December 29, 2017 (moc.media)
In response to criticism of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin from a German politician, the art collective Center for Political Beauty (Zentrum für Politische Schönheit) set up a replica of the memorial next to the home of a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
The miniature replica of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Source: Kai Pfaffenbach/ArtForum
According to Deutsche Welle, Afd’s senior leader Björn Höcke referred to the memorial as a “monument of shame” earlier this year and called on Germany to make a “180-degree turn” in the way it addresses World War II.
Artists build a small replica of the monument and installed of 24 concrete slabs of different sizes on the private property near the politician’s house in a village in Thuringia. The art group’s leader, Philipp Ruch, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper about the project: “We are doing our neighbourly duty. We hope he [Björn Höcke] enjoys the view every day when he looks out the window.”
Ruch added: “He will now have to deal with the fact that he has neighbors who don’t consider the Holocaust Memorial a ‘monument of shame’, but who try to remember what had happened, to prevent it from happening again.”
The Center for Political Beauty launched a fundraising campaign to rent the property for two more years. The group says the installation will be removed if Höcke falls on his knees in front of the memorial and asks for forgiveness, as former chancellor Willy Brand did in front of Warsaw’s Ghetto Heroes Monument in the 1970, ArtForum reports.
