A Jewish Holocaust survivor who danced with his family at the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp and other Nazi death camp memorials has attracted a growing following on the Internet with a film of their performance.
Adolek Kohn, 89, a former Auschwitz prisoner who is now an Australian citizen, said the video, which shows him, his daughter Jane and her three children bopping to Gloria Gaynor’s hit song I Will Survive, is meant as an affirmation of life and stands as a celebration of his own survival.
However, the so-called Auschwitz Dance film, which has clocked up around 500,000 hits on YouTube, has attracted a whole gamut of responses from viewers, ranging from disgust to admiration.
One viewer called it offensive and “disrespectful to all those who perished,” while another said it was a “life-affirming middle finger to the Nazis.” Another said it had moved him to tears of joy.
The family is shown doing a line dance at the gates of Auschwitz in Poland in front of the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign, in Terezin in the Czech Republic, Dachau in Germany, and various synagogues, wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “Survivor.”
In some scenes, they are wearing Jewish stars of David sewn into their clothing, the symbol Jews were forced to wear during the Third Reich.
At the end of the video, Kohn is heard saying: “If someone would tell me here, then, that I would come, 60-something-three years later, with my grandchildren, I’d say ‘What you talking about?’ So here you are. This is really a historical moment.”
His daughter, an artist, said she suggested the project to her father, adding it was created in defiance of the adage that there could be “no art after Auschwitz.”
“It was important to create something that gave a fresh interpretation of the Holocaust because for the younger generation the word and images you see of the Holocaust are numbing,” she said. “It wasn’t easy to ask my father, but I had to do it.”
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