Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020: Irreverent Remembrance (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict) 303079220X, 9783030792206

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Nazi and Holocaust Representations in AngloAmerican Popular Culture, 1945–2020 Irreverent Remembrance

Jeffrey Demsky

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict Series Editors Ihab Saloul University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Rob van der Laarse University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Britt Baillie Wits City Institute University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa

This book series explores the relationship between cultural heritage and conflict. The key themes of the series are the heritage and memory of war and conflict, contested heritage, and competing memories. The series editors seek books that analyze the dynamics of the past from the perspective of tangible and intangible remnants, spaces, and traces as well as heritage appropriations and restitutions, significations, musealizations, and mediatizations in the present. Books in the series should address topics such as the politics of heritage and conflict, identity and trauma, mourning and reconciliation, nationalism and ethnicity, diaspora and intergenerational memories, painful heritage and terrorscapes, as well as the mediated reenactments of conflicted pasts. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14638

Jeffrey Demsky

Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020 Irreverent Remembrance

Jeffrey Demsky Political Science and History San Bernardino Valley College San Bernardino, CA, USA

ISSN 2634-6419     ISSN 2634-6427 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ISBN 978-3-030-79220-6    ISBN 978-3-030-79221-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Tatyana

Preface

A Jewish merchandiser familiar with my scholarship once quipped to me that unsold inventory killed more Jews than the Holocaust did. Although I did not know it at the time, his tasteless joke about the perils of wholesale purchasing presaged this book’s thesis. On the one hand, such impiety has the obvious capacity to offend. However, the joke’s impertinence also sustains the lore’s factuality. Indeed, for those whose tastes permit, the merchandiser’s crack is possibly pedagogical because its referent humor validates the sinister nature of the reality it attempts to demystify. This book locates, assembles, and most importantly explains related expressions of irreverent memorializing in Anglo-American Holocaust discourses. I encourage scholars to seriously contemplate, rather than simply condemn, the increasing abundance of these provocative and sometimes problematic postures. Acknowledging that this history is increasingly removed from contemporary life, I am ultimately trying to explain how subversive portrayals benefit this memorialization by stoking its continued relevance. At first glance, the proposition that contemplating absurdist portrayals can facilitate constructive remembrance may appear problematic. However, my book explains how and why nonconformist approaches are sometimes fruitful. Scholars must accept where people are in this difficult learning. We cannot insist that they meet us where we want them to be. Never has this challenge been more pressing. Seventy-five years past World War II’s end, ours is a “fake news” age, an obvious toxic atmosphere for Holocaust remembrance. I posit that by embracing flippant representations, scholars will discover paths toward innovative pedagogy. If onlookers think that they “know” about the Holocaust from screening an attention-grabbing vii

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movie, or reading a kitschy fictionalized novel, then we should use this familiarity—imperfect as it might be—as a springboard for delivering factual lessons. Rather than destabilizing truth functions, I observe that pop culture and other presentist appropriations construct memory bridges to this increasingly bygone past. Especially for uninitiated youthful consumers, startling representations, such as the type I have assembled, may ensure that this history is remembered at all. San Bernardino, CA

Jeffrey Demsky

Acknowledgments

I wrote this book’s first draft while on sabbatical. I am grateful to Chancellor Diana Rodriguez and the San Bernardino Community College District for sponsoring this opportunity. It is a pleasure to work at an institution that unflinchingly supports their professors’ professional and intellectual development. Thank you also to Camille Davies at Palgrave Macmillan for contracting my manuscript and investing in its development. Individuals do not produce scholarship alone. Lawrence Baron offered generous encouragement and keen feedback on early chapter drafts. Stephen Whitfield welcomed me to join him on several conference panels where I had opportunities to receive criticism from scholars that I otherwise would not have met. Victoria Aarons also helped a great deal, inviting me to contribute topical essays to various editions that she published. Kirsten Dyck sharpened my discussions of rock ‘n’ rollers and Nazi iconography. Randall Kaufman shared with me pertinent research that appears throughout this book. Vishnu-Priya Sneller managed the manuscript’s technical formatting. Of course, I alone am responsible for the book’s content, interpretations, and any possible blemishes. My work benefits from some third-party materials. Thank you to Alexsandro Palombo for granting me permission to include his cartoon prints in chapter three. Cambridge University Press approved my using an excerpt from Michael Berenbaum’s After Tragedy and Triumph Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience as the introduction’s epigraph. Most of all, I am grateful to my family. My wife and son do not have a particular interest in Anglo-American Holocaust representations, but they ix

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do have an untiring dedication to me and my happiness, just as I do to them and their joys. Their love helped me to successfully finish this project, as much as any research that I read, or conference that I attended, or sentence that I wrote. Thank you, both, and to Fluffers, our cat, too.

Praise for Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020 “Jeffrey Demsky’s Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture makes a vital contribution to Holocaust Studies. Beginning with the 1945 Nuremberg Trials and concluding with the emergence of potentially incendiary modes of representation in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, Demsky makes convincing claims for the complex ways in which even the most problematic pop cultural discourses reframe and extend Holocaust memory.” —Victoria Aarons, O.R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA “No subject poses a greater challenge to the moral imagination than the Holocaust, nor raises more complicated questions than its memorialization and its pedagogy. To clarify these tricky issues, Jeffrey Demsky brings the resources of an enduring and serious engagement, a tenacious appetite for the detritus of popular culture, and a flair for crisp and lively prose. Demsky’s willingness to stalk the terrain of the most problematic expressions of Holocaust imagery is scrupulous and admirable.” —Stephen J. Whitfield, Professor of American Studies (Emeritus), Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA “Jeffrey Demsky examines whether “irreverent” depictions of the Holocaust in Anglo-American popular culture promote rather than diminish public awareness of the event. He illustrates how malleable the collective memories of it have been since 1945 from the Nuremberg Trials to Pepe the Frog memes. Distinguishing between constructive and destructive memorialization, he thoughtfully demonstrates how the former challenges Holocaust commemorative rituals and revives its relevance while the latter mocks its victims and minimizes its horrors.” —Lawrence Baron, Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University, San Diego, USA

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 The Nuremberg Narrative: Fashioning Anglo-American Holocaust Memorialization 11 3 The Americanization of the Holocaust: Expressions of Cultural and Political Memorialization 27 4 Why All the Swastikas?: UK Rock Stars’ Nazi/Holocaust Encounters, 1960s–1980s 47 5 No Soup For You!: Responsible and Irresponsible Holocaust Humor on American Sitcoms 67 6 Irreverent Instruction: Considering New Approaches in Twenty-First-Century European and American Holocaust Education 85 7 That Is Really Meme: Nazi Pepe the Frog and the Subversion of Anglo-American Holocaust Remembrance105

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8 Conclusion127 Index133

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 5.1

Anne Frank, No Racism, No Antisemitism (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo). (Note: This image invites viewers to challenge Anne’s Americanized girlish persona) Adolf Hitler, No Racism, No Antisemitism. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image invites viewers to consider Americanized commodification of the Holocaust) The Simpsons-NEVER AGAIN. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image employs American cultural icons to spark Holocaust awareness) Anne Frank, The Simpsons-NEVER AGAIN. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image renders Anne Frank more culturally recognizable and relevant) Brian Jones, Nazi costume. (Note: Flaunting Nazism to mock elders’ wartime sacrifices) Guy Peellaert, Rock Dreams. (Note: This image indicates a generational lack of awareness about what Nazi/Holocaust icons convey) Sid Vicious, Nazi T-Shirt. (Note: Appropriating Nazi/ Holocaust icons for social disruption and economic profit) David Bowie, Nazi Salute. (Note: Welcoming the Nazi past into late 1970s British society) Pink Floyd, The Wall (Note: Modeling what a contemporary fascist UK society might resemble) Eric Cartman, Nazi Costume. (Note: This image locates third-generation Nazi/Holocaust post-mockery within a fourth-­generation character)

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34 35 36 49 50 52 56 56 75 xv

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Fig. 5.2 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5 Fig. 7.6 Fig. 7.7 Fig. 7.8 Fig. 7.9 Fig. 7.10 Fig. 7.11 Fig. 7.12

Cartman and his “Anne Frank” kitty. (Note: This image reveals potential risks associated with transferring American Holocaust humor into global contexts) 76 “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas” T-shirt. (Note: Familiar Dutch slogan conveying Holocaust post-mockery) 92 Pepe the Frog. (Note: Pepe the Frog prior to his transformation into a Holocaust mockery symbol) 106 Nazi Pepe the Frog. (Note: This image depicts Pepe’s transformation into a symbol of Holocaust mockery) 107 Pepe Nigel Farage, Pepe Marine Le Pen, and Pepe Donald Trump. (Note: Assigning Pepe to convey British, French, and American nationalism) 108 The Deplorables, 2016. (Note: Using Pepe to convey anti-globalist, antiliberal, and Holocaust mocking impulses) 111 Corrupt Hillary, 2016. (Note: Hillary Clinton as a “Jewish puppet” hostile toward white Christians) 112 NPC Wojak, 2018. (Note: This meme indexes alt right fears of government-imposed social homogeneity) 112 NPC Wojak Robert Bowers. (Note: Memorializing via Nazi symbols an alt right adherent who attacked a synagogue) 114 MAGA Capitol insurgents. (Note: Rabble-rousers displaying Pepe the Frog and related derisive Holocaust icons) 114 Lockdown Laura. (Note: This cartoon implies that COVID-19 mask mandates are a Jewish control device) 115 Star of COVID. (Note: This meme references fears that the COVID-19 vaccine has surveillance microchips) 116 Brexit Pepe. (Note: MAGA-styled hat—sporting a Get the Fuck Out acronym—and Brexit ribbon conflate impulses of Anglo-American nativism) 118 Nativist Pepe and Wojak Oswald Mosley. (Note: Memes conveying latent hostility toward British Holocaust remembrance)119

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  Demsky presents an inventive thesis contending that provocative Anglo-American Holocaust representations strengthen the history’s memorialization. He outlines his book’s chapters and introduces topics surveying seventy-five years of political and cultural intersections. Offering a much-needed methodological framework for situating the increasing abundance of these provocative, problematic, and sometimes vulgar portrayals, he challenges scholars to devise more holistic interpretations that elucidate both factual Holocaust history and its subsequent historicization. As memory of the Nazis’ crimes against European Jewry becomes increasingly removed from contemporary life, Demsky maintains that embracing the growing array of complicating and attention-grabbing intersections may help ensure that this past is remembered at all. Keywords  Holocaust • Memorialization • Post-memory • Historicization

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_1

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For the Holocaust to have any sustained impact it must enter the mainstream […] yet the moment it enters the mainstream, the Holocaust becomes fair game […] Some lesser minds or insensitive thinkers are bound to disappoint, dilute, and misrepresent. —Michael Berenbaum (Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 23).

