Rendering on Painting №1

The article published on the website abc.net on January 12, 2013 is headlined “Artist 'used ashes of Holocaust victims' in painting”. The article reports at length that Polish prosecutors are investigating a Swedish artist's claim that he used the ashes of people killed in the Holocaust in one of his paintings.

According to the text of the article, Carl Michael von Hausswolff says he stole the ashes from the former Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek in Poland during a visit in 1989. Moreover, he claims he then used the ashes in one of his paintings by mixing them with water in order to represent the suffering of the victims by the black-and-white painting. 

Speaking of the situation it is necessary to note that the prosecution opened an investigation into this matter. Beata Syk-Jankowska, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office in Lublin, south-eastern Poland, says officials are investigating the artist's claims. In this connection it is worthwhile mentioning the fact that the probe centres around potential charges of desecration of the dead or stealing human remains or graves - crimes punishable up to eight years in jail in Poland.The statute of limitations for such acts normally carry a maximum of 15 years.

It’s an open secret that the artwork, entitled Memory Works, was exhibited at a gallery in Lund, in southern Sweden, last month. But the exhibit was later shut down after protests from the Jewish community and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which represents Jewish interests.

Giving appraisal to the situation, it’s necessary to point out that Swedish police opened an investigation after a member of the public filed a police complaint against von Hausswolff on December 5 for "disturbing the peace of the dead", calling the artwork a "desecration of human remains".   The case was later dropped due to lack of evidence, as the offence was committed abroad.

The article draws a conclusion that the Majdanek camp, the second largest death camp in Poland after Auschwitz, was created near Lublin by the Nazis in 1941 and was in use until 1944. It was revealed that historians working for the museum estimate that around 80,000 prisoners, of which 60,000 were Jews, were executed in the camp's gas chambers or died through malnutrition or exhaustion. In total, 150,000 people were imprisoned in the camp between 1941 and 1944.

As for me, I think that it is hard to predict the course of events in future, but I believe that the guilty should be punished for his actions, especially in this case, because the ashes used in painting is beyond my understanding.