An Australian artist has defended posting a YouTube video of her family singing and dancing to the tune of I Will Survive at the Auschwitz death camp.
Melbourne artist Jane Korman - who is Jewish - filmed her Holocaust survivor father and her three children dancing outside the infamous camp in Poland.
As many as 1.1 million people were murdered there by the Nazis in World War II.
The video also shows the family dancing at a Polish synagogue, the German concentration camp at Dachau, the Czech concentration camp at Theresienstadt and at a Polish memorial to the victims of the Nazi ghetto.
The video ends with Korman's emotional 89-year-old father Adolk describing his return to Poland with his three grandchildren as "a really historic moment".
Ms Korman told London's The Daily Mail the video was a "celebration of life and survival".
"I wanted to make artwork that creates a fresh interpretation of historical memory," Ms Korman said. "He [her father] is saying 'we're dancing, we should be dancing, we're celebrating our survival and the generations after me. We are affirming our existence'."
But the video - which was also displayed in an Australian art gallery - has been met with anger by some Holocaust survivors and has been picked up and exploited by neo-Nazi websites.
"I don't see how this video is a mark of respect for the millions who didn't survive, nor for those who did," Kamil Cwiok, 86, told The Daily Mail. "It seems to trivialise the horrors that were committed there."
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff said there was a time and place to celebrate survival.
"As human beings, we have a right to celebrate survival, but there is a time and place to do so," he said.
"There is an infinite number of ways to do that, but we need to consider the sensibilities of those for whom places such as Auschwitz will always hold terrible pain and indelible memories . . Auschwitz is one of the world's largest cemeteries."
The artwork was met with mixed reactions on blog sites with some supporting Ms Korman.
New Zelands Daily Telegraph