All historical memory is tendentious and instrumentally oriented. Its representations are vulnerable to embellishments and revisions. In this book, I explore such processes in Anglo-American popular cultural discourses about the Holocaust. Re-signifying this commemoration is not new. Anne Frank’s posthumously constructed hopeful persona is an early example of producers memorializing this past on their own terms, and in service of their own times. Later interventions like the Holocaust (1978) television miniseries, Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1991), and films like Jojo Rabbit (2019) and Where Is Anne Frank (2021) follow suit. Recent swells in the numbers of these unorthodox artifacts require our attention. They are not ephemera, but rather harbingers. Just twenty-five years before the Holocaust’s centennial, duty to its remembrance faces increased global contest. Unconventional pop culture representations can rejuvenate this past, helping to help ensure that the history is remembered at all.1 I am not asserting that all impudent Nazi/Holocaust portrayals are desirable. They are not. Rather, unpacking this tangle of nonconformist remembrance might help scholars understand why the phenomenon appeared in the first place. My book is not the first to examine this question.2 Over two decades ago, Peter Novick argued that Americans memorialized Holocaust history more to celebrate their World War II triumphs than to honor foreign Jewish victims.3 Norman Finklestein complicated these claims by characterizing western Holocaust memorialization as a feint, a furtive effort to reap from the genocide’s commemoration economic profits rather than moral guidance.4 Neither work, nor dozens of related subsequent studies, employ my specific irreverent remembrances language. Nevertheless, I perceive the idea suppressed in the collective writings, as authors’ analyses demonstrate that Holocaust memorialization accomplishes far more than remembering a historical story. Tim Cole reaches similar conclusions in his Holocaust “selling” arguments.5 So, too, does Oren Baruch Stier, writing about Holocaust semiotics.6 In both texts, the authors argue that Holocaust icons, for example, Anne Frank’s girlish visage or Auschwitz’s gates are so ubiquitous that

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contemporary onlookers can intuit their meaning absent formal instruction. Such interpretative flexibility, however, is also an invitation to muddle, which is why scholars are developing methods to sift out the nonsense from knowledge.7 Careful interpretations of mischievous portrayals, like those that Gavriel Rosenfeld offers in Hi Hitler!, model how this approach might function.8 Rather than rejecting bastardized representations, I want to take advantage of them to start fresh conversations. I disagree with Alvin Rosenfeld that dissonant artifacts, like those showing Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh, signal the end to Holocaust memory.9 Instead, I conclude that this and related adaptations affirm her life’s continued utility. Many of my book’s chapters draw their inspiration from, and contribute new insights to, Holocaust post-memory literature. Unlike inviolable first-hand memorialization, sourced from lived experience, secondary memory is a belated form of knowing, as each generation enters into a history that is literally not their own.10 That people acquire these pasts, however, does not necessarily diminish its relevance and power. Post-­ memory denotes intentionality and sincerity, as onlookers attempt to establish intimacy to the Holocaust’s legacy.11 Forming post-memorial relationships girds my book’s Anglo-American framework. I ask how these similar cultures have interacted with this foreign historical inheritance. Ample literature documents the nations’ wider “special relationship.”12 The US/UK share a common language, dominant Protestant religion, and during World War II their soldiers first-hand-witnessed the Nazis’ crimes.13 Such similarities, however, do not mean that the two nations formed a mutual Holocaust memorialization. They did not. The US and UK had different wartime and postwar experiences, which impacted how they recalled and represented the fight. World War II caused the US little damage. After the battles ended, in prosperous socio-economic environments, public commentators began mythologizing stories about how stopping Nazi depravities symbolized the nation’s righteous triumph. This was not the case in the UK. The war inflicted terrible damage upon its cities, economy, and people. Its postwar Empire steadily eroded. Such harshness, what Jeffrey Alexander terms a generation’s “cultural trauma,” excluded Holocaust memorializing from entering British public conversations.14 Moreover, as Tony Kushner explains, even the most erudite observers lacked the “imagination” to comprehend the operations of a state-organized genocide.15 British Jews displayed similar ambivalence.16 A so-called Holocaust silence persisted in the UK, as David Cesarani, Andy Pearce, and others explain, in varying degrees, into the early 1990s.17 This hush signifies a major distinction

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from the American experience. However, if a strict US/UK comparison is infeasible, additional rationales support the dichotomy. Liat Steir-Livny and I have modeled how broad comparative approaches can work.18 Our essay about American and Israeli television Holocaust humor did not require establishing strict national overlaps. Instead, more discreetly, we examined skit writers’ motivations, discovering a joint disillusionment with the memory’s historicization. I believe that the expressions of transatlantic impudence that I am currently studying complement this approach. The shared lesson is that modern cultural discourses promote reverent Holocaust consciousness, alongside iconoclasm, just as they always have.19 From Holocaust-themed YouTube spoofs to related TikTok clips, Anglo-American cultural producers continue to play a leading role in these processes, invigorating the memorialization as much as they vulgarize it.20 I open my story at the Nuremberg trials, where western remembering of the Holocaust originated. It is also the site where its problematic memorialization began. Throughout World War II, even possessing abundant documentation of Jewish mass murders, and despite receiving repeated calls for help from both Jewish and nonsectarian groups, the US/UK governments did little to halt the killings.21 Following the Nazis’ defeat, such indifference precluded them from claiming moral authority while judging Hitler’s henchmen. However, by dint of its grand staging, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) provided Anglo-Americans a political theatre for recasting their prior ambivalence.22 By portraying their militaries as liberators, western jurists seized upon a mantle of justice for Jewish losses, claiming that their nations’ victories over Nazism connoted a broader triumph over the prejudices that Hitlerism promoted. More fashioned that factual, Nuremberg reveals Anglo-American leaders searching out a path toward usable Holocaust remembrance. If bowdlerized, their Whiggish fabrications became central to subsequent popular imaginings, existing alongside—and, at times supplanting—the more somber truth of inaction.23 It is unclear that this memorializing pivot was deliberate. However, the intention behind its appearance is ultimately less important than its result. Since most ordinary people in the US/UK had no prior knowledge of the genocide, they formed their first impressions via fashioned emancipator tropes. In the US, especially, this alternative perception girded what eventually became known as the Americanization of the Holocaust. When Michael Berenbaum coined the phrase, he argued that fashioning a

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national duty to this past was an “honorable task provided that the story told is faithful to the historical event.”24 However, recognizing this correctness has sometimes been hard to achieve. When ordinary Americans honor the history of Europe Jewish losses, they often do so as a predicate for affirming a more significant lore that holds the US as a just nation that defends human rights. Such stilted views nevertheless proved popular, gaining later export to Europe, establishing a westernized memorialization that remembers Holocaust victims alongside their liberators.25 Of course, this process has been gradual and uneven. I locate a unique sample demonstrating variations in the British experience. Indeed, spanning the 1960s into the late 1980s, their nation’s rock ‘n’ roll performers—not survivors or academics—took the lead in publicly interacting with Nazi ideas and icons. Various reasons explain these unlikely behaviors. Sometimes the impetus was generational, as youthful rockers flaunted swastikas to signal their independence from their elders. Other times, the motivation was satirical and stylistic, in line with the Nazi chic trend. Political and racial considerations also played a role, as Third Reich imagery helped some celebrities (and their fans) decry rising levels of non-­ white immigration. Admittedly, rock ‘n’ roll entertainers are flimsy pedagogues. That the ones I examine mostly had no ethno-religious ties to the history that they appropriated renders their behaviors disruptive. However, their antics also demonstrate how sensationalized Holocaust post-memorializing keeps the Nazi/Holocaust story relevant and fresh. Nowhere is this revitalization process more visible than in current American television programing. Beginning during the 1990s and persisting nowadays, the writers for various popular American sitcom series recover this history into public conversations by joking about Hitlerism and the Holocaust. I do not consider whether such humor is amusing, or appropriate. Instead, I analyze its operations via two contrasting categories. Shows like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Simpsons produce “responsible” comedy. Their lampooning, while pert, ultimately spurs rather that spurns faithful memorializing. “Irresponsible” humor, however, sows destructive remembrance. Family Guy and South Park produce skits that deride both the memorialization’s civic status and its Jewish victims. Consumers find no constructive remembrance from these interactions. The skit’s producers recovered the history simply to depreciate it.26 It is unclear whether modern audiences are laughing with, or at, those that suffered this history. I study this issue as well. Twenty-first-century classroom educators must untangle this knot. Contemporary youth, born

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many decades after World War II’s end, cannot easily receive (or form) post-memorialized Holocaust joking because many possess incomplete understandings of the historical truth. Instructors must apply their pedagogical license to adapt bygone Holocaust facts to presentist situations.27 This likely requires fashioning new directions in text selection and teaching methods. Owing to chronological distancing and demographic changes across western classrooms, canonical works like Diary of a Young Girl or Night no longer reliably deliver Holocaust lessons. I endorse teaching the stories via what I term an irreverent instruction platform, one that supplements traditional literature with more relatable (if fictionalized) accounts.28 Despite the many books that are written about it, the many museums that are devoted to perpetrating its relevance, and the many cultural performances that continue to draw large audiences, current-day Anglo-­ Americans may simply be stumbling along under the cover of complacently vague banalities to “never forget.”29 This maxim, however, is not analogous to remembering. Absent new methods to distinguish this bygone trauma from today’s cluttered social justice landscape, Holocaust education may present as wisdom from on high, rendering it susceptible to plebian subversions. Such activities are already manifest in both the US/ UK, as my book’s closing analysis of Pepe the Frog explains.30 This cartoon meme’s unwitting global celebrity as a Nazi/Holocaust troll exposes rips in the fabric of Nuremberg liberator lore. His story teaches us that more and more commonly, Anglo-American inheritors seek to evade this difficult inheritance.31 Importantly, Pepe’s provocateurs did not stumble into their Nazi/ Holocaust derisions. Instead, their bigoted appropriation reflects a long-­ simmering hostility toward a confluence of impulses, namely, anti-­ globalism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism.32 The languages of patriotic nationalism and bigotry blend easily, enabling people to convey their expressions of the latter in the rhetoric of the former. Since pious Holocaust history is inexorably Jewish, liberalized, and global, denigrating its significance rejects all three impulses. Destabilizing Pepe memes enliven both the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and Brexit crowds. In both movements, his symbolism signifies white Christian nationalistic preferences to abandon the liberal, integrated world that formed after World War II.33 The “paranoid style” never really left the western political landscape.34 It just went silent. Age of Trump and Brexit voters have revived these

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traditions, demanding fresh answers for old questions. For example, why must they continue to abide a liberal/globalist economic system that destroyed their civic status and economic well-being?35 Why do their children learn to celebrate foreign Holocaust icons like Anne Frank, but scorn localized figures like Robert E. Lee and Edward Colston? In line with the rowdy rock ‘n’ rollers and snarky sitcoms skits that I analyzed, Nazified Pepe’s smirking face is another example of sensationalist post-memory. Just because he represents a more destructive example of these processes does not diminish his importance. We cannot only learn the lessons that we want to. Indeed, Holocaust Studies’ future trajectory appears contingent on scholars’ abilities to usefully mediate between constructive and destructive memorialization. Such narrative tension should perhaps be expected, following the “original sin” of Anglo-American postwar embellishments. The pressing challenge is determining where to set memorialization markers in such a way as to differentiate boldness from balderdash. Contemporary stewards must ready themselves to this work because the likely alternative is increasing misremembering and forgetting. As Oscar Wilde once observed, if not specifically regarding historical episodes, the “One thing in the world worse than being talked about, is not being talked about.”36 Ultimately, demonstrating that irreverent representations can combat potential memorial amnesia is this book’s contribution. It is an uncertain endeavor, to be sure, but an exciting one nevertheless.

Notes 1. Sarah Pinnock, “Atrocity and Ambiguity: Recent Developments in Christian Holocaust Responses,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75, no. 3 (2007): 516. 2. For a recent set of essays see David Slucki, Gabriel Finder, and Avinoam Patt eds., Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020). 3. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 85. 4. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 2003), 4. 5. Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold (New York: Routledge, 1999), 81. 6. Oren Baruch Stier, Holocaust Icons: Symbolizing the Shoah in History and Memory (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 8, 11.

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7. Ross Poole, “Misremembering the Holocaust: Universal Symbol, Nationalist Icon or Moral Kitsch?,” in Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society eds. Yifat Gutman, Adam Brown, and Amy Sodaro (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 32; Walter Metz, “Show Me the Shoah!”: Generic Experience and Spectatorship in Popular Representations of the Holocaust,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 27, no.1 (2008): 10. 8. Gavriel Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past Is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 28. 9. Alvin Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 152. 10. Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “War Stories: Witnessing in Retrospect,” in Image and Remembrance: Representation and the Holocaust, eds. Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 139. 11. Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Geoffrey Hartman, The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996). 12. Jorgen Rasmussen and James McCormick, “British Mass Perceptions of the Anglo-American Special Relationship,” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 3 (1993): 516. 13. Duncan Little, “‘No One Believed What We Had Seen’: British Soldiers Who Witnessed Mass Murder in Auschwitz,” in Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide eds. Caroline Sharples and Olaf Jensen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 13. 14. Jeffrey Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity eds. Jeffrey Alexander et  al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1. 15. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 137. 16. Jon Stratton, Jewish Identity in Western Pop Culture: The Holocaust and Trauma through Modernity (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 148. 17. Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain (London: Routledge, 2013), 11; David Cesarani and Eric Sundquist eds., The Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence (London: Routledge, 2012); Tony Kushner, “Oral History at the Extremes of Human Experience: Holocaust Testimony in a Museum Setting,” Oral History 29, no. 2 (2001): 85. 18. Jeffrey Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny, “Signaling Positions of Intimacy and Distance toward Holocaust Memory on American and Israeli Situational

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Comedies,” in The Languages of Humor: Verbal, Visual and Physical Humor ed. Arie Sover (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 70–85. 19. Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner, “Approaching the Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century,” in Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture eds., Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner (Cham: Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 6–7. 20. Meghan Lundrigan, “#Holocaust #Auschwitz: Performing Holocaust Memory on Social Media,” in A Companion to the Holocaust eds. Simone Gigliotti and Hilary Camille Earl (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 639–56; Liat Steir-Livny, “Is It OK to Laugh about It Yet? Hitler Rants YouTube Parodies in Hebrew,” European Journal of Humour Research 4, no. 4 (2016): 105–21. 21. Rafael Medoff, The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 97. 22. Daniel Plesch, Human Rights after Hitler: The Lost History of Prosecuting Axis War Crimes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 48. 23. Vivian Patraka, “Situating History and Difference: The Performance of the Term Holocaust in Public Discourse,” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies eds. Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 62–3. 24. Berenbaum, After, 20. 25. Masako Shibata, “Holocaust Education in Transition: A Transnational Perspective,” in Equity in and Through Education: Changing Contexts, Consequences and Contestations eds. Stephen Carney and Michele Schweisfurth (Boston: Brill, 2018), 31–2. 26. Jeffrey Demsky, “Searching for Humor in Dehumanization: American Situational Comedies, the Internet, and the Globalization of Holocaust Parodies,” in Analysing Language & Humor in Online Discourse ed. Rotimi Taiwo (Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing, 2016), 1–19. 27. Hilene Flanzbaum, “Nathan Englander’s ‘Anne Frank’ and the Future of Jewish America,” in New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky eds. (Albany: New  York: SUNY Press, 2019), 211–12. 28. Grant Rodwell, Whose History: Engaging History Students through Historical Fiction Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 176. 29. Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 174. 30. Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Digital Anti-Semitism: From Irony to Ideology,” Jewish Review of Books 36 (2019): 4–7.

