Posted on 02/20/2004 7:59:26 PM PST by TopQuark
Swastika Artwork Removed From Exhibit Fri Feb 20, 5:05 PM ET
OSLO, Norway - A painting that featured the words Israel and the United States — and replaced each S with a Nazi swastika — was removed from an art exhibit Friday after it infuriated a Holocaust survivor and other Jews.
Andreas Engelstad, owner of the Galleri A Minor in Oslo, said the Israeli Embassy demanded that the painting be removed, but that it was the reaction of other Jews that prompted his decision to withdraw it.
"I took it down not because of the embassy, but out of respect for victims of the Holocaust," he told The Associated Press. "One of the victims called me and said they were hurt by the painting."
The work by Norwegian artist Chris Reddy was part of an exhibit entitled "Anti-Semite in the Name of God."
Its removal came a month after a dispute between Israel and Sweden over an exhibition in Stockholm that enraged the Israeli ambassador there.
That exhibit showed the picture of a Palestinian suicide bomber, and so outraged Israeli Ambassador Zvi Mazel that he tried to damage it by throwing a light fixture at it.
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