One of my favorite Twitter accounts, @TMIJOS (Jew on Shabbat), recently brought the following article to my attention:

“Jewish officials are furious over a video installation at a Polish museum that shows naked men and women playing a game of tag in a gas chamber. 

“Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s office in Jerusalem, called the installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow “so offensive and so disgusting that we found it necessary to protest.”

“Game of Tag,” made in 1999 by Polish artist Artur Zmijewski, has for years been accused of taking the Holocaust lightly.

“The World Jewish Congress and Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, have also asked the museum to remove the installation. In response, the museum recently put it behind an enclosure with a warning.

“But Zuroff and other Jewish officials say it isn’t enough. Zuroff said it is “simply incomprehensible” that the video is being shown in Poland, where Nazi Germany killed millions of Jews and non-Jews.”

The full article can be read here, but I think the above covers the issue pretty well. Frankly, I am shocked that anyone would call trivializing the Holocaust, the victims, and their suffering “art.”

This is not art, it is offensive filth.

I am not a puritan, and I think it’s totally ok for art to be wild, weird, and non-traditional. I don’t mind if something is controversial, but it needs to be for a good purpose, not to simply cause pain and further degrade those who suffered. Genocide should never be treated like a joke, because it’s consequences are deadly serious.

Back in the ’90s, there was a similar uproar over an artist’s unusual depiction of the Virgin Mary. He chose to paint her as being black and decorated with elephant dung. Obviously such “art” was VERY offensive to the Catholic community (Mayor Rudy Giuliani was particularly outraged and led a charge to have it removed).

Being Jewish, the Virgin Mary has no special meaning for me, yet I too was upset by it. No one deserves to have their religion made into a laughingstock. This painting belongs in the garbage, yet it recently sold for over 4 million dollars. Sad, huh?

True art adds beauty to this dark world. Those of us who love it—and I do!—need to protest things that cross the line and definitely not contribute one cent to its production. What scares me most is the next generation. God forbid a child sees people playing tag in a gas chamber and think it looks like fun. Now, that would truly be a tragedy…

Do you think there should be limitations on art?