Israel’s Warsaw embassy seeks to pull Auschwitz video from display

Israel’s embassy in Warsaw asks organizers of an art exhibition about Auschwitz to remove a controversial video of naked people playing tag in a gas chamber.

The video is part of an exhibition titled “Poland – Israel – Germany. The experience of Auschwitz,” which opened last month at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, or MOCAK, about the former Nazi death camp’s impact on public discourse. It was endorsed and sponsored by the Israeli embassy in Poland.

“The embassy has learned of criticism regarding the video in question and has contacted organizers with a request that the parts deemed offensive be removed,” Michael Sobelman, the embassy’s spokesperson, tells JTA Wednesday.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel both criticized the video and called it inappropriate for an exhibition with sponsorship from the embassy.

— JTA