Activists apologise for use of ‘Holocaust ashes’ in installation
The Centre for Political Beauty installed an urn outside Germany’s parliament building earlier this week.
An activist group has apologised to Jewish organisations outraged over their use of purported Holocaust victims’ remains in an installation outside Germany’s parliament building.
The Centre for Political Beauty, a Germany-based activist group known for provocative stunts, installed an urn outside the Reichtstag building on Monday.
Soil the group said contained victims’ ashes could be seen in the transparent orange urn, about the size of an oil drum, set atop a metal pillar.
“We want to apologise especially to Jewish institutions, associations and individuals who see our work as disturbing or touching the peace of the dead according to Jewish religious law,” the group said on its website in a post late on Wednesday.
Six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis, many of them transported from around Europe to be killed in camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka that the Germans established in occupied Poland.
The activist group, whose members consider themselves political artists, had said the urn should serve as a warning in times of growing far-right extremism of how conservative forces in Germany helped pave the way for Adolf Hitler’s fascists to come to power in 1933.
