December 27, 2012

(JTA) — An Italian artist reportedly placed a statue of Adolf Hitler in a building outside what used to be the Warsaw Ghetto.

The statue, which depicts Hitler kneeling and is titled “Him,” is part of a new exhibition by Maurizio Cattelan titled “Amen,” according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In a statement Thursday, the center called the display a “tasteless misuse of art.”

Efraim Zuroff, the center’s Israel director, referred to the statue as “a senseless provocation which insults the memory of the Nazis’ victims.”

The statue reportedly was placed in the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw last month and recently opened to the public. The art center’s website describes the exhibition as an exploration of the notion of “love thy enemy,” adding, “What does forgive  those who trespass against us mean? Evoking the traumas of history, they deal with memory and forgetfulness, good and evil.”

In the summer of 1942, about 300,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to the Nazi death camp Treblinka.

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