Swedish Artist Uses Jewish Holocaust Victims’ Ashes for ‘Artwork’
Swedish Artist Uses Jewish Holocaust Victims’ Ashes for Painting
Carl Michael von Hausswolff mixed the ashes from the infamous Nazi facility with water to compose a small painting of grey streaks. The work now hangs in a gallery in the Swedish city of Lund.
But Salomon Schulman, a leading voice in Sweden’s Jewish community who lost many relatives to the Holocaust, has condemned the painting as “revolting”.
“Who knows,” he wrote in a letter to a local newspaper. “Maybe some of the ashes originated from my relatives. No one knows where they were deported: all my mother’s siblings and their children, and my grandparents.
“I will never go to this gallery and it as view the desecration of Jewish bodies,” he added. “I am sickened by his work and obsession with necrophilia.”
Mr Von Hausswolff took [IOW—he stole them] the ashes during a 1989 visit to Majdanek, which, during its 34 months in operation from 1941 to 1944, claimed around 79,000 lives, the vast majority of them Polish Jews. The artist said the ashes appeared to “contain the memories and the souls of people: people tormented and murdered by other people in the most viscous [sic! Telegraph spell check fail!] war of the 20th Century”.
Someone should steal this painting and bury it.