An Italian street artist who regularly creates work on topics such as the Holocaust and Hamas has condemned the vandalism of his latest work depicting Anne Frank.
On October 7, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever airstrikes on Gaza. According to Israeli officials, 1,200 people in Israel were killed in Hamas' attack, the Associated Press reported Monday. According to Reuters, more than 11,000 people, 40 percent of whom are children, have died in Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is "at war" and has cut off supplies of food, fuel, electricity and medicine into Gaza.
aleXsandro Palombo erected two murals in Milan on Thursday to raise awareness about antisemitism. One depicted a crying Anne Frank holding an Israeli flag, dressed in the white and blue striped uniform of the Nazi concentration camps, including the yellow Star of David. Alongside Frank in the mural in Milan's central Piazza Castello is a Palestinian girl wearing a traditional keffiyeh wrapped around her head as she burnt a Hamas flag.
"These works are a warning and will help us to remember October 7th," Palombo told Newsweek, adding that he wanted to raise awareness about antisemitism.
Who Was Anne Frank?
Frank chronicled her time hiding from the Nazis with her family in German-occupied Amsterdam, with the Jewish teen's diary being published in 1947 after she died in a concentration camp. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl has become a classic read by millions ever since and is used to teach students about the Holocaust.
Palombo's other mural depicted the "Warsaw Ghetto Boy" being flanked by two Hamas fighters, one of which is a young child. It is a reworking of one of the most famous photos from the Holocaust which showed a small Jewish boy holding his arms in the air as Nazi SS troops forcibly remove Jewish people from a bunker in Warsaw, Poland.
That mural in the Porto Nuovo business district was also vandalized. The alleged vandals scratched out the images of Frank and the boy, then added the words "Free Gaza."
Newsweek has contacted local police by email for comment.
"Those who wanted to vandalize these two works against antisemitism and deface the two most important symbols of the Shoah had failed because their gesture reinforces the meaning of the works and highlights all the anger and social dangers of this hateful antisemitic wave which is underway and which puts everyone's freedom at risk," Palombo said.
"If there is no strong and decisive response from politics and institutions, then we will all lose: legitimizing these gestures is equivalent to legitimizing antisemitic thoughts and leaving room for the terrorism that is spreading in our liberal society."
The Shoah refers to the Holocaust and is defined as "the greatest tragedy in human history."
'Art Is an Important Weapon'
For fellow Italian street artist, Eduardo Castaldo, he does not believe vandalizing art, no matter how contentious is the right solution.
Castaldo spent eight years in Israel and the Occupied Territories of Palestine, including as a finalist in the 2012 Press Photo of the Year and working for Newsweek magazine. He quit photojournalism to turn his hand to art, especially to document the experience of Palestinian people in the Middle East.
"That's why I'm so committed to this story. It's not an external view," Castaldo told Newsweek, adding that he was in Gaza for three years and has "a lot of experience there."
Castaldo himself has gone viral with his response to the October 7 Hamas attack, because "art is an important weapon...controlling art is difficult," but said "personally, I don't agree with the message" of Palombo's latest murals.
"We should be careful when drawing links between antisemitism and what is happening in the Middle East," he said. "But at the same time vandalizing something [you don't agree with] is an act of violence. It's much more delicate when we're talking about issues such as antisemitism, and especially in this case when they feature identities that are so delicate and sensitive for so many people."
Instead, Castaldo said, rather than censoring or vandalizing an artist, he preferred to make his own counter-artworks.
"If you have the feeling that you want to say something, there is a lot of space and a lot of walls where you can say it," he said.
Earlier this year, Palombo had another Holocaust-themed mural vandalized in Milan.
Titled "Track 21, the Simpsons deported to Auschwitz," Palombo depicted the famous TV cartoon family heading to a concentration camp on the walls of Shoah Memorial Museum.
The museum was built on one of the places where Jewish people and other victims of the Nazis—such as political opponents, homosexuals, disabled people, Roma people and Jehovah's Witnesses—were transported to death camps, including Auschwitz in Poland.
"In this case we are talking about antisemitism that took place in a very important and symbolic place for the city of Milan and the memory of the Jews, a place from which Italian Jews were deported to concentration camps," Palombo told Newsweek in April after the mural was vandalized on the Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Antisemitism hasn't disappeared and the mural, popular and symbolic, certainly disturbed the most extreme supporters of denial and revisionist thoughts."
Islamophobia and Street Art
Palombo is no stranger to controversy and in 2014 was labelled "Islamophobic" for depicting Disney characters Aladdin and Jasmine as Hamas fighters.
At the time, he described the series as "an awareness campaign focused on the devastating problem of terrorism that affects Israel and Palestine and on child soldiers," but also came when new figures showed Americans' opinions of Arabs and Muslims had declined steadily since, according to a poll released by the Arab American Institute.
When questioned about whether or not the artwork was racist, Palombo's spokeswoman denied the assertion.
"Palombo's work is against Hamas, against terrorism and terror, aleXsandro is not racist...he's always fighting for human rights," she told Newsweek in 2014.
Cardi B Lawsuit
The artist also threatened to sue rapper Cardi B over her 2022 Halloween costume, which he argued was lifted from an artwork he designed in 2013 without credit.
Cardi B dressed as The Simpsons matriarch, Marge Simpson, complete with iconic tall blue hair dressed in a black Thierry Mugler dress. She then posted a photo of herself alongside a photo of woman wearing the same dress and imitating her pose.
Palombo argued that Cardi B's photo was a cartoon version of the same image, which he said was his original design.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
