posted originally last December, has received mass viral attention this week, skyrocketing to more than 500,000 hits on the popular video-sharing website. The video also has generated more than 3,000 responses, many of them sympathetic. But some were scathing, and the video also has been exploited by neo-Nazi websites.
Korman, of Melbourne, posted her own message defending her work.
“To those that I have offended—I am sorry,” she wrote. “My intention was to present a fresh perspective to younger generations who have often become desensitized to the horrors of the Holocaust. I hope ‘Dancing Auschwitz’ helps keep the lessons of the past alive so they will be forever remembered.”
When she first posted the video online, Korman wrote, “This dance is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life. It is an affirmation that man can triumph over the darkest of circumstance and still strive to find beauty and peace.”
In an interview with the BBC this week, Korman’s father said first the family prayed for the martyrs.
“The dancing was also very important because we are alive, we survived,” Kohn said.
Not everyone agreed. Kamil Cwiok, 86, told The Daily Mail that “I don’t see how this video is a mark of respect for the millions who didn’t survive, nor for those who did. It seems to trivialize the horrors that were committed there.”
Russian Court Tosses Blood Libel Case
A Russian court dismissed incitement charges against a college professor who perpetuated the canard that Jews ritually murder Christian children.
The court in Tyumen dropped the charges after Svetlana Shestakova did not appear in court, citing illness, the Slavic Law and Justice Center reported on July 9, according to the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. The statute of limitations then reportedly was allowed to lapse.
Shestakova gave a series of lectures to future public school teachers in 2008 at Tyumen State Oil-gas University on the topic of “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture,” during which she reportedly made the blood libel claim that Jews ritually murder Christian children and use their blood to bake matzah for Passover.