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31. Rachel Feldhay Brenner, “Holocaust Culture in Perspective: Evading the Holocaust Story and Its Legacy of Responsibility,” Dapim 26, no. 1 (2012): 125–50. 32. Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000), 133. 33. For fuller discussion of shared nationalistic symbols see Gabriella Elgenius, Symbols of Nations and Nationalism: Celebrating Nationhood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 23. 34. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1964). 35. Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter, “Whiteness, Populism, and the Racialization of the Working Class in the UK and US,” in Whiteness and Nationalism ed. Nasar Meer (London: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 13. 36. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings (New York: Bantam House, 2005), 6.

CHAPTER 2

The Nuremberg Narrative: Fashioning Anglo-American Holocaust Memorialization

Abstract  Demsky studies the origins of Anglo-American Holocaust memorialization. Beginning with an examination of Nuremberg’s International Military Tribunal, he demonstrates the US/UK using the proceedings to recast their governments’ prior ambivalent relationship to the genocide. By defining themselves as concentration camp liberators, and contending that ending such horrors symbolized their victory over Nazism, they achieved a more usable memorial relationship to this past. More fashioned that factual, this bowdlerized construct nonetheless proved effective. Demsky demonstrates how supplanting historical fact with liberator lore helped the British dim reminiscences of their prewar accommodators, appeasers, and antisemites. He similarly reveals Americans seizing upon such claims to lay the intellectual foundations for building a more pluralist postwar national character. Such mythologizing establishes the foundation of subsequent Anglo-American Holocaust memorializing. Keywords  Nuremberg trials • Liberators • Holocaust • Memorialization

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_2

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On November 20, 1945, six months after Nazi Germany surrendered, American, British, French, and Soviet officials convened the world’s first International Military Tribunal (IMT). Assembled in Nuremberg, the body’s purpose was to secure “just and prompt punishment” for the “major war criminals of the European Axis.”1 Through its mandate, the IMT sought justice for tens of millions of noncombatant wartime victims, specifically the six million murdered Jews. Of course, as the familiar adage reminds, talk is cheap. Throughout World War II, no Allied government tried to halt the killings. Vichy France collaborated in them.2 Such realities precluded Nuremberg jurists from claiming moral authority in their judgments. Rather, for Anglo-American participants specifically, the tribunal was a political theatre where they recast their nations’ ambivalent prior relationship to this history. Admittedly, avenging European Jewish losses was not Anglo-American prosecutors’ central aim. However, several times during his opening remarks, and then intermittingly throughout the nine-month-long sessions, chief US prosecutor Robert Jackson referenced the Nazis’ “systematic and brutal extinction of non-Aryans, especially Jews.”3 His comments alerted the courtroom’s participants, and later historians, that Americans intended to punish Nazis for violating a new component of international jurisprudence, namely, “crimes against humanity.”4 British lead prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross followed suit, stating his nation’s judgment that the Nazis’ crimes against peace—specifically abnegating the Munich Agreement—and their crimes against humanity represented two sides of the same coin.5 Not all of the tribunal’s jurists, however, shared this mindset. French representative François de Menthon’s opening statement did not mention Jews.6 Soviet prosecutor LM Smirnov only obliquely referenced the genocide, terming it “excessive.”7 In contrast, Anglo-Americans’ alacrity to publicly litigate the matter presaged what would become an identifying characteristic in this history’s westernized memorialization. By portraying their nations as justice seekers, Anglo-American officials claimed both military and moral victories over Hitlerism. Of course, this liberalizing trope did not scrutinize events before and during the Holocaust, when the two nations did not compellingly aid Jews. Rather, recalling the history at the event’s end point, when Anglo-Americans stood in self-positioned blamelessness, they established what Peter Maguire terms the “Nuremberg myth” of western integrity.8 The Nuremberg narrative taught that western soldiers stumbled onto the Nazis’ crimes as a fait accompli. They were the Jews’ redeemers. If expurgated, this myth, like all myths, nonetheless has provided a basis for

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popular memorialization. Maybe it does not matter if the US and UK actually soldiered to liberate Buchenwald and Belsen, secure justice for its victims, and sanctify this trauma in the annals of western democratic remembrance.9 Such representations are valuable because they gifted Anglo-American political and cultural producers a more usable memorial relationship to this history. It is unclear that this pivot was deliberate, but the intention behind its appearance is ultimately less important than its results. As both nations’ citizens entered the postwar era, stories recalling their emancipation of Jewish prisoners encouraged a wider civic reconfiguration. Liberator lore did not merely sanitize prior instances of Anglo-­ American bigotry, it provided a thematic basis for developing a more appealing national identity story.10 For the British, the device dimmed public reminiscence of their earlier accommodators, appeasers, and antisemites. It sketched the outlines of a hopeful future vision, helping establish what Tony Kushner notes was a heretofore missing “mainstream model of diversity.”11 Assuring citizens that their victory over totalitarianism sustained democratic values, the Nuremberg storyline—and related discourses—urged Brits toward continued vigilance. Americans, similarly, took this cue. Even more eagerly than the British, they seized upon the Nuremberg narrative’s lessons to model a pluralist national character that separated their postwar present from its “angry days” past.12 For both the UK and US, the war crimes trials, and the resulting liberator lore, provided a basis for positive Holocaust commemoration. It also established a memorializing tension between what happened historically, and the later narration of what happened.

Fashioning British Holocaust Memorialization In July 1946, Sir Hartley Shawcross closed the UK’s case before the Nuremberg tribunal. Notably, his summation attempted to “transform the trial […] into a proceeding about the crimes against the Jews.”13 To be clear, Shawcross followed a winding path to this end. Although the British delegation agreed with Americans that Nazi crimes against humanity were justiciable, their prosecutors litigated more pressing issues. Unlike for the US, which endured no meaningful wartime attacks, Shawcross spoke in the direct shadow of a fierce Nazi bellicosity. During 1940–1941, some forty thousand Londoners died during the aerial blitz.14 The next year’s “Baedeker Raids” demolished large swaths of Canterbury, York, and Exeter.15 Even throughout 1944–1945, with the war’s end in sight, Nazis’

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V1 and V2 rocket attacks killed close to ten thousand people.16 These were the war crimes—against Britain and Britons—that the UK’s jurists tried. Their prosecutions were effective. After witnessing the case against him, no less an observer than Albert Speer privately acknowledged his guilt.17 That Shawcross’s closing statement thus foregrounded the Nazis’ crimes against Jews is conspicuous. By affirming Jewish victimhood, he posthumously imbued their deaths with a value denied to them during their lives. He also recorded for posterity how the UK helped end such horrors. Whether Shawcross did so consciously, or even effectively, his posture steered contemporary onlookers toward new national remembrance.18 Attempting to mute memories of Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists (BUF), as Louise London notes, the UK entered the postwar era positioned to develop what became the “remarkably durable myth that Britain did all it could for the Jews during 1933–1945.”19 Such claims have some merit. Not all UK citizens during the prewar period harbored anti-Jewish bigotry. Novelist James Joyce was philosemitic.20 Sir Horace Rumbold, the first British ambassador to the Third Reich, expressed his apprehensions about Nazi antisemitism directly to Adolf Hitler.21 Moreover, in both its philosophical rationales and practical operations, the well-remembered Kindertransporte program defied Hitlerism.22 Which set of national attitudes—philosemitic or antisemitic— are most representative of the British mindset is not my main concern. Instead, the coexistence of both contesting impulses contextualizes wider debates about how, when, and why people in the postwar UK have accepted or disputed what happened.23 Well before the Holocaust began, grassroots rejections of Nazi-styled prejudice formed. In summer 1933, some thirty thousand East End laborers, agitated by reports of anti-Jewish violence in Germany, marched nosily through the Hyde Park business district. Along their route, protestors handed merchants so-called closing cards imploring them to shutter their shops for the day in opposition to Nazi racism.24 Such activities were not entirely symbolic. The day after the demonstration, a Manchester Guardian article reported the story of a women who noticed the words “Made in Germany” printed on boxes belonging to a toy importer. “Things were looking ugly,” a police official identified in the story remarked.25 “Not until every case had been taken away from the warehouse,” he recounted, “did the people fully disperse.”26 Related plebian outbursts against Nazism, specifically directed at its racial hierarchies, continued in the UK throughout the decade, spanning boxing halls to football matches.27

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The October 1936 Battle of Cable Street is symbolic. Located in the same East End community that gave rise to the boycott marchers, the hateful atmosphere precipitating the brawl compounded over time. Metropolitan police, assigned to monitor the neighborhood, often stood by passively as BUF speakers excoriated Jews from makeshift podiums. One agitator in the heavily Jewish Stepney district exclaimed, “Jews were rats and vermin […] it was Jews that stole your jobs and houses while you were fighting in the war.”28 Against this charged backdrop, a coalition of Jews, Irishmen, local workers, and communists coalesced to stop a BUF march. Despite the presence of several thousand law officers, significant violence ensued. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s government responded with the Public Order Act, banning, among other things, citizens from publicly costuming and marching in quasi-military outfits.29 The new law applied to all advocacy groups. Baldwin did not specifically punish the BUF, or support Jews. Nevertheless, the proscription signaled jack-booted antisemites that theirs was a publicly unwelcome brand. Such messaging likely found immediate resonance at the Nazi regime’s highest levels. Only two days after the rumble, Oswald Mosley travelled to Germany, where he married the English socialite Diana Mitford. Joseph Goebbels hosted the wedding and Adolf Hitler was the guest of honor.30 If party goers did not mention the row, Hitler’s regular prewar British companion, Unity Mitford, the new Mrs. Mosley’s younger sister—and avowed public antisemite—perhaps later raised the topic with him.31 More significant, however, than establishing whether Nazi leaders knew about this street fight, is the ideological wedge between the UK and Germany that the disruption (and its aftermath) signaled regarding the so-called Jewish Question. Nazism posited that Jews represented an existential threat to Christian societies, warranting their civic exclusion. While certain medieval periods of English history modeled this mindset, by the early twentieth century such proscriptions were a relic. Even during the 1930s, a time of heightened anxiety about Eastern European Jewish immigration, the UK government did not enact formal anti-Jewish restrictions.32 Kindertransporte provided safe haven for some ten thousand foreign Jewish youth.33 Prior to World War II, the UK granted asylum to nearly eighty thousand more adults, mostly all of them Jews, helping ensure the survival of the very people that the Nazis despised.34 This openness existed in sharp contrast to the US, where bureaucratic “paper walls” impeded Jewish refugee seekers.35 Notably, Nazis seeking common cause for their Jewish bans found

