Humor and the Holocaust in Australia
Making Out in Anne Frank’s Attic: Humor and the Holocaust in Australia David Slucki (COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON) Until the 1990s, the Holocaust did not feature prominently in Australian life. To be sure, Holocaust commemoration was a pressing concern within Australia’s Jewish communities, which had received a large influx of survivors in the late 1940s and 1950s, but it was largely an internal affair, conducted mainly in the Jewish communi- ties of Melbourne and Sydney. A number of factors brought the Holocaust into the wider public sphere in the 1990s, perhaps most importantly the exposure it received in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed film, Schindler’s List (1993). Since then, it has become more salient in public discourse and in popular culture, with televi- sion, film, radio, and the popular press taking a keen interest in individual stories of survival. Along with this shift from marginality to center stage is the advent of Holocaust- related humor, ranging from the work of local Jewish comedians and artists to com- ments by the prime minister in the federal parliament. Since the 1990s, the use of humorous devices in artistic expression related to Holocaust memory has become a part, however minor, of Holocaust representation in the United States, Israel, and Europe. This essay will examine the growing body of Holocaust humor in Australian popular culture in the past1 decade and how it is produced, received, and ultimately regulated in various local media. By looking at case studies including television series, radio broadcasts, videos, and political cartoons, this essay will demonstrate that Holocaust humor and its reception tell us much about how the Holocaust is remembered—and misremembered—in Australian life.
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