A few days ago, I read a “Culture Monster” (the L.A. Times art blog) post on a controversial YouTube video, made by Jane Korman, an Australian artist. The video shows Korman, along with her father, Adolek Kohn, who is a Holocaust survivor, as well as other children in the family, dancing at Auschwitz. At one point, Kohn is in front of an oven, wearing a t-shirt with the word “Survivor.” The family dances to Gloria Gaynor’s seventies hit, “I Will Survive” (given its basically trivial lyrics, the song is especially jolting).
There have been lots of comedies making fun of the Holocaust, most notably, The Producers, and there are countless Holocaust jokes. But can you actually go out and dance on the graves of those murdered at Auschwitz and somehow make it move people? I’ve watched the video several times now, vacillating between thinking it’s an outrage and thinking it’s a moving work of heartfelt genius. Perhaps, in a way all genuinely new, affecting art works, it’s both.
The artist and her father both argue that their intention in making the video was to reach out to younger people—people for whom the Holocaust is as much ancient history as the First World War is to people my age. How will people in the 21st century, for whom the Nazi regime inevitably must ossify into a remote and dry fact, comprehend that it was Western civilization’s reason and technology, combined with its core values of “common decency,” that produced the Holocaust—not to mention two catastrophic world wars that together killed 60 million people?
In an interview, Korman said, “We came from the ashes, now we dance.” Reactions to the video have varied from outrage to empathy. Some people commenting on the video have dismissed it as yet another product of an artist wanting attention. Others celebrate it, seeing the family as dancing on the graves of Hitler and the Nazis. Others decided that Kohn, as a survivor, had the right to do whatever he wanted. Still others were concerned that the video, though made with good intentions, will end up misunderstood—especially since the Internet makes it easy to present things out of context.
Living in an ironic age as we do, it takes a little work to see people dancing happily at Auschwitz as something other than an Onion joke. But in the tiny gestures—a hand of one of the children gently caressing the father’s shoulder, the casual manners of the family while they’re dancing—sincere love and joy reveal themselves.
This video is not for everyone. For every person who thinks it’s beautiful and moving, there will be someone else who thinks it deeply offensive. The dance violates ordinary ideas of propriety and common decency, going against our established ideas of what it means to properly mourn the horror of the Holocaust. And yes, the video is dangerous, since bad people may very well use it for evil purposes. All art is dangerous in this way.
When ways of seeing things grow tired or stale, however, art has a way of stepping in and doing something fresh. The very unfathomableness of daring to dance at Auschwitz, instead of maintaining the expected sacred hush, may very well turn out be the best way to inform a new generation about the Holocaust.
17 Responses to Dancing at Auschwitz
22228715 - July 19, 2010 at 9:59 am
I experienced it as a celebration of the triumph of time and life and normalcy over the Nazi horrors. To have this man, and two generations of descendants of a survivor dancing and laughing and loving in such a place is moving. Yes, I can see how it might seem to trivialize the Holocaust to some, but if it does trivialize it, it does so in a way that says that even this awesome evil, with unimaginable force and violence, is ultimately small by contrast to the power of simple acts of love and life over time.The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
jack_cade - July 19, 2010 at 10:38 am
This is offensive because it is so poorly done–for instance the half-assed choreography. So clearly the work of a weekend or so by a handful of talentless teens on vacation to Europe with one of their grandfathers. This grandfather becomes the cloak of ethos they wrap themselves in as the act like self-involved children in a place of unspeakable horror.It is flippant and distasteful in its mockery of talent and carefully made art, while simultaneously making light of its location, yes whatever else it does it does make light of the holocaust. Now, none of these things would doom this piece of trivial footage to the scrap heap of terrible ideas / youtube videos. But, taken together, they make this an utter and shameful train wreck.
akafka - July 19, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I understand the objections, but the beauty of it too. It’s untidy, effusive, and a little degenerate. But given the Reich’s feelings about degenerate art, that’s part of the video’s appeal, no? Auschwitz has been made into a somewhat sterile monument, and this sticks a thumb in the eye of that sentiment. The horrors there weren’t sterile; the survivors’ difficult, scrambling subsequent lives weren’t sterile; and the psychic echoes down the generations aren’t either. I like the subtext: “Still here. Still messy. Still vivacious and rebellious. Still making difficult and ironic art. So there! You failed, suckers. Dance to that!”
satris - July 19, 2010 at 5:31 pm
@22228715 –Right. It’s a celebration of normalcy, A triumph over the past. The amateur dancing makes it all the more real: no flashy “professional entertainers” — just real folks.
