'Game Of Tag' Played Inside Nazi Gas Chamber, Jewish Groups Seek Answers

Organizations representing Holocaust survivors on Wednesday sent a letter to the president of Poland asking why artists received permission to record video inside what was later revealed to be a Nazi gas chamber at a concentration camp in Stutthof, Germany.

The Organization of Holocaust Survivors in Israel and the Simon Wiesenthal Center asked President Andrzej Duda if artists who filmed the naked "Game of Tag" gained "permission from the Stutthof administrators to make this video" and "what rules exist for proper conduct at the site," the Times of Israel reported.

The groups issued the request after it was discovered that artists filmed naked people inside the gas chamber of the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. The video was part of an installation called "Poland - Israel - Germany - The experience of Auschwitz," which was displayed in 2015 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow.

"The embassy has learned of criticism regarding the video in question and has contacted organizers with a request that the parts deemed offensive be removed," Michael Sobelman, the embassy’s spokesman, told the Times of Israel in 2015.

The video was shelved after Jewish groups protested it, but was later reinstalled after the museum cited it as "freedom of artistic expression." The "Game of Tag" exhibition was featured at a gallery in Estonia before protesters called for its removal.

"It is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time," Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi hunter said regarding the installation. "They lied about it. It is just revolting and a total insult to the victims and anyone with any sense of morality or integrity."

Germans built the Stutthof camp in September 1939, in a secluded area near the town of Sztutowo. Initially, Stutthof was a civilian internment camp managed by the Danzig police chief, however, it became a "labor education" camp in November 1941, overseen by the German Security Police.

Over 110,000 people were imprisoned in the Stutthof concentration camp during World War II. About 65,000 people died at the camp, where many were tortured inside gas chambers. Around 28,000 of those killed were Jewish.

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