Copenhagen, Denmark – Wiesenthal Center: Cheap Exploitation To Use Gold Teeth In Auschwitz Sculpture

Copenhagen, Denmark – A Danish artist claims he used teeth and gold fillings to build a sculpture commemorating the horrors of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.

The work exhibited Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, depicts a toy-sized diamond-studded train heading toward the entrance of the camp.

Marco Evaristti, a Chilean-born Buddhist convert with Jewish parents, said parts of the 5.1-pound (2.3-kilogram) sculpture were built with enamel and gold fillings from teeth that he bought in Austria from a person who said they came from Nazi death camps. The artist told The Associated Press he “cannot be positively sure” about that claim but added, “I have to believe what he told me.”

He said he also used three teeth from his grandmother that he had received from his mother. The grandmother was Jewish but didn’t die in a concentration camp.

“I wanted to create an artwork that is related to all the atrocities in the world which many tend to forget,” Evaristti said. “I wanted to unite some of the most beautiful things with some of the meanest and most macabre.”

The artwork has not created much controversy in Denmark, though Copenhagen mayor for cultural affairs Pia Allerslev, who opened the exhibit, acknowledged it could be “offensive” to some.

Jacques Blum, a member of the organizing committee for the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Denmark and former chairman of the Jewish Community in Denmark, said he had suggested the sculpture be put on display.

“Stronger and stronger means are needed to mark the day,” because many young people know too little about the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, Blum said.

Outside Denmark, some found it in bad taste.

“To me it sounds like a person who is looking for a cheap exploitation of the Holocaust,” said Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “He lacks sensitivity.”

Zuroff and Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, both questioned the claim about the gold teeth.

“We don’t know anything about it and I doubt it is what he claims it is,” Yaari said.

Evaristti said the artwork was briefly displayed during an arts exhibition in Berlin in 2008 but was “quickly removed because some people were sensitive about it.”

Evaristti has a history of provocative works.

In 2000 he drew widespread attention for a display at a Danish gallery inviting visitors to turn on blenders filled with goldfish. He painted an iceberg in Greenland red with biodegradable dye and draped the Mont Blanc mountain in scarlet fabric to call attention to environmental degradation.