Destroyed last Monday due to, according to the Ministry of the Interior, a lack of authorizations, the Holocaust Memorial erected by German NGO PixelHelper in Ait Faska (province of Marrakech) is again under the spotlight. Indeed, the association announced on Saturday that the lawyer Isaac Charia was working on the case, in order to «prevent the demolition» of what remains of the «works of art» erected on the site. The announcement was made on Facebook by Oliver Bienkowski, founder of the NGO, presenting his project as a tribute to the Jewish and LGBTQ+ victims of the violence of the Second World War. He takes the opportunity to call again for 100,000 euros in donations to repair the «material damage» caused by this destruction he considers illegal and motivated by «political reasons». «To put art on private land, you do not need a building permit», he says. Moreover, he urges the Moroccan state to «treat artists as [him] as such, and not as terrorists». If Oliver Bienkowski recalls that the controversial lawyer is a member of the board of the Moroccan Liberal Party, he does not mention that his legal representative was previously under the spotlight for having supposedly submitted membership at the PJD party, who would then have introduced him as being Jewish before the information was revealed to be false. Previously a member of the Rif Hirak activists' defense committee, Charia retired in 2017 after his statements about Ilyas El Omari, the PAM party leader had accused him of «encouraging Nasser Zefzafi to conspire against the King and the country». Oliver Bienkowski remains at the heart of a controversy since the destruction of his memorial, and has denied any connection with Israel in the context of his project. He responded to some national NGOs, including the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) who accused him of normalization and of spreading Zionist propaganda, while revealing a similar precedent project that had not been completed.