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far greater inspiration from American racial laws than they did from their UK neighbors.36 Such activities offer compelling evidence that the UK played a constructive, liberator-like role in helping Jews prior to the Holocaust. However, this story is incomplete. Set against the nation’s wartime record—especially once the genocide began—additional data indicates that the UK could have done a great deal more. As AJ Sherman noted nearly fifty years ago, despite the many tens of thousands of Jews admitted into the UK, a half million more Jewish entry applications languished.37 Such inattention was not an oversight, but instead reflected officials’ contempt for the “wrong type” of Jews, “small traders […] driven by economic and political pressure to seek asylum here and stay.”38 Moreover, while the UK government did not codify anti-Jewish immigration restrictions, its officials still found many paths to this end. At the 1938 Evian Conference on Refugees, convened specifically to discuss promoting European Jewish emigration from Nazi-controlled regions, UK representatives declined to accept any more asylum seekers. So, too, did their commonwealth lands, typified by the Canadian “none is too many” mindset.39 British diplomats assented to join Americans in constituting a new Intergovernmental Committee (IGC), a body intended to speed up Jewish emigration to more welcoming locales in Latin America. However, the panel quickly proved a loud-sounding nothing. Such inaction had dire consequences. Kristallnacht occurred only a few months after the ineffectual Evian sessions. No less an observer than Joseph Goebbels surmised that British inaction on the “Jewish Question” implied they preferred the Nazis to act unilaterally.40 Such cynicism is impossible to substantiate. The sentiments, however, reflect a stubborn historical truth that complicates later, postwar British memorializing. Specifically, the UK government did not view helping European Jewish refugees as beneficial to the national interest. Especially after the Nazis’ escalated their Jewish harassment into genocide, the UK’s government were not liberators. Inaction did not reflect an absence of information. As early as 1941, British war managers possessed abundant evidence of the Nazis’ crimes.41 Commanders feared that acting on such reports would jeopardize other strategic and tactical planning. News of Nazi crimes also found its way to the men fighting at the front. However, for ordinary soldiers, rescuing Jews was not a reason for their enlistment.42 Even as the war’s tide turned in the UK’s favor, leaders remained aloof. In March 1943, Jan Karski, a Christian agent for the Polish government in

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exile, told Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden about the Nazis’ death camps. He pleaded for relief. Karski later recorded the secretary’s reply: Britain had “done enough.”43 Other UK diplomats dismissed the genocide accounts as Jewish scheming, intended to “stoke us up.”44 Similar German atrocity stories from World War I proved false. “What was the advantage of a gas chamber,” one official asked skeptically, “over a machine gun?”45 Such indifference toward Jews reveals a subtle, but important, distinction between prewar and wartime British attitudes. Namely, once the fighting began, Whitehall viewed refugee issues through a national security lens. As Foreign Office’s refugee chief AWG Randall explained to a colleague: “Should we open the door to adult male Jews […] a quite unmanageable flood may result. (Hitler may facilitate it!)”46 Not having to feed Hitler’s “useless mouths” became part of the British government’s wartime raison d’être. During a May 1943 IGC meeting, Foreign Office chief Richard Law pushed this envelope a bit further. He worried that should the UK display interest aiding Jewish survival, Nazi officials might use such concerns to blackmail British colonial interests.47 Officials’ candor in explaining why not to help Jews directly subverts Hartley Shawcross’s attempts, just two years later, to establish national claims of intimacy to the Jews’ trauma. This dueling tension between historical fact and historicized fables encapsulates the wider problematic relationship between ambiguous memory and ambitious post-memory. Such patterns repeat, unresolved, from the Nuremberg trials into the present day. Synthesizing the differing reconstructions can smooth out these knots, in this case developing a hybrid memorialization that conflates both expressions of British apathy and concern. Indeed, as Nira Yuval-Davis and Max Silverman explain, a third storyline is increasingly dominant in British conversations, one in which “Holocaust commemoration completely removes the nation from any direct contact with the event.”48 By promoting an abstract discourse about the importance of forestalling genocide as a general rule, citizens experience no passions related to Britain’s positive role (as liberators), nor  discomforts connected to the nation’s negative role (as bystanders).49 Such sterile representation provides additional benefits, namely, conveying the impression that perpetrating and resolving the genocide’s burdens is someone else’s problem, “particularly the Germans’.”50 The approach also quashes potential untoward discussion of British mass atrocities—an unshakeable part of its imperial history—by instead  promoting celebration of  European Jewish

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wartime survivorhood.51 Ultimately, all civic remembrance must serve affirmational ends. British experiences forming a constructive Holocaust commemoration reconfirms this lesson, demonstrating how fashioning post-memory can soften the history that it seeks to support.

Fashioning American Holocaust Memorialization In 1953, the American television series This Is Your Life aired its Hanna Kohner episode. A Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor, and one of the hundreds of thousands of European Jewish émigrés who found refuge in the postwar US, Hanna’s experiences brought this not-too-distant past into ordinary Americans’ living rooms. The show candidly discussed the genocide, with host Ralph Edwards describing the Nazis’ clandestine gas showers.52 However, despite such dreariness, producers represented her life as an Algeresque “pluck and luck” story. “You look like a young American girl,” Edwards assured, “just out of college.”53 That Kohner was actually a young Czech girl, just out of Mauthausen, typifies the constructed nature of Americans’ early Holocaust encounters. Citizens learned about European Jews’ trauma, but mostly as a predicate for celebrating Americans’ role in ending it. For her part, Hanna, and the other survivors who joined her onstage, obliged this expectation. They expressed gratitude to their American rescuers, muting mention of their painful foreign pasts. Walter Reich terms this the “welcome narrative” technique.54 Holocaust victims suppress their prior pain under hopeful, forward-oriented personas. Such impulses, combined with the adoption of liberator lore, helped constitute a basis for constructive national memorialization. One of the earliest and most influential cultural examples of this technique appears in Frances Goodrich’s and Albert Hackett’s theatrical adaptation, The Diary of Anne Frank (1955). Liberator lore informs the script’s subtext, injecting dramatic hope into what audiences already know is a tragic story. An instance of this manufactured uplift occurs as audiences watch a particularly fraught scene, portraying the annex’s inhabitants quarrelling over pilfered food. Miep Gies unexpectedly rings the buzzer to share pressing wartime news. The group switches on their radio and hears General Eisenhower’s voice: “The hour of your liberation is approaching.”55 Instantaneously, for the actors, as well as for postwar audiences, moods shift from despair to ecstasy. Whether this representation accurately mirrors the historical scenario is unknowable. It is also irrelevant. The ploy is

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an effective theatrical device, and useful memorializing frame, developing uplifting remembrance. Assuring postwar American audiences that Anne viewed the US Army as her savior, even though they ultimately did not free her, manufactures forgiveness and closure. It renders her story “welcoming.” The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) motion picture strikes a similarly cathartic (but fictive) stance. The film’s director, George Stevens, who commanded the US Army videography unit that documented Nazi crimes, certainly knew the Holocaust’s facts. However, he replaced the film’s original closing scene, portraying Anne standing listlessly in a concentration camp, with a post-memory-inspired reading of her fabled “people are good at heart” diary entry.56 The former ending would have been more historically honest. However, choosing the latter representation helped successive generations of postwar Americans affirm the “tales of pluralism, tolerance, democracy, and human rights that the nation tells about itself.”57 If this liberalizing mentality girds the dominant postwar American remembrance, then an obvious question is why the US did not do more to end the Holocaust while it was happening. Scholars untangling this ambiguity—as with the British example—must separate history from its historicization. Indeed, pre-Holocaust American attitudes toward Jews differed sharply from their post-Nuremberg displays. During the 1930s and 1940s, Jews faced routine slander in domestic discourses. US government officials sought to distance the nation from so-called Jewish issues, especially by restricting European Jewish immigration. State Department Visa Division head, Breckinridge Long Jr., championed this cause. In a June 1940 memo, he explained: We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of [Jewish] immigrants into the US. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.58

Such directives countermand Nuremberg liberator claims. It reminds contemporary learners that one of the reasons that the postwar producers fashioned this triumphant narrative in the first place was because people like Hanna Kohner found little welcome in the prewar US. Understanding the nation’s quick commemorative reversal requires evaluating contradictory evidence samples. Just as in the UK, not all

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prewar Americans shunned Jews, or viewed the Nazis’ racialized persecutions solely as a Jewish problem. Pockets of public domestic opposition formed soon after Hitler’s rise to power, and remained visible until the war’s close. In March 1933, some thirteen thousand members of the Jewish War Veterans laced up their boots for an anti-Nazi march in New York City. One million people lined Manhattan’s streets in a show of solidarity.59 During the early and mid-1930s, hosts of New  York’s merchants participated in an anti-Nazi boycott effort that alarmed Third Reich officials at the regime’s highest levels.60 Moreover, if State Department officials remained silent about the Nazis’ mistreatment of Jews, dozens of congressional lawmakers stirred, employing legislative powers to investigate Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust.61 Although these pressures did not spur immediate action, they legitimized the topic in political discourses. In January 1944, acknowledging escalating public and private concerns about the European genocide, President Roosevelt took remedial steps. He empaneled and funded a War Refugee Board (WRB), designed to “develop plans and programs for the rescue and relief of the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.”62 The board’s mandate did not specifically mention Jews, but, in actuality, nearly all of the agency’s activities addressed ending the genocide. Roosevelt’s Executive Order called for State, War, and Treasury Department staffers to manage the new outfit. However, this never occurred. The State Department declined to assign a liaison and War Department officials viewed the board as nonessential to the military effort.63 Despite this intransigence, the WRB saved hundreds of thousands of European Jews.64 They also played a pivotal role in the transfer of some one thousand foreign Jews into the wartime US, where they found safe haven on an upstate New York military base.65 I am less interested in evaluating the WRB’s practical operations than I am in analyzing its significance to the nation’s later self-admiring Holocaust memorialization. The WRB’s creation confirms that American leaders— indeed, President Roosevelt—recognized a need to reposition their postwar relationship to this wartime history. Despite the many Breckinridge Longs staffing his administration, Roosevelt did not want his historical legacy defined by inaction.66 This is the same memorializing tension, mediating between unsavory historical fact, and aspirational historicized fables, which complicates British Holocaust remembrance. However, in the American case, there is additional wartime evidence depicting some

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officials drawing the nation closer to Europe’s Jews. President Roosevelt may not have been aware of the goings-on, but even before he created the WRB staffers at the Office of War Information (OWI) integrated compassionate Holocaust-themed stories into their official communications about the nation’s war aims. Some need exists to survey their activities, as an antecedent referent for understanding later liberator lore. An expansive midlevel agency with offices in Washington, D.C., London, New  York, and San Francisco, the OWI played a vital role in increasing the public flow of knowledge about a wide range of war-related topics. Officials betrayed a particular interest in subjects intersecting with race, religion, and gender.67 Their Radio Division broadcast such programs as American All, Immigrant All, resetting the boundaries of so-­ called Americanism.68 Their Motion Pictures Division sponsored Frank Capra’s paean to democracy, the Why We Fight series.69 OWI also published narrative brochures.70 War Jobs for Women (1943) and Negroes and the War (1943) explained how females and African Americans supported the war effort. Nazi War against the Catholic Church (1942) condemned German hostility toward non-Protestants. Tale of a City (1943) publicized the Holocaust. Distributed in March 1943, at post offices, public libraries, and other government buildings, Tale of a City is a twenty-three-page brochure depicting the German tyranny in Warsaw. It begins with an inscription from President Roosevelt stating, “Punishment shall be meted out to those responsible for the organized murders and commission of atrocities which have violated every tenet of the Christian faith.”71 The story reports a wide range of Nazi injustices, visited upon Catholics, Slavs, women, and the working class. Notably, the story also contains explicit descriptions of the Jewish mass murders. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse […] German authorities are now carrying into effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.” […] “The able bodied are worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure or are deliberately massacred in mass execution.72

At a publication of just under two million copies, Tale of a City represented the Office’s second-largest brochure release, far exceeding the print dedicated to more American-centric stories like The Four Freedoms (1942) and Battle Stations for All (1943).73 Tale was a tangible example of US

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government officials confirming that European Jewish murders were part of an American problem. The OWI’s story resonated with ordinary Americans. Stuart Perry of Adrian, Michigan wrote the agency’s director. He was “perfectly delighted […] the subject matter is exactly the kind that I want to see widely broadcast.”74 Additional plaudits arrived from within the academy. “You are to be congratulated on the excellence of your pamphlet Tale of a City,” wrote Dr. Douglas Hill at Duke University.75 Not all the feedback, however, was supportive. AB Lambert from St. Louis, Missouri, characterized the publication as “uncalled for […] an emotional appeal with certain social inferences.”76 Mrs. Fritz Downey agreed. She disliked “the propaganda pamphlet […] please try and limit the amount of resources directed to such stories.”77 A handful of correspondences about a single governmental brochure might strike skeptics as ephemera. I disagree. Rather, the activity confirms, well before Nuremberg trials, the outlines of liberator-inspired memorialization forming in American public discourse. Some citizens embraced this framing and even those that did not recognized its motive and stance. Ultimately, positioning the Holocaust as the antithesis of Anglo-American values foreshadows a memorializing pattern persists into current times. If more fashioned than factual, the Nuremberg narrative achieved tangible results in drawing the US and its citizens into a commemorative relationship with the history of European Jewish destruction under Nazism. Such intimacy flourished during subsequent postwar decades, constituting what came to be known as the so-called Americanization of the Holocaust, as increasing numbers of citizens recognized that stewarding this European past helped them to bolster the American national character.

