Jewish Art

Holocaust
survivor Abe Foxman,
national director of the
Anti-Defamation League, says
“the exhibit is
premature”
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/37656.htm

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January 11, 2002

Jewish
Museum in Holocaust “Art” Flap

By MARSHA KRANES

Among the works to be exhibited are:

• ” LEGO Concentration Camp Set,” by
  Zbiginiew Libera – featuring a LEGO toy
  box with a picture of a miniature death
  camp made with LEGO blocks.
• “Giftgas Giftset,” by Tom Sachs – a
  series of poison-gas canisters with
  designer labels.
• “It’s The Real Thing – Self
  Portrait at Buchenwald” by Alan
  Schechner – the artist holding a Diet
  Coke inserted into the famous photo of
  emaciated Jews being liberated from the
  death camp.

“Chutzpah,” said Rabbi Abraham
Cooper of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center. “It’s not an issue of censorship — such an exhibit will find a way into the pop culture. But the Jewish
Museum should be building a firewall to protect history, to stand with the victims, to help the community at large to understand the sacredness of memory.”

The show will run at the Jewish Museum, on Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, from March
17 to June 30.

Website note: Abraham Foxman, wealthy and controversial chief of the Anti Defamation league, likes to refer to himself as a
“Holocaust survivor.” As a biography on this website show, he was not even born when Hitler invaded his native Poland, and he was looked after by Polish
Catholics throughout the war; his parents also
“survived”.

“It’s a very different approach to the
Nazi era and the Holocaust — focusing on
the perpetrator and implicating you, as
the viewer of the work,” said museum
curator Norman Kleeblatt.

The LEGO toy box, he said, shows how
“innocent things can be perverted and turned into implements of destruction.”

The “Giftgas Giftset” piece “shows how you can make something glamorous out of something that is poisonous.”

Holocaust survivor Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation
League, says “the exhibit is premature” and will be “as long as there are survivors alive who may be offended.”