Rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang to visit Auschwitz
May 3, 2018
The rappers' notorious references to Auschwitz and the Holocaust in their lyrics have stirred controversy in Germany. Now they have accepted an invitation to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial.
Two controversial German rappers at the center of an anti-Semitism scandal are planning a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp memorial.
The German daily Bild reported that rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang have accepted an invitation issued by the International Auschwitz Committee.
"We have accepted the invitation," rapper Farid Bang confirmed to the paper. The visit is expected to take place on June 3.
The date had been suggested by Christoph Heuber, vice president of the committee, because both German and Polish youths will be helping workers at the memorial that day.
Heuber said that the rappers' decision to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau is "a signal to their many fans."
The idea for Kollegah and Farid Bang to pay a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau was suggested by German musician Marius Müller-Westernhagen in an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Müller-Westernhagen was one of various musicians who gave back their Echo music awards after the two rappers also received a prize at the April 3 Echo ceremony for an album that contained lyrics describing their bodies as "more defined than Auschwitz inmates." In another piece, the duo sing: "Commit another Holocaust, come with a Molotov cocktail."
The Echo awards' organizers scrapped the award due the widespread criticism from media, musicians and Holocaust survivors following the rap duo's prize.
A memorial to the victims of the largest concentration camp
The largest of its kind established by Germany's Nazi regime, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex was erected in 1940. The camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau were used to exterminate over a million Jews and some 100,000 Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners and anti-Nazi resistance fighters. Researchers believe that around 232,000 children died on site during World War II.
Established in 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum preserves the authentic site of the concentration camp in Poland as well as the memory of the victims, hoping to serve as a warning to future generations. The memorial site has grown to symbolize the tragedy of the Holocaust and all other Nazi atrocities.
Surviving was a daily struggle during the Holocaust. Some of the people persecuted in concentration camps, ghettos or living underground managed to document in their work the indescribable horrors they faced.
Image: Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oœwiêcim
Forgotten artists
While many of the so-called "degenerate artists" persecuted by the Nazis are now world-renowned, those who painted in concentration camps, such as Waldemar Nowakowski (pictured) are almost forgotten. The book and the exhibition "Der Tod hat nicht das letzte Wort" (Death does not have the last word), opening on January 27 in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, offer a tribute to these artists.
Image: Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oœwiêcim
Etching the horrors of Theresienstadt
The writer, exhibition curator and art historian Jürgen Kaumkötter spent more than 15 years researching Holocaust art. His focus goes beyond the works which emerged during the war, including all forms of art dealing with the events in retrospect. Leo Haas created this etching about the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1947. Some inmates even managed to draw while they were in the camps.
Image: Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else-Lasker-Schüler- Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider
Painting for the 'camp museum'
Artistic life in Theresienstadt has been better documented than that in Auschwitz, which nevertheless had its own "concentration camp museum." Artists were given pencils, brushes and paper to carry out assignments for the Nazis. Other works were created covertly. However, almost no art emerged from the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pictured here: Marian Ruzamski, self-portrait, 1943-44.
Image: Staatliches Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oœwiêcim
Artist and witness of the crematories
Yehuda Bacon (pictured right) arrived in Theresienstadt in 1942, when he was 13 years old. He was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1943, where he was employed as a messenger and was allowed to warm up by the ovens of the crematories in winter. Not only would he later testify during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, he'd also show what he saw there through the drawings he made after the war.
Image: Bürgerstiftung für verfolgte Künste – Else- Lasker-Schüler-Zentrum – Kunstsammlung Gerhard Schneider
A symbol of death
Later drawings by Yehuda Bacon do not show Auschwitz in detail, unlike those he made for the Frankfurt judges. Yet one can still recognize the square chimneys of the crematories, a shower head, and outlines of people. For art historian Kaumkötter these images are an allegory of death in the gas chambers and graves in the skies. Beyond their testimonial value, they are valuable works of art.
Image: Yehuda Bacon
The second generation
Michel Kichka is an influential comic illustrator in Israel. The graphic novel "Zweite Generation. Was ich meinem Vater nie gesagt habe" ("Second generation: what I never told my father") deals with his relationship with his father, an Auschwitz survivor. As a child, Kichka was traumatized by his father's story. His dad's jokes about the concentration camp would help him overcome his nightmares.
Image: Egmont Graphic Novel
Metaphors of the Holocaust
The parents of the Israeli artist Sigalit Landau were also Holocaust survivors, and her art teacher was the Auschwitz survivor Yehuda Bacon, who is still active as an artist and professor in Israel to this day. Her works integrate metaphorical allusions to the Shoah, such as these shoes, reminiscent of the mountains of footwear which can be seen in the permanent exhibition at Auschwitz.
Image: Sigalit Landau
Death does not have the final word
Sigalit Landau collected a hundred pairs of shoes in Israel and sank them in the Dead Sea. The sea covered the shoes with layers of its healing salt, an allegory for life beyond death. She wanted to show them in Berlin, as a symbol for hope overcoming despair. The exhibition "Der Tod hat nicht das letzte Wort" ("Death does not have the final word"), will stay in Berlin until February 27.