Notes 1. Lawrence Rockwood, Walking Away from Nuremberg: Just War and the Doctrine of Command Responsibility (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 74. 2. Michael Sutton, “Jews and Christians in Vichy France: New and Renewed Perspectives,” French Politics, Culture & Society 35, no. 3 (2017): 105–128. 3. Jeffrey Hockett, “Justice Robert H. Jackson, the Supreme Court, and the Nuremberg Trial,” Supreme Court Review (1990): 272. 4. Michael Marrus, “The Holocaust at Nuremberg,” Yad-Vashem Studies 26 (1998): 5–10.

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5. Lawrence Friedman, The Big Trial: Law as Public Spectacle (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), 44. 6. Laura Jockusch, “Justice at Nuremberg? Jewish Responses to Nazi War-­ Crime Trials in Allied-Occupied Germany,” Jewish Social Studies 19, no.1 (2012): 130. 7. Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 72. 8. Peter Maguire, Law and War: International Law & American History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), viii. 9. Paul Kemp, “The British Army and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen April 1945,” in Belsen in History and Memory eds. David Cesarani et al. (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 134–48. 10. Lawrence Baron, “The First Wave of American ‘Holocaust’ Films, 1945–1959,” American Historical Review 115, no. 1 (2010): 113. 11. Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 126. 12. Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939–1941 (New York: Random House, 2013), 378. 13. Douglas, Memory, 93. 14. PMH Bell, Twelve Turning Points of the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 33. 15. Uta Hohn, “The Bomber’s Baedeker-Target Book for Strategic Bombing in the Economic Warfare against German Towns 1943–45,” GeoJournal 34, no. 2 (1994): 214. 16. Hermione Giffard, “Engines of Desperation: Jet Engines, Production and New Weapons in the Third Reich,” Journal of Contemporary History 48, no. 4 (2013): 823, 833. 17. Magnus Brechtken, “Persuasive Illusions of the Self: Albert Speer’s Life Writing and Public Discourse about Germany’s Nazi Past,” in German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century eds. Birgit Dahlke, Dennis Tate, and Roger Woods (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), 75. 18. Caroline Sharples, “Holocaust on Trial: Mass Observation and British Media Responses to the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945–1946,” in Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide eds. Caroline Sharples and Olaf Jensen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 31. 19. Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees, and the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 13. 20. Morton Levit, “The Greatest Jew of All”: James Joyce, Leopold Bloom and the Modernist Archetype,” Papers on Joyce 10/11 (2004–2005): 145. 21. Kushner, Holocaust, 39.

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22. Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 61. 23. David Cesarani, “How Post-War Britain Reflected on the Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder of Europe’s Jews: A Reassessment of Earlier Responses,” Jewish Culture and History 12, no.1 (2010): 98. 24. Jeffrey Demsky and Randall Kaufman, “Not Buying It: Reconsidering American Consumer Opposition to Nazi Antisemitism,” in Shopping for Change eds. Louis Hyman and Joseph Tohill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017), 114. 25. As quoted in Sharon Gewitz, “Anglo-Jewish Responses to Nazi Germany, 1933–39,” Journal of Contemporary History 26, no. 2 (1991): 260. 26. Ibid. 27. For boxing halls see John Harding, Jack Kid Berg: The Whitechapel Windmill (London: Robson Book, 1987), 198; for football matches see London, Whitehall, 35. 28. David Stephen Lewis, Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fascism and British Society, 1931–81(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987), 171. 29. Janet Clark, The National Council for Civil Liberties and the Policing of Interwar Politics: At Liberty to Protest (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 131. 30. Ian Hernon, Riot!: Civil Insurrection from Peterloo to the Present Day (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 168. 31. Mary Lovell, The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (New York: Norton, 2001), 187–8. 32. Marion Berghahn, Continental Britons: German-Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 78, 87, 91. 33. Caroline Sharples, “The Kindertransporte in British Historical Memory,” Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies 13 (2012): 15–28. 34. London, Whitehall, 11–2. 35. David Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938–1941 (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968). 36. James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 12. 37. A.J.  Sherman, Island Refuge: Britain and Refugees from the Third Reich 1933–1939 2nd ed. (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1994), 128. 38. Pamela Joy Shatzkes, “Anglo-Jewish Rescue and Relief Efforts, 1938–1944,” (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1999), 60–1. 39. Irving Abella and Harold Martin Troper, None is too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982), 131.

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40. Henry Feingold, review of Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939–45, American Historical Review 85, no. 4 (1980): 888. 41. Richard Breitman, Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 94. 42. Mark Celinscak, “The Final Rescue? Liberation and the Holocaust,” in Unlikely Heroes: The Place of Holocaust Rescuers in Research and Teaching eds. Ari Kohen and Gerald Steinacher (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 68. 43. Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 361. 44. Breitman, Official, 119. 45. Ibid. 46. Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979), 248. 47. London, Whitehall, 213–4. 48. Nira Yuval-Davis and Max Silverman, “Memorializing the Holocaust in Britain,” Ethnicities 2, no. 1 (2002): 115. 49. Ibid. 50. Tony Kushner, “Selling Racism: History, Heritage, Gender and the (Re) Production of Prejudice,” Patterns of Prejudice 33, no. 4 (1999): 80. 51. Tom Haward, “British Responses to the Holocaust: Student and Teacher Perspectives on the Development of a New Classroom Resource,” in Holocaust Education Book: Contemporary Challenges and Controversies eds. Stuart Foster, Andy Pearce, and Alice Pettigrew (London University College of London, 2020), 119. 52. Malgorzata Pakier,“Between Memory and Post-memory: Once More on the Awkward Marriage of the Holocaust and American Mass Media,” in American Responses to the Holocaust: Transatlantic Perspectives eds. Hans Krabbendam and Derek Rubin (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017), 189. 53. Ibid., 191. 54. Walter Reich, “Unwelcome Narratives: Listening to Suppressed Themes in American Holocaust Testimonies,” Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2006): 464. 55. Frances Goodrich; Albert Hackett; Wendy Ann Kesselman; Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank Rev. ed. (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2001), 63. 56. Samantha Powers, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 73. 57. Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41–2. 58. As quoted in Norman Finkelstein, American Jewish History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2007), 136.

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59. “Protest on Hitler Growing in Nation,” New York Times, March 23, 1933. 60. Both Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goring followed the American boycott goings on, indeed unleashing a Nazi retaliation against German Jewish shops. See Demsky and Kaufman, “Not,” 113–14. 61. Jeffrey Demsky, “Do The Words Matter? Congressional Resistance to Nazi Anti-Semitism during the 1930s,” in Holocaust Resistance in Europe and The America: New Aspects and Dilemmas ed. Victoria Khiterer (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 2–25. 62. For the board’s full mandate see “Clippings,” box 114, War Refugee Board Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. 63. David Wyman and Rafael Medoff, A Race against Death: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 2002), 162–3. 64. Rebecca Erbelding, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (New York: Doubleday, 2018), 270. 65. Sharon Lowenstein, Token Refuge: The Story of the Jewish Refugee Shelter at Oswego, 1944–1946 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986). 66. Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2013) 59, 265. 67. Gerd Horton, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War Two (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002). 68. Barbara Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 21–30. 69. Ian Scott, “Why We Fight and Projections of America: Frank Capra, Robert Riskin, and the Making of World War II Propaganda,” in Why We Fought: America’s Wars in Film and History eds. Peter Rollins and John O′ Connor (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2008), 244. 70. Sydney Weinberg, “What to Tell America: The Writers’ Quarrel in the Office of War Information,” Journal of American History 55 (1968): 73–89. 71. For the full brochure see Information Control and Propaganda: Records of the Office of War Information, Part I: “The Director’s Central Files, 1942–1945,” ed. David Culbert (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1986), reel 9: 0143. 72. Ibid., reel 9: 0160. 73. Ibid., pt. 1, reel 8: 0049. Distribution levels: Four Freedoms: 600,000; Battle Stations: 200,000. 74. Ibid., Culbert, Perry to Davis March 19, 1943, reel 9: 0172. 75. Ibid., Hill to Davis, April 28, 1943, reel 9: 0182. 76. Ibid., Lambert to Davis, April 15, 1943, reel 9: 0177. 77. Ibid., Downey to Davis, April 29, 1943, reel 9: 0183.

CHAPTER 3

The Americanization of the Holocaust: Expressions of Cultural and Political Memorialization

Abstract  Demsky analyzes the Americanization of the Holocaust. This memorializing construct finds Americans remembering the Nazis’ crimes against Jews as a predicate for celebrating their rectitude in helping to end them. Demsky unpacks a bifurcated survey that considers cultural and political expressions of this practice. Spanning Anne Frank’s story to Maus, he elucidates cultural representations’ substantial memorializing power. Next, turning to an analysis of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s founding, as well as the NATO air campaign against Serbia, Demsky demonstrates American politicians bolstering their domestic positions via Holocaust memorialization. If influential, Americanized remembrance sometimes complicates the history it aims to consecrate. Demsky unpacks the intricacies of pop culture and politicized remembrance, explaining how this past can change when placed in service of the present. Keywords  Americanization of the Holocaust • Memorialization • Politicization In April 1979, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation’s first Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust ceremonies. Speaking from the Capitol rotunda, he explained, “The Holocaust is of fundamental

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_3

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significance to Americans. It was American troops that liberated many of the death camps […] we feel compelled […] to prevent such enormities from occurring in the future.”1 A little over a decade later, Michael Berenbaum, project director for the still-developing US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), outlined how this national duty to memory might look. While the Holocaust was a unique occurrence, with specific consequences for Jews, its legacy taught broader lessons—about human survivorhood and renewal—that could “be told in such a way that it would resonate not only with the survivor in New York […] but also with a black leader from Atlanta, a Midwestern farmer, or a Northeastern industrialist.”2 In the last chapter, I located this impulse in so-called Nuremberg liberator lore. This trope confirmed that the Nazis’ destruction of Jews represented “a violation of every essential American value.”3 Such remembering of the past in service of the present proved popular and effective. By the time that the USHMM opened, a so-called Americanization of the Holocaust had  formed, a process in which political and cultural producers employed this history as a vehicle for celebrating liberalized democratic values.4 The appropriation is complicated, as the German writer Henryk Broder notes, observing that Americans commemorate the event with such “fervor” that a naïve observer might reasonably conclude that the Nazi Holocaust took place in the US.5 Such eagerness might be more sensible than surreptitious. For many decades after World War II, especially in Broder’s Germany, many nations remained silent about what had happened. Fulsome Americanized remembrance, if imperfect, nonetheless represents an effort to recall this genocidal past in search of a more uplifting future.6 The process can elicit both raised awareness of the history, and some confusion. In 1988, American Vice President Dan Quayle modeled this potential, noting, “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history.”7 The problem, of course, was not with his statement’s sentimentality, but rather with its factuality. It is true that during his public career Dan Quayle uttered many mistaken assertions.8 This gaffe may have been just one of those instances. His recollecting the genocide as part of American history, however, is a good-hearted thing. It substantiates the wider postwar national imperative to learn and remember what happened. Quayle’s blunder confirms criticisms that Americans have clumsily commandeered the history. However, it also demonstrates how integral Holocaust learning has been in the postwar American experience.

