Eighth Point of Reference
The Buchenwald trial of 1947, proved the sadistic and evil disrespect that Ilse Koch, wife of Karl Koch, Commandant of Buchenwald, showed towards the detainees of Buchenwald concentration camp.
Book-covers, lampshades and other ornamental household articles, apparently created from human skin, specially made by orders of Ilse Koch, were shown to the court
The favourite of Koch’s being the specially requested tattooed ‘skin pictures’, taken from corpses within the camp.
It was claimed that specially selected prisoners, with tattoos of interest, were murdered specifically for this purpose on the orders of Ilse Koch.
Whether or not the people, from which the items shown at the Buchanwald trial, were murdered or perished from the brutal maltreatment within the camps, they were so abruptly and brutally detained.
Koch showed the utmost disrespect for a fellow human being by taking away the only item that the prisoners within the camp truly owned. The skin from their back.
Kabbalah, a philosophical system followed heavily by the Jewish society and also many different people the world over, teaches that there are 7 points of reference. The 6 directions in the world, north, south, east, west, up and down and the place you are, being the seventh.
‘Eighth Point of Reference’ is a place non existent to the human reasoning: A place of evil, inhumanity and hatred.
Article 5 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, aims to protect the liberty and security of an individual against this type of sadistic treatment.
The type of atrocities committed by people like Ilse Koch, throughout the Second World War, still continue to occur around the world today. Atrocities committed by people who hide behind veils of Politics, Religion and Money.
This work is homage to the atrocities and victims of those horrific events.
Arbeit Macht Frei
This work evolved from a series of visits and photographs taken at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp.
Photographic transfers on tissue paper, multiple layers of latex and human hair.
Each section of the image has been sewn together using human hair to form the final large image, 120cm x 84cm.