Prague, Czech Republic – A controversial Prague exhibition by Polish artist Peter Fuss showing large pictures of Nazi soldiers with stars of David instead of swastikas on their sleeves lasted only several minutes before being dismantled by visitors from the Prague Jewish Community.
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“This is no censorship. If somebody offends you, you must react,” Prague Jewish Community head Frantisek Banyai said.
Banyai said that the exhibition was “clearly a provocation degrading Holocaust victims” because it opened on Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day that commemorates the beginning of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 when Polish Jews were fighting against the Nazis.
The photomontages had a strongly anti-Semitic character, Banyai pointed out.
The organisers presented the exhibition as criticism of Israel’s anti-Palestinian policy.
The Linhart Foundation that runs the Roxy/NoD gallery in a building owned by the Jewish community in Prague centre apologised for the exhibition and promised to adopt measures preventing similar failures.
The exhibition was cancelled and information about it was withdrawn from the Internet.
Banyai said the Jewish community wanted to immediately contact the Linhart Foundation at the exhibition’s opening, but its heads were not on the spot. He said that the dismantling was not organised, but spontaneous.
One of the visitors who removed the pictures allegedly said “Polish swine” when he received the information that the author is a Pole, the local paper says.
In a text accompanying the cancelled exhibition, Fuss asks how come that people who remember ghetto walls that surrounded Jews allow and accept that Palestinians are now surrounded by walls.
The photographs of Nazi soldiers during anti-Jewish pogroms that Fuss used for the exhibition are not historical, but pictures from the films Schindler’s List and The Pianist.
Fuss’s previous art projects react to the situation in Poland. In January, the Polish police dealt with his billboard placed next to a church, saying “Jews get out of the Catholic country”!” and showing a number of faces of popular Polish personalities, including Lech Walesa and President Lech Kaczynski.
Fuss keeps his real identity secret because he fears about his safety.
People who compare the so called palestinians with the jews during WWII are either deliberately anti-semitic or just plain stupid. There are no comparisons at all. It is utterly offensive…
He keeps his identity a secret…what a coward.
clearly a loser and should seek psycological (i know its spelt wrong) help
Another leftist “artist” who thinks that “art should always provoke”…There was something interesting in his “Jews get out of the Catholic country” poster. This was clearly a mockery of the obsessions of the far right and a test of how would people respond to such views being expressed openly in the public space. Controversial, but he was up to something. Now it’s rubbish. Not only the comparison is untenable, it’s also extremely unoriginal.
World Jewish population 1939:
18 million.
World Jewish population 1945:
12 Million.
World Jewish population 2000:
16 million.
Palestinian population 1937:
about 700,000.
Palestinian population 1950*:
about 700,000.
Palestinian population 2005*:
4.2 million.
*Figures from UNRWA.ORG website
Polish Swine that doesn’t know math.
“but its heads were not on the spot. He said that the dismantling was not organised, but spontaneous. ” Regardless of the content of the article, what in the world does that supposed to mean? Where was “its heads” and who has more than one? and why don’t you read what you’ve written so you can correct your own mistakes!
Silly word games -we all know what he meant.