11159859 - July 19, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I found it exultant. He is not only alive, but he dances. Not only he, but his children; not only his children, but his grandchildren.He dances beside the huge machine other humans built to kill him.The dance says, “To Life!” Without self-destroying hatred. I’m not sure this is a democratic question, but nevertheless: Who has earned the right to object? S. Leonard Rubinstein
your_rights - July 20, 2010 at 3:17 am
I cried through the whole video. I think it is “a moving work of heartfelt genius.” I’ve been to Auschwitz. It did not move me the way Adolek Kohn did. You’re a cool grandpa Mr. Kohn.
superdude - July 20, 2010 at 12:01 pm
This is fantastic! And to jack_cade I say: any attempt to put a feel of professionalism to the video would have made it utterly fail. The fact that it’s nearly spur of the moment, amatuer, honest and real makes it simulaneously poingant and powerful.The normal people won; normalcy won; emotions won; and a carefuly controlled and homogonized society lost.
danbloom - July 21, 2010 at 8:35 am
I liked it, and I liked the old man’s spirit and zest for living in his remarks. But one thing, I am not sure you noted it, but the AP story from Poland about this video emphasized that the video, which was made a while back, not recently, did not become popular at first. Very small audience, in fact. It was only after some rightwing neo-nazi hate group websites found the video link and posted it on THEIR websites that word started going viral worldwide, reaching the huge number of hits now. So this is also something to think about: how and why the video become so hugely widely viewed. There’s an irony here.
danbloom - July 21, 2010 at 8:46 am
Laurie, more background: “The video, which was posted originally last December 2009, has received mass viral attention this week, skyrocketing to more than 500,000 hits on the popular video-sharing Web site. The video also has generated more than 3,000 responses, many of them sympathetic. But some were scathing, and the video also has been exploited by neo-Nazi websites.”
danbloom - July 21, 2010 at 8:47 am
“Dancing, laughing at Auschwitz: who has the right?” By Vanessa Gera for ap wire servuice in WARSAW, Poland…..”The fact that the video only gained massive attention when neo-Nazi groups spread it online further complicates the question.”
honore - July 21, 2010 at 10:37 am
i have 2 VERY conflicting responses to this..1. as tears streamed from my eyes I watched this, I asked myself what do the dead of Auschwitz think of their descendant dancing on their graves? I don’t know.2. in a way, their dancing might be their way of transcending the horror of such a legacy. I don’t know.I won’t judge them harshly however. Too many today want to forgive and forget, but is this possible ever? Not in this instance so horrific, savage and cruel, while much of the world sat by. I’m glad they did this, regardless of what I or anyone else has to say.
oscarthedog - July 21, 2010 at 3:49 pm
It is human.
danbloom - July 22, 2010 at 3:33 am
A friend of mine, himself a Holocaust survivor in NYC, 80, who was a young boy was in six different camps, and has written a book about his life then too, told me re this video:”Danny,That dancing video made me squirm. I found it somewhat tasteless, but ifthese Holocaust survivors want to express themselves in this manner, I thinkit is their privilege to do so.”
danbloom - July 22, 2010 at 3:34 am
He added in his second note: “Danny, I think this article by Laurie Fenrich is very good. It expresses some of myown ambivalence about the story.”
danbloom - July 22, 2010 at 3:44 am
totaly2die4 said on YuTube:”Is it so wrong for an old man to want to return to a place filled with bad memories and create one happy one there? I think it is amazing that his grandchildren went with him to create such a special memory!”And LLL said: “I got an E-Mail this morning that shows a scene from ‘Schindlers List’, that shows the scene where the prisoners are running from table to table in the nude with the song ”I will survive playing”. Obviously these people in the movie portrayed those that did’nt survive. I knew a video of this type would appear sooner or later,it was just a matter of time. Now I have a morbid curiosity to see more of these videos. The floodgates are open. “
geraldus - July 24, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Sure and why not an animated film showing dancing and singing skulls in Pol Pot’s killing fields? There’s no biz like showbiz.
goxewu - July 25, 2010 at 10:54 am
Re #16:Not quite a parallel. That would be a survivor of the Khymer Rouge’s killing fields and his/her family filmed dancing in them.