A Swedish artist has caused outrage among Holocaust survivors by using ashes taken from a concentration camp mausoleum to create his artwork, according to media reports. The reports say Swedish artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff combined the ashes with water to create gray lines in a painting currently on display in Lund, Sweden. He reportedly collected the ashes from the mausoleum at the Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, during a visit in 1989. This revelation caused outrage and shock in Sweden's Jewish community. Salomon Schulman, a Jewish community leader, said he had lost relatives to the Nazi death machine, and called the painting revolting. "Who knows? Maybe some of those ashes belonged to my relatives. No one knows where they were taken," Schulman wrote in a letter to a popular Swedish newspaper. "I will never go to that gallery [that is displaying Hausswolff's work]. I am appalled by this artwork and his obsession with necrophilia." Hausswolff argues that the ashes contain the "memories and souls" of the people who were tortured and killed. In a statement to the press, the artist invited the public to view his artwork and judge for themselves.
