Criticism of ZPS Art Action: "Instrumentalization of Victims"

Also as a warning to the Union parties before working with the AfD, the artist collective Center for Political Beauty (ZPS) wanted to know the memorial not far from the Reichstag in Berlin. But the action "Search for us!" also triggers strong criticism. Thus, the Green politician Volker Beck filed a criminal complaint against the ZPS as a "pillar of resistance" designated memorial, which contains according to the artists' collective ashes of Holocaust victims.

"If it was indeed the ashes of those murdered in the Shoah, this would be a punishable violation of the dead rest (§ 168 StGB)," say the activists of the Center for Political Beauty (ZPS), "tweeted Beck.

This can only be checked by investigation. I have filed a criminal complaint with the state protection. https://t.co/Un67woJwJU

The journalist and co-editor of the journal "Yalta - Positions on the Jewish Presence" Max Czollek participated in the discussions in the social networks. He criticized, among other things, a fundraising campaign that is part of the project. For 50 euros you can buy a cube from the monument.

Think cubes with ashes and bones as a Merch for Shoah memorial action can only be awesome if you are 1 incompletely secularized Christian in your heart.

Czollek also pointed out that Jewish voices were overwhelmingly shocked by the action - such as the blogger Lila from the north of Israel, whose contribution went viral:

I feel very much about criminal offenses against the Center for Political Beauty, but nobody would care. I prefer to refer to this text as always famous @ Purple to the matter. https://t.co/WBkrPLOPM6

Meron Mendel, Israeli educator and director of the Anne Frank Education Center, pointed out that according to Jewish law, body parts may only be buried in Jewish cemeteries. He spoke of an "instrumentalization of the victims":

Even at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial, Jews turned against the instrumentalization of the remains of those murdered. According to Jewish law, body parts may only be buried in Jewish cemeteries. The action of #ZPS is perhaps well-intentioned, but fundamentally wrong. https://t.co/Lrh20RbjBe

The journalist Johannes C. Bockenheimer recalled that in the Holocaust the contempt of the German perpetrators for their Jewish victims had gone beyond death by the Germans burning the corpses of the Jews. "Now, decades later, a few grandchildren of the German perpetrators think it is a good idea to re-excavate the ashes that were used to ill-treat the Jews who were abused during and after their lives and for political action."

Christoph Heubner, Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, had already strongly criticized the action immediately after the announcement: "Auschwitz survivors are dismayed that this memorial violates their feelings and the eternal peace of their murdered relatives."

Support from Lea Rosh and Götz Aly

There was support from Lea Rosh. The initiator of the monumental field of steles in Berlin described the action on request of SPIEGEL for "deeper than our Holocaust memorial is it". She was "moved and touched" by the idea and its execution: "It is unbelievable."

The historian and Holocaust researcher Götz Aly expresses sympathy: "The subject of the exploitation of the murdered has been taboo for an infinitely long time," he told SPIEGEL. Aly remembers, as Rosh did, at earlier visits to extermination camps, that he had already noticed the omnipresence of human remains: "We were standing on the ashes, which was not a natural forest floor, and white bones of bone came out in the rain."

On Monday morning, the artist collective had built the installation on the site of the former Krolloper - where the Reichstag deputies in March 1933 voted for the Enabling Act, an important basis for the dictatorship of the Nazis. "It's about the last German dictatorship and whether it threatens us again," said ZPS founder Philipp Ruch on Monday.

The "Center for Political Beauty" has attracted attention on several occasions in recent years, causing discussions. For example, about two years ago, it had set up a replica of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in the neighborhood of the residential building of AfD politician Björn Höcke in Thuringia.