From synagogue to gas chamber
Former German synagogue hosts performance artist, wants to spotlight 'banality' of Holocaust remembrance
A Spanish performance artist on Sunday transformed an unused synagogue into a gas chamber as part of a project to draw attention to the Holocaust.
According to German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Santiago Sierra directed the poisonous exhaust fumes from six cars into the former place of worship in the small town of Pulheim, near the city of Cologne.
Visitors wearing breathing equipment were allowed inside the synagogue one at a time in the company of a fireman to spend a couple of minutes walking around the carbon-monoxide-filled room.
The 39-year-old Sierra said in a statement he was trying to draw attention "'to the banality of remembrance of the Holocaust."
The agency said Sierra, an internationally known artist who lives in Mexico City, has staged other "provocative" exhibits in the past, including tattooing the backs of six Cuban men and dying the hair of Africans blonde in order to make them look European.
The Pulheim project, called 245 Cubic Meters, is scheduled to take place on Sundays except for Easter Sunday until April 30.
The former synagogue has not been used as a place of prayer since the 1920s. Annual art events have taken place there every year since 1991.
In an initial reaction, the Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the action as 'an insult to the victims' of the Holocaust.
