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 communities 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 television, 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. What is ultimately at the heart of this discussion is the question of who “owns” memories of the Holocaust and who regulates what is deemed acceptable in its representation. All instances of Holocaust humor cause outrage, some more than others. Such controversies attest to the persistence of a phenomenon that Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir once referred to in a provocative essay titled “On Sanctifying the Holocaust,” in which he criticized the emergence of a series of “commandments” dictating how the Holocaust could be discussed and remembered in public.1 Together, these pre- scribed axioms contributed to what he called the sacralization of the Holocaust, a kind of “religious consciousness” that inscribed the Holocaust as its foundational myth. He complained that Holocaust historians, religious leaders, politicians, and 204 Making Out in Anne Frank’s Attic 205 educators—what the survivor and writer Imre Kertész subsequently described as the “choir of Holocaust puritans, Holocaust dogmatists and Holocaust usurpers”—had effectively conspired to make the Holocaust appear to be a transcendent, meta-histor- ical, and uniquely Jewish event.2 This is certainly the case in Australia, where any form of Holocaust humor is apt to be regarded, by Jews and non-Jews alike, as a serious affront to the survivor community. Thus, the genre’s recent emergence in Australia offers a local case study of how Holocaust humor is used to renegotiate the implicit rules of public discourse, particularly but not exclusively within Jewish communities. Of course, public responses to humor are never uniform, as there are no simple rules to dictate just which forms of humor may be acceptable in the context of the Holocaust. Similarly, criticism of such forms of humor also varies considerably. In the Australian context, it seems to be the case that Jewish comedians and artists, although criticized for inserting Holocaust-themed humor in their work, are not excluded from Jewish life. In contrast, when non-Jews have been the source of remarks deemed improper by the community’s gatekeepers, the sharp response by the Jewish community has led to anything from public apologies by the offenders to an ongoing feud between Australian Jewry and one of the nation’s most celebrated cartoonists. This is telling in terms of the question of ownership: Jewish leaders demand reverence and solemnity in all media, and non-Jews are subject to special censure for mixing Holocaust with humor. When considering the boundaries of Holocaust depiction and the (intentionally) transgressive quality of Holocaust humor, this essay will ask the following questions: Is Holocaust humor permissible or tolerable only when it is told by Jews for Jews? Within what ethical parameters can Holocaust jokes form part of the tapestry of Holocaust remembrance? And who is to arbitrate these matters? Of course, none of these questions have definitive answers.T hey are situational and fluid. Nonetheless, despite fluctuating opinion on these issues, and despite the participation of non-Jews in public discourse related to the Holocaust, it seems clear that Jews in Australia have maintained a substantial role1 in determining levels of appropriateness. Australian Jewry and the Holocaust Before attending to the issues of Holocaust humor in the specific context of Australia, a few words on the Australian Jewish community are necessary. Although there have been Jews in Australia since the very beginning of British colonization in the late 18th century, they remain a small minority of the general population, accounting for less than half a percent: in the 2006 census, 106,000 people identified as Jews, out of a total population of somewhat more than twenty million.3 As noted, the Jewish community has a high concentration of Holocaust survivors. In the decade after the war, Australia accepted around 17,600 Jews from Europe, of whom 60 percent (mostly from Poland) settled in Melbourne; the remainder, mostly from Germany, Austria, and Hungary, settled in Sydney. Overall (including net migration and natural increase), Australia’s Jewish population nearly tripled in size between 1933 and 1961, from 23,000 to 60,000.4 With ongoing antisemitism in Central and Eastern Europe through 206 David Slucki the 1960s and beyond, further waves of refugees would follow through to the end of the 20th century, when a large number of former Soviet Jews, as well as South African Jews, made their way to Australia.5 With a substantial survivor community, and with the composition of the community going through numerous periods of major social, cultural, and demographic change, it is likely that Australian Jewry has put a premium on the need to protect a sense of communal cohesion and consensus. Moreover, the communal institutions are dominated by Orthodoxy, reinforcing this sense of vulnerability. Unlike the United States, where Jews are, despite their relatively limited numbers, a major presence in the public imagination and in the film and television industries in particular, Australian Jews usually go about their business unnoticed on the local popular scene. By and large, they are neither represented nor involved in television or film.T he film critic Don Perlgut has argued that this situation is largely due to the fact that, prior to the mid-20th century, most Jewish immigrants to Australia hailed from Britain, where they had not been as actively involved in the broader cultural life as were East European Jews in the United States.6 According to film historian Freda Freiberg, Australian Jews’ lack of presence in Australian film and television can also be explained by the sensitivity of the local Jewish community to “the politics of representation” (in consequence, non-Jewish artists and studios tread warily with regard to putting Jews on screen); the fragility of the Australian film industry, which inhibits filmmakers from taking risks and portraying the diversity of the Australian population; and the absence of an established literary or dramatic tradition among the Australian Jewish community.7 During the first half of the 20th century, only one Jewish comedian left an indeli- ble mark on Australian popular culture: Roy Rene, a major figure in Australian film and theater history, who influenced Australian comedy with his own brand of Jewish humor.8 Apart from Rene, the only Jewish characters depicted on screen or on Australian television before the 1980s were those appearing in imported films and television programs. Things changed in the mid-1980s with the broadcast of a television miniseries titled The Dunera Boys (1985), starring British actor Bob Hoskins, which reenacted the story of a group of German Jewish refugees who were deported from the UK (under “enemy aliens”1 provisions) in 1940 and sent aboard a British ship for internment in Australia. A bit more than a decade later, the Oscar award-winning Shine (1996), a biopic about the internationally acclaimed pianist David Helfgott, dealt with themes of Holocaust trauma within a refugee family and Jewish identity in postwar Australia. More significantly, Australian popular memory of the Holocaust was shaped by events and cultural productions originating abroad. Along with many other commentators, historian David Ritter has argued that the reporting of the Eichmann trial in 1961 first brought the Holocaust into widespread public consciousness in Australia, as elsewhere.9 In 1978, the American television miniseries Holocaust was the top-rated program of the year, gaining close to half the market share in both Melbourne and Sydney. The program’s popularity demonstrates that, by the late 1970s, the Holocaust was catching the attention of Australian audiences.10 Fifteen years later, the enormous popularity of Schindler’s List11 further confirmed the notion that imported programming was shaping the way in which Australians understood the Second World War. Making Out in Anne Frank’s Attic 207 During the 1990s, two local controversies also brought the Holocaust firmly into the public sphere. One was the publication of a novel by a young Australian author, Helen Demidenko, a pseudonym for Helen Darville, who claimed falsely to be the daughter of a Ukrainian migrant.

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