Making out in Anne Frank’s attic: humor and the Holocaust in Australia

This chapter examines the growing body of Holocaust humor in Australian popular culture in the past 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, it demonstrates that Holocaust humor and its reception tell us much about how the Holocaust is remembered—and misremembered–in Australian life. Jewish responses show, on the one hand, that sensitivities around the subject are still raw. On the other hand, claims made by intellectuals such as Ophir, Kertész, and Des Pres—that the Holocaust has come to be revered in a way that makes it difficult to appreciate its universality—remain relevant as well. In many ways, the responses to Holocaust humor in Australia have reinforced the ways in which the Holocaust is imagined as Jewish, to the exclusion of other victim groups. This attitude stems from and reinforces the perception of the Holocaust as a specifically and uniquely Jewish tragedy.