Israeli student steals from Auschwitz for art project: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
20.07.2017 17:46
An Israeli art student has admitted to stealing artefacts from the Auschwitz Museum to use in her work at the Jerusalem university, the IAR news agency has reported.
The main gate of the Auschwitz German Nazi camp. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
“This is painful, outrageous and disrespectful,” the museum said on Twitter.
“[The] Auschwitz-Birkenau site is preserved to testify for the future. 'Art' does not justify theft,” it added.
The museum notified Polish prosecutors that the woman – a grandchild of Holocaust survivors – stole a number of items including small bowls, glasses, a screw, a handful of earth, and a “no stealing” sign, according to IAR.
The woman told an Israeli newspaper that she took the items out of concern that, with time, the Holocaust would become “a myth”, IAR said.
Prosecutors are to investigate if the materials used in her artwork are originals from the museum.
If found guilty of theft of culturally significant items the woman could face up to ten years in jail.
The Auschwitz Museum, located at the site of the former German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland's south, aims to bear witness for future generations to the tragedy of the Holocaust and the Second World War, a museum spokesman told IAR. (vb)
Source: IAR