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Elie Wiesel once remarked, “The opposite of history is not myth, but forgetfulness.”9 If unintended, this insight appears to endorse the Americanization of the Holocaust. At its core, Americans’ self-claimed right to memorialize another’s experiences supports Wiesel’s broader command to remember. Admittedly, Americanized treatments sometimes obfuscate the lessons they aim to consecrate. However, all histories are subject to external seizure and revisions, including this one. Whether American involvements have rejuvenated, or ruined, the Holocaust’s legacy is a compelling question, but one that is superfluous to my analysis. Instead, I want to demonstrate how Americans’ recalling this foreign past, especially in bold and imaginative forms, has helped them to better understand their present days. This approach confirms the work started at Nuremberg, namely, turning a factual legacy of inaction into a memorializing call-to-arms. For all of its blemishes, the Americanization of the Holocaust establishes a broad template for remembrance, ensuring that unlike earlier twentieth-century genocides, humankind did not forget the European Jewish destruction.10

Cultural Post-Memory Expressions In 1979, Philip Roth published The Ghost Writer. Set during the mid-­1950s, its plot imagines Anne Frank (Amy Bellette) alive and well, living in Boston and working for Harvard University’s library.11 While Roth’s premise is iconoclastic, it is not flippant.12 He does not target Anne Frank, but rather the fulsome attention that her legacy commands in American postwar discourses.13 Why does Roth do this? Deconstructing Frank’s memory—indeed, negating her very death—is not simple literary nonconformity. Rather, his (mis)treatment trains critical attention on those stewards, including her father, who believed that they had bequeathed in Anne’s posthumous figure a transformative symbol of goodness. For his part, Roth observed that mendacity, provinciality, and alienation persists in the post-Holocaust human condition.14 Such commentary reveals limits to fashioned remembrance, even those sourced from genocide lessons. Ultimately, Roth’s novel is neither about Anne Frank, nor the Holocaust. Instead, he uses both legacies to explore broader tensions between historical memorializing and historical memory, pointing out that the gusto dedicated to sculpting the former often has the potential to problematize the latter.

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Roth explores this muddle via his Amy Bellette and quasi-eponymous Nathan Zuckerberg characters. Both seek to burnish their social statuses by fostering deeper connections to representations of Anne’s girlish, hope-­ filled post-memory.15 That neither figure can successfully do so, however, highlights the wider dilemma of contemporary generations looking to the past for knowledge about a far-changed present. Roth has Amy travel to New York—to the Cort Theatre—where she attends a performance of the Goodrich and Hackett adaptation. Seated alongside a well-heeled (Jewish) American audience, she delivers an inner monologue anticipating the fruits of her long-sought fame. Her notions soon prove elusive. As actors re-create her arrest, Amy/Anne hears theatregoers’ anguish. Their pain unveils a harsh reality. It is only the certainty of her demise, and not the promise of her survivorhood, which makes her story valuable. “It was too late to be alive now,” she remarks, “I was a saint.”16 For his part, Nathan Zuckerberg, a young writer, critical of the swirling Anne Frank pageantry, hatches an equally self-directed and flawed scheme, angling to marry Amy/Anne as a trophy conquest to defuse criticisms that he was a self-­ hating Jew.17 Roth’s apparent puerility nods toward serious ends.18 His exaggerated plotlines clear a path to more substantive conversations about the potential for corruption within American Holocaust memorialization. Thirty years after The Ghost Writer’s publication, Shalom Auslander revived Roth’s discussion. His living Anne Frank character is an elderly and embittered shut-it, cloistered in a rural western New York cottage.19 The book’s protagonist, Sol Kugel, purchased the property with no knowledge that she squatted (predictably) in its attic. When he asks her to vacate, she demurred. How could she? Once, she confided, after the war’s end, she visited the Amsterdam publisher that circulated her diary. “Do you know what he said? Stay dead. He went to his desk and held up a copy of that goddammed diary, with that goddammed smiling child on that goddammed cover and said, they don’t want you, they want her.”20 Again, as with Roth’s Amy Bellette, Auslander unveils an untoward aspect of popular Americanized memorialization. Anne Frank appeals to audiences because they encounter her as a sanitized and one-dimensional persona. Those same consumers, however, likely would not want to meet her as a complex person with imperfections and eccentricities. While brazen, neither Roth nor Auslander mock Anne Frank, nor trivialize her suffering. Rather, they employ outrageousness to plead for more somber representations of her life and times.21 If intellectually preferable,

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however, such calls may also prove counterproductive. The risks involve moderating Americanized post-memory’s greatest asset, specifically its power to engage otherwise detached onlookers. Some trade-offs appear inevitable between raising memorial awareness, and doing so by outfitting new learners with kitschy remembrance. The 1978 NBC Television Holocaust miniseries encapsulates this tension. Broadcast one year before Roth published The Ghost Writer, the Hollywood production was inescapably tacky, in part dramatizing the extent of Nazi racism via an exploration of James Woods’s mischling marriage to Meryl Streep. Holocaust film scholar Lawrence Baron locates additional “hackneyed subplots designed to tug at audiences’ heartstrings.”22 Elie Wiesel dismissed the entire production as a “soap opera.”23 Such misgivings, however, ignore how the week-long set of shows facilitated massive domestic interactions with this foreign past. Over one hundred million Americans screened the miniseries. It aired in several European markets, notably West Germany, where the production gave voice to long-silent conversations about their Nazi legacy.24 If audience members did not receive proper historical lessons, they did inherit a viable commemorative narrative about how Hitler’s henchmen brutalized Jews until the US Army stopped them. This typecasting, articulated during the Cold War, with the Soviet Union in effect representing Nazism, confirmed Holocaust post-memory assigning present day lessons.25 Moreover, Holocaust aired a year before President Carter convened the nation’s first Days of Remembrance ceremony. Despite its loose alignment to accurate truth, the production’s wide appeal likely had a salutary effect in preparing American viewers for these more solemn discussions. Rather than confusing a new generation of post-witnesses, the combination of the two differing reconstructions—fantasy and factual—validated this foreign history’s growing domestic importance. Of course, the best example of sensationalized (but pedagogical) American memorializing is Art Spiegelman’s two-volume graphic novel, Maus.26 The work’s creative method, anthropomorphizing cartoon animals to depict this history was cutting-edge. It was also risky, sparking criticisms that his portrayals lacked the seriousness demanded of Holocaust art.27 Such disapprovals, however, ignore the volumes’ many nuanced contributions. Spiegelman crams his panels with seemingly endless factual thought and speech balloons, captions, photographs, charts, tables, diagrams, and timelines.28 In this sense, he achieves truthful remembrance, explaining he insistence that Maus is a nonfiction work.29 Such claims are

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faintly problematic since—despite their titles—the books do not strictly retell a “survivor’s tale.” While confronting great amounts of his father’s Holocaust pain, Spiegelman also probes his own victimization, the son of inexorably damaged parents.30 “I have entered myself into their story,” he acknowledges. “The way this [secondary] story got told, and who the story was told to, is as important, if not more important, than solely my father’s narrative.”31 A postwar producer supplanting the survivor’s voice in favor of their own might appear to encapsulate post-memory’s worst impulses. However, Spiegelman’s impositions did not offend most onlookers because they judged him to have dealt compassionately with the history of the event, and the strain its details places on those who inherit it. Artists possess license to provoke. However, this warrant has limits. Ultimately, a postmemory’s context, in addition to its content, determines if the representations are harmless or hurtful. Spiegelman’s disruptive imaginings garnered accolades because critics recognized the authenticity of both his unique method, and his (Jewish) right to retell the story.32 Less clear is whether non-Jews possess the same authority to critically probe or redirect this legacy.33 Italian graphic artist and social activist Alexsandro Palombo pushes these boundaries. His “humor chic” method assigns American cartoon characters to represent unfunny things. For example, to promote breast cancer awareness, Palombo made colorful prints of Betty Boop, Snow White, and the Little Princess with double mastectomy scars. In a similar vein, highlighting the scourge of domestic violence, he released a splashy series in which Olive Oil, Wilma Flintstone, and Wonder Woman have blackened eyes. Palombo also works with Holocaust iconography and memorialization. In some ways, his method constructively engages the Americanization tradition, cartooning images that teach universalized lessons about opposing bigotry. However, in line with the chorus of European voices chastising American Holocaust memory  imperialism, many of Palombo’s prints reveal ambivalence.34 His 2010 “No Racism, No Antisemitism” series illustrates this tension. The set includes various cartoon images co-posing Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler. Notably, Palombo’s twenty-first-century Anne presents as giddy and openly sexualized, her voluptuous bosom outfitted in camouflage lingerie. Such representation subverts long-standing Americanized efforts to symbolize her as eternally innocent and demanding of protection.35 Unprepared viewers will likely find this post-memory vision more vulgarizing than validating (Fig. 3.1).

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Fig. 3.1  Anne Frank, No Racism, No Antisemitism (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo). (Note: This image invites viewers to challenge Anne’s Americanized girlish persona)

I caution against such easy conclusions. Instead, the print strikes me as an invitation to develop more incisive understandings of how post-­memory can enrich calcified memorialization. Just as with Philip Roth’s deconstructions, Palombo’s glibness does not diminish Anne—whom he empowers with a rifle—but rather impugns the commemorative tendency to flatten her remembrance into a victimization trope. His inversion of the Nazi–Jew power balance is purposeful; Palombo wants Anne to elude her prostrated constructedness. His boldness points out that onlookers’ commitments to sustaining the vulnerable Anne Frank persona denies her the exact human extravagances that they mourn as central to her premature death. Palombo’s Hitler figure, as well, bucks dominant memorializing patterns. Swiping at profit-driven aspects of the American Holocaust industry, Palombo draws Hitler seated atop an American-flag stool, clutching a Coca-Cola, and wearing a jacket studded with Louis Vuitton emblems and a Coco Chanel logo swastika. Punctuating his obvious rejection of commodified western memorialization, Palombo’s high-end Hitler delivers an obscene gesture to Holocaust Americanization (Fig. 3.2).36 Palombo’s frustrations, however, do not denote his complete rejection of the tradition. His 2015 series, The Simpsons-NEVER AGAIN, embraces

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Fig. 3.2  Adolf Hitler, No Racism, No Antisemitism. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image invites viewers to consider Americanized commodification of the Holocaust)

Americanization’s best aspects, specifically its ability to use familiar cultural icons to attract new viewers. He created the prints to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. They arrange the globally beloved television family, Homer, Marge, and their three kids, behind the death camp’s barbed wire with Stars of David sewn to their garb; emaciated, naked, and in a gas chamber, as Homer lay dying. If disorderly, Palombo’s aim is nevertheless positive. His prints strive toward what James Hoberman terms “vulgar modernism.”37 This technique reflects artists’ seizing agency to redefine prevailing norms—and in this case dominant memorialization—to match historical representation with current trends. Palombo correctly judges that his portraying The Simpsons characters’ persecution will likely elicit greater familiarity (and compassion) from contemporary observers than black-and-white shots of nameless people.38 He also produced a new Anne Frank look. Unlike his earlier empowered and sexualized rendering, the 2015 print returns her girlishness. Importantly,

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however, Palombo does not victimize Anne. Her stern visage and active hand placement on the confining barbed-wire fence indicates defiance, while still acknowledging her dire plight (Figs. 3.3 and 3.4). Notably, Palombo poses Anne with her diary. While ahistorical, the ploy advances his memory revitalization agenda. The Simpsonized drawing renders Anne more culturally recognizable, and thus more worthy of recall into contemporary discussions. Youthful viewers encountering his cartoon should have little difficulty connecting animation Anne and her diary to the Holocaust lessons they might be learning in their schools. Palombo’s rendition also sharpens Anne’s accurate Jewish identity, drawing her with a Star of David patch.39 This print provides an example in which a post-­ memorialized artifact supports historical memory. However, ultimately, it matters less that new generations continue to honor Jewish genocide victims, than it does that this honoring confirms their vigilance to combat such crimes. Absent this resolve, active memorialization may only end up highlighting, firstly, humans’ inability to stamp out genocide, and, secondly, that remembering genocide does not necessarily forestall its reoccurrence.

Fig. 3.3 The Simpsons-NEVER AGAIN. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image employs American cultural icons to spark Holocaust awareness)

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Fig. 3.4  Anne Frank, The Simpsons-NEVER AGAIN. (Permission granted by artist, Alexsandro Palombo) (Note: This image renders Anne Frank more culturally recognizable and relevant)

Political Post-Memory Expressions In April 1993, before closing his remarks at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) inaugural ceremonies, Elie Wiesel turned to President Bill Clinton, seated directly behind him on the stage. Speaking as America’s most eminent Holocaust survivor, he implored: Mr. President. I have been in the former Yugoslavia last fall. I cannot sleep since, for what I have seen. As a Jew, I am saying that we must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country! […] Something, anything must be done.40

This was not the first (or last) time that Wiesel lectured American presidents about such topics.41 In 1985, at a White House ceremony, he

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publicly advised President Reagan against visiting a West German cemetery that interned Waffen SS troops’ remains.42 In 2009, and then again in 2012, he reminded President Obama about the “perils of indifference” regarding Syrian atrocities.43 Wiesel’s pleadings articulated a common theme, namely, that the American liberator trope required more than just faithful memorializing. Facing renewed genocide outbreaks, liberators must become saviors. Such calls to operationalize American commitments to this past demonstrates political post-memory, which is different from cultural post-­ memory by dint of its agency. Artistic representations helped  many hundreds of millions of Americans form Holocaust awareness. However, when the US government devises a national remembrance institution, or dispatches military assets to halt ethnic cleansings, the political learning is equally impacting. As with all political undertakings, opaque motivations might inspire these commitments. However, I am not studying motives. My focus is understanding how Americanization of this history manifests itself in both abstract cultural commemorations, and tangible political steps. Someone like Elie Wiesel personifies these dual impulses. A survivor, scholar, and author, his acclaimed Holocaust memoir, Night (1960), sketched unsparing portraits of man’s inhumanity.44 However, Wiesel was also an inspiring political figure. His “Auschwitz to the White House” story confirmed the viability of an American “ethos of […] goodness, innocence, optimism, liberty, diversity, and equality.45 To these broader ends, throughout his postwar life, Wiesel used his unlikely fame to ensure that “every person sees himself or herself as a [Holocaust] witness.”46 Such advocacy complemented the Americanization impulse, although, to be clear, Wiesel rejected its universalized portrayals.47 Indeed, it is this ambivalence toward—yet also his accommodation of—Americanized post-­ memorialization that renders his story essential. More than any other figure, possessing of various sponsorship platforms, his voice and vision shaped the contours of national remembrance. Such contributions were not entirely selfless. Wiesel reaped significant status from being the “official interpreter of the Holocaust.”48 He won a Nobel Peace Prize. George Bush Sr. awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom; Congress honored him with their Gold Medal. Corporate and private donors likewise lent support. Prior to his passing, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity reported fifteen millions dollars in assets.49 Of course, Elie Wiesel had every right to hawk his wares in “Shoah

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business.”50 Methodologically, such  activities do not interest me. The trade-offs he made to achieve such standing do. Specifically, as a condition of his domestic celebrity, Wiesel acquiesced to a liberator narrative that by the late 1970s struck increasing numbers of observers as inauthentic. Such loyalty to a flawed lore politicized his advocacy and complicates his legacy. This ambiguity intersects with gnawing criticism that the Americanization of the Holocaust, in its zeal to promote a compelling story, tacitly privileges triumphalism over truth. Surveying the USHMM’s founding and messaging highlights this tension. In late 1978, President Jimmy Carter selected Elie Wiesel to head a commission that eventually recommended the construction of a national Holocaust memorial.51 Political pressures swirled around the constituting process, many of which had nothing to do with Wiesel, or Holocaust remembrance. As Shaul Magid points out, “realization of the gravity of the tragedy that had befallen the Jews of Europe” did not spur President Carter’s judgment to foreground this past.52 Rather, in the wake of the controversial Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, and raging Middle East unrest, he judged that consecrating a public memorial space adjacent to the National Mall would remind increasingly forlorn Americans about past instances of national goodness. Such calculations reveal corrupt remembrance, in line with the type that Philip Roth observed  in cultural discourses. Both President Carter and Elie Wiesel had ample opportunity to consider why institutionalizing a liberator-themed narrative was potentially  problematic. In May 1978, more than six months before President Carter formed his advisory commission, David Wyman published “Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed.” The essay provided a damning rebuke of the triumphant postwar Nuremberg narrative, documenting instead how the US government consistently ignored European Jewish suffering.53 Of specific note, Wyman included a 1944 War Department communication to the British government stating, “It is not contemplated that units of the armed forces will be employed for the purpose of rescuing victims of enemy oppression ….”54 Soon thereafter, Walter Laqueur published related evidence, sourced from State Department memos, characterizing officials’ views that the “fate of the Jews was a bothersome and not very important footnote to the war.”55 Such studies presaged what soon became a sturdy critique of liberator lore—that is, abandonment theory—rooted in caches of government communications demonstrating that senior Roosevelt administration officials cared little about ending the Holocaust.56

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Despite such discoveries, USHMM planners codified liberator lore into its architecture and exhibits.57 As Vivian Patraka points out, “The opening vista of the Holocaust exhibit proper […] occurs through the liberating soldiers’ eyes.”58 The technique of “herding [visitors] into the intentionally ugly, dark-gray metal elevators in the Hall of Witness” further serves this end.59 Bunched together and steered through the permanent exhibit’s fourth and third floors, onlookers confront graphic displays of Nazi violence. Whether participants are cognizant of the impulse or not, the exhibit’s shocking representations subliminally compel visitors’ yearning for their own liberation.60 The tension finally breaks on the second level where, indeed, groups learn about Allied-led emancipation and postwar emigration. Survivors’ oral histories, specifically recounting their rescues, closes the USHMM tour, providing a thematic bookend to its liberator-­ themed opening. Witnesses depart the museum knowing both happened to Europe’s Jews, and understanding how being an American means taking on a duty to stop such things.61 These are not empty words. Indeed, just a few years after the museum opened, American leaders embraced the institution’s activist legacy. In November 1995, President Bill Clinton announced his decision to combat ethnic cleansing ongoing in the former Yugoslavia. He articulated his decision via Holocaust liberator language, a step that confirmed the narrative’s evolution from an abstract rhetoric into a concrete reality. Clinton declared: […] Nowhere today is the need for American leadership starker or more immediate than in Bosnia […] skeletal prisoners caged behind barbed-wire fences, women and girls raped as a tool of war, defenseless men and boys shot down into mass graves, evoking visions of World War II concentration camps […] There are times and places where our leadership defends our fundamental values as a people […] the terrible war in Bosnia is such a case.62

Operating under NATO auspices, and persisting for nearly eighty days, American personnel dispatched some forty thousand sorties that helped thwart  Serbian Christians from murdering their Bosnian Muslim neighbors.63 Fifty years after Nuremberg, such deployments demonstrate the US government animating the trial’s moralistic spirit.64 However, this learning was slow, constrained, and somewhat contrived. Two and a half years passed between Elie Wiesel’s initial prodding and President Clinton’s

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stirring. Moreover, American reliance on NATO assets betrayed the thorny fact that the president could not marshal congressional support for his initiative.65 This reluctance reflected, in part, a perception that President Clinton’s anti-genocide activities informed his domestic political calculations as much as they did his human rights concerns. Indeed,  Clinton delivered his “concentration camps” speech two weeks into the 1995 government shutdown battle with the national legislature.66 Viewed through Aaron Wildavsky’s “two presidencies” lens, which argues that presidents flex their foreign policy authority in order to cower Congress, Clinton’s alacrity to end ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia appeared equally affected as compassionate.67 Further non-genocide-related factors complicate historical impressions. Especially during 1998–1999, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal intensified, Clinton’s foreign policy actions struck his critics as a “wag the dog” strategy intended to distract public attention from his peccadillos.68 In August 1998, three days after publicly admitting to a relationship with Lewinsky that was “inappropriate” and “wrong,” Clinton launched cruise missile attacks against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Sudan.69 That December, on his impeachment’s eve, he authorized bombings of Iraq.70 Directly following his impeachment trial, Clinton resumed a robust anti-­ genocide campaign in the Balkans.71 For his part, during 2013 remarks delivered before the USHMM, the former president credited Elie Wiesel’s motivating challenge to “get off my rear end and do something about Bosnia.”72 Although folksy, his expedient retrospective framing is ultimately less important than its practical outcome, namely, substantiating the idea that liberating genocide victims—any genocide victims—displays modern American values.73 Perhaps, most significantly, this political post-memory about liberators becoming saviors prompted transatlantic support. In the UK, joining the NATO Balkans action marked the beginning to an end of fifty years of hushed official interactions with this memory. Explaining British involvement, Prime Minister Tony Blair instead  signaled a new national intimacy  with genocide prevention. “We must show vigilance against the recent ethnic cleansing and killing that has taken place in Europe […] to ensure that the horrendous crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust are never forgotten.”74 This unvarnished support marked a new chapter in the British commemorative relationship to this past. We need to look more closely at that story. Spanning the 1960s–1980s, unlike the expansive Americanization embrace, British Holocaust remembrance

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was intermittingly casual, costumed, and caustic. Cultural and political producers raised the topic in public discourses, but their intentions often stirred controversy rather than curiosity. Studying such goings on is essential because it provides context for understanding both how this remembrance first gained popular visibility in the UK, and how that foundation supported later memorialization.

Notes 1. Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust: A Department of Defense Guide for Annual Commemorative Observances 2nd ed. (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1989), 9. 2. Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 20. 3. Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1993), 2. 4. For the term’s origin see James Young, “America’s Holocaust: Memory and the Politics of Identity,” in The Americanization of the Holocaust ed. Hilene Flanzbaum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 73. 5. Henryk Broder, “We Invented the Holocaust!” Transition 89 (2001): 74. 6. Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 108. 7. As quoted in Elizabeth Drew, “Letters from Washington,” The New Yorker, October 10, 1988, 102. 8. Jeannie Thomas, “Dumb Blondes, Dan Quayle, and Hillary Clinton: Gender, Sexuality, and Stupidity in Jokes,” Journal of American Folklore 110, no. 437 (1997): 294. 9. As quoted in Elie Wiesel and Robert Franciosi, Elie Wiesel: Conversations (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002), 123. 10. Jeffrey Demsky and Melissa King, “A Duty to Remember, A Duty to Forget: Examining Americans’ Unequal Memories of the War on Armenians and the War on Jews,” in War Memories: Commemorations, Recollections, and Writings on War eds. Stephanie Belanger and Renee Dickason (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 148–185. 11. Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 25. 12. Stephen Whitfield, “A Ring of Fire: Humor and the Holocaust,” in David Slucki, Gabriel Finder, and Avinoam Patt eds. Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020), 120.

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13. Aimee Pozorski, “How to Tell a True Ghost Story: The Ghost Writer and the Case of Anne Frank,” in Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author ed. Derek Parker Royal (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 99. 14. W.  Clark Hendley, “An Old Form Revitalized: Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer and the Bildungsroman,” Studies in the Novel 16, no. 1 (1984): 87, 89. 15. Jennifer Slivka, “History and the ‘I’ Trapped in the Middle: Negotiating the Past in Roth’s The Ghost Writer and The Plot against America,” Philip Roth Studies 8, no. 2 (2012): 130. 16. Roth, Ghost, 150. See also Kathy Rugoff, “Humor and the Muse in Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer,” Studies in American Humor 4, no. 4 (1986): 246. 17. Sally Bachner, The Prestige of Violence: American Fiction, 1962–2007 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 109. 18. Lawrence Mintz, “Devil and Angel: Philip Roth’s Humor,” Studies in American Jewish Literature 8, no. 2 (1989): 155–8. 19. Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012), 68. 20. Ibid. Original italics. 21. Brigitte Simon, “Anne Frank as Icon, from Human Rights to Holocaust Denial,” in Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, and Memory Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 180–5. 22. Lawrence Baron, Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 53. 23. Jeffrey Shandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 168. 24. Siegfried Zielinski and Gloria Custance, “History as Entertainment and Provocation: The TV Series Holocaust in West Germany,” New German Critique 19, no. 1 (1980): 81–96. 25. Robert Cherry, “Holocaust Historiography: The Role of the Cold War,” Science & Society 63, no. 4 (1999/2000): 473. 26. Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986); Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991). 27. Robert Faggen, “Loose Cannons: The Holocaust for Beginners,” Harvard Review 5 (1993): 26. 28. Hillary Chute, “The Shadow of a Past Time”: History and Graphic Representation in Maus,” Twentieth Century Literature 52, no. 2 (2006): 202, 205. 29. Linda Raphael, “Representing the Holocaust in Literature: Diaries, Memoirs, Fateless, and Other Fiction,” Colloquia Germanica 36, nos. 3/4 (2003): 242.

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30. Jeffrey Demsky, “We Are a Long Ways past Maus: Responsible and Irresponsible Holocaust Representations in Graphic Comics and Sitcom Cartoons,” in Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture eds., Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lassner (Cham: Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 530. 31. As quoted in Graham Smith, “From Mickey to Maus: Recalling the Genocide through Cartoon,” Oral History 15, no. 1 (1987): 30. 32. James Young, “The Holocaust as Vicarious Past: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the Afterimages of History,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 3 (1998): 676–8. 33. Gabriel Finder, “I’m Allowed. I’m a Jew: Oliver Polak and Jewish Humor in Contemporary Germany after the Holocaust,” in Laughter, eds. Slucki, Finder, and Patt, 233–34. 34. Emiliano Perra, “Intermittingly Americanized: Italian Debates on Holocaust Cultural Products,” in American Responses to the Holocaust: Transatlantic Perspectives eds. Hans Krabbendam and Derek Rubin (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017), 158–9. 35. Aimee Pozorski, “Anne Frank, Figuration, and the Ethical Imperative,” in New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures eds. Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky (New York: SUNY Press, 2019), 186. 36. Vanessa Esteban (on behalf of Alexsandro  Palombo), email message to author, May 13, 2019. 37. James Hoberman, Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 32–9. 38. Batya Brutin, Holocaust Icons in Art: The Warsaw Ghetto Boy and Anne Frank (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020), chap. 3b, Kindle. 39. Alvin Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 105. 40. As quoted in Edward Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 262–3. 41. Mark Chmiel, “The Political Varieties of Sacred Remembrance: Elie Wiesel and U.S.  Foreign Policy,” Journal of Church and State 40, no. 4 (1998): 842. 42. Richard Jensen, Reagan at Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2007), 64. 43. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, “The Subjects of 1975: Delineating the Necessity of Critical Refugee Studies,” MELUS 41, no. 3 (2016): 199. 44. Daniel R. Schwarz, “The Ethics of Reading Elie Wiesel’s Night,” Style 32, no. 2 (1998): 221–42. 45. Rosenfeld, End, 60. 46. As quoted in Robert Franciosi, Brian Shaffer, and Elie Wiesel, “An Interview with Elie Wiesel,” Contemporary Literature 28, no. 3 (1987): 292.

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47. Shaul Magid, “The Holocaust and Jewish Identity in America: Memory, the Unique, and the Universal,” Jewish Social Studies 18, no. 2 (2012): 110, 113. 48. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering 2nd ed. (New York: Verso, 2003), 4; Tim Cole, “Representing the Holocaust in America: Mixed Motives or Abuse?,” Public Historian 24, no. 4 (2002): 129; Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 274. 49. “Elie Wiesel Survives Madoff Wipeout, Heart Bypass,” Elie Wiesel Foundation.org, October 8, 2012, https://eliewieselfoundation.org/elie-­ wiesel-­s ur vives-­m adoff-­w ipeout-­h eart-­b ypass/#:~:text=About%20 one%2Dthird%20of%20the,%2C%20old%2C%E2%80%9D%20Wiesel%20 says. 50. Tim Cole, Images of the Holocaust: The Myth of the ‘Shoah Business’ (London: Duckworth, 1999), 87. 51. Noah Shenker, Reframing Holocaust Testimony (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 59. 52. Magid, “Holocaust,” 107. 53. David Wyman, “Why Auschwitz was Never Bombed,” Commentary (1978): 37–46. 54. Ibid., 41. 55. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s “Final Solution” (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 10. 56. David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1942–1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 340. 57. Jeffrey Ochsner, “Understanding the Holocaust through the U.S.  Holocaust Memorial Museum,” Journal of Architectural Education 48, no. 4 (1995): 247. 58. Vivian Patraka, “Situating History and Difference: The Performance of the Term Holocaust in Public Discourse,” in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies eds. Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 62. 59. As quoted in Linenthal, Preserving, 167. 60. Elizabeth Ellsworth, “The U.S.  Holocaust Museum as a Scene of Pedagogical Address,” Symploke ̄ 10, nos. 1/2 (2002): 26. 61. Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 34. 62. “Transcript of President Clinton’s Speech on Bosnia,” CNN Online, November 27, 1995, http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/bosnia_speech/ speech.html. 63. Carole Rogel, The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 38.

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64. Roger Petersen, Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 251. 65. Louis Fisher Supreme Court Expansion of Presidential Power: Unconstitutional Leanings (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), 228–9. 66. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 174, 251. 67. Frederick Paul Lee, “The Two Presidencies Revisited,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1980): 620–8. 68. Dick Flannery, “Broadcast News and the Movies: Wagging Somebody’s Dog,” in Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture ed. Joseph Foy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 157. 69. Burton Peretti, The Leading Man: Hollywood and the Presidential Image (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 203. 70. Richard Posner, An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 160–1. 71. Michael Mccgwire, “Why Did We Bomb Belgrade?” International Affairs 76, no. 1 (2000): 12. 72. As quoted in Ariel Burger, Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 30. 73. Debra Renee Kaufman, “Post-Memory and Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity Narratives,” in Sociology Confronts the Holocaust, eds. Judith Gerson and Diane Wolf (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 48. Italics original. 74. As quoted in Nira Yuval-Davis and Max Silverman, “Memorializing the Holocaust in Britain,” Ethnicities 2, no.1 (2002): 114.

CHAPTER 4

Why All the Swastikas?: UK Rock Stars’ Nazi/Holocaust Encounters, 1960s–1980s

Abstract  Demsky scrutinizes rock ‘n’ roll stars in the UK misappropriating Nazi and Holocaust icons. He identifies various motivating reasons for this behavior. Sometimes the impetus was generational, as performers flaunted swastikas to signal autonomy from their elders’ experiences and attitudes. Other times, the motivation was stylistic, in line with the Nazi chic trend. Racial considerations also played a role, as Third Reich ideas and imagery helped bigoted rockers and their fans decry rising levels of non-white immigration. Perhaps, musical celebrities are unusual pedagogues. Ultimately, however, just as with American rock stars—who Demsky also concisely analyzes in this chapter—their behaviors embody Holocaust post-memorializing as inheritor generations received this history on their own terms, and represented it for their own needs. Keywords  Rock ‘n’ Roll • Nazi • Holocaust • Post-memory • UK

Generational Nazi/Holocaust Encounters In January 1967, the Rolling Stones appeared on Ed Sullivan’s popular American television program. Scheduled to sing their hit single, “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” the show’s producers prevailed upon the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_4

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group to modify the song’s sexually suggestive title/chorus. Although visibly disgusted, lead singer Mick Jagger acquiesced to crooning the more platonic line, “Let’s spend some time together.”1 Often forgotten in this well-remembered anecdote is its Third Reich coda. Indeed, after performing their edited song, the Stones exited the stage to re-costume for the encore. To Sullivan’s great surprise and dismay, the bandmates emerged from their dressing room wearing Nazi uniforms.2 Such impertinence enraged their host, who had lived through both World Wars, resulting in their second act’s cancellation and a temporary banishment from the show. The Stones’ foiled Nazi homage is not mere rock ‘n’ roll trivia. Such behaviors can teach about deeper generational churnings related to British memorializing about the wartime era.3 Admittedly, rock ‘n’ roll entertainers are not ideal representative figures. In this instance, however, their unique involvement with Third Reich iconography recommends them for study. The Rolling Stones were not Nazi-minded, or even politically minded, especially when compared to contemporary acts like The Beatles.4 Rather, they tweaked the history’s importance to roil authority, in line with rock ‘n’ roll’s inherent subversiveness.5 The Ed Sullivan incident was also not the first time that members had (mis)appropriated Nazi/ Holocaust icons. The year before, while visiting Munich, band founder Brian Jones posed for a German magazine photo shoot wearing an SS uniform. In one of the more provocative images, he stands crushing a baby doll’s head beneath a black boot (Fig. 4.1). Responding to the ensuing controversy, Jones characterized the stunt as satirical and dismissed the criticism as hypocritical. No one chastised actor Peter O’Toole, he noted, when newspapers published photos of him donning similar garb.6 Of course, the inequity in outrage reflected the performers’ differing motivations. In O’Toole’s case, the Nazi attire reflected gear for a motion picture role that he was filming. His likely target audience was UK citizens that lived through World War II and wanted to return to its memory in a temperate way. The Rolling Stones’ capers nodded toward completely different audiences and objectives. They dabbled with Nazi icons as an insurrectionary performative strategy, mocking stoic representations of Britain’s “finest hour,” and marking a wider generational independence from this inherited past. Additional acts from this era echoed this same separation urge, although in non-Nazi-related ways. “Why don’t you all just f-fade away,” The Who quizzed their elders in “My Generation” (1965).7 The Monkees’ “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees” (1967) and The Beatles’ “Revolution” (1968)

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Fig. 4.1  Brian Jones, Nazi costume. (Note: Flaunting Nazism to mock elders’ wartime sacrifices)

raise similar voice. What caused this fissure? Born during and after World War II, possessing no memory of the damage that Nazism caused the UK, postwar youth escaped what Jeffrey Alexander terms “cultural trauma.”8 Fighting fascism scarred their parents, who, like their own parents a generation earlier, endured war’s physical destruction, material scarcity, and additional stresses. The postwar “baby boomers,” however, knew nothing of such suffering, and they did not want to contemplate it. In sharp contrast to their older family members, this younger cohort—who rock stars

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more authentically represented—entered the “long 1960s” believing that the UK’s best days lay ahead.9 Embracing the future meant discounting the past, which in practical terms connoted diminishing World War II history. Interestingly, rockers did not ignore this legacy, but instead misappropriated it in service of their own identity preferences. The resulting adaptations found them spurning their elders’ triumphant remembrance of defeating fascism in favor of their flaunting Nazi icons. As English punk rocker Siouxsie Sioux explained about wearing swastikas, “We hated older people […] always harping on about Hitler […] It was a way of saying, ‘Well, I think Hitler was very good, actually.’”10 Belgian artist Guy Peellaert’s Rock Dreams (1973) prints are especially rebelliousness. Take, for example, his tableau casting the Rolling Stones in a parlor room wearing SS uniforms and drinking from swastika teacups. Four partially naked pre-pubescent girls rest at the band’s beckand-call, complicating the already ambiguous image.11 While the band had no role in concocting these debaucheries, no member voiced any complaints. Peellaert later recalled, “He [Mick Jagger] liked it […] of course.” (Fig. 4.2).12 That Jagger welcomed his band’s association with genocidal (not to mention pedophilic) symbols is notable. Such acquiescence raises the

Fig. 4.2  Guy Peellaert, Rock Dreams. (Note: This image indicates a generational lack of awareness about what Nazi/Holocaust icons convey)

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question of whether the Rolling Stones, and their fans, fully understood the iconography with which they flirted. Maturing during the era when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan remarked, “Most of our people have never had it so good,” the ensemble probably knew little about Third Reich crimes.13 Unlike in the US, where recalling this history was commonplace, public discourses in the UK mostly did not. Absent detailed awareness of the Nazis’ misdeeds, the Rolling Stones and their fans probably only contemplated these brigand visuals’ naughtiness. Their dressing up as Nazis did not signify post-memory—since one cannot re-­memorialize something they have not yet learned—as much as it discloses what Andy Pearce terms a British cultural “turn toward” this past.14 In this sense, the Stones’ provoking activities were weightier than they may have intended as it signified an emerging pattern of subsequent rock ‘n’ roll curiosities. During the mid-to-late 1970s, the Sex Pistols built out these encounters.15 The band’s wider punk rock genre denoted increased rowdiness, and their half-Jewish manager, Malcolm McLaren, surmised that exhibiting swastikas could enhance both the act’s disruptiveness and economic profit.16 Bassist Sid Vicious appeared in photo sessions standing in front of banners advertising the band’s album while wearing Nazified outfits. Certain Pistols’ songs directly referenced the Holocaust, namely “Holiday in the Sun” (1977) and “Belsen Was a Gas” (1977), the latter ditty memorializing factual concentration camp goings-on.17 Other UK punk acts rankled at this impertinence. The Clash’s manager, Bernie Rhodes, a Holocaust survivor’s son, consistently took issue with the Pistols’ superficial use of Nazi/Holocaust imagery.18 Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones downplayed the criticism, recalling, “It [embracing Nazi icons] just seemed like a good way of shocking people and having a laugh.”19 However, this is not the central point. The Sex Pistols may have flaunted swastikas to annoy, but actual racist musicians during the late 1970s attended their shows and witnessed the technique’s crowd-frenzying power. These more sinister-­ minded musicians soon adopted the practice to the “hate” rock subgenre, widening UK rockers’ Nazi encounters to include celebrating its hallmark racism (Fig. 4.3).20 American punk acts from the time also summoned this past, although in less outlaw ways. In 1976, The Residents released The Third Reich ‘n Roll, with whimsically named tracks like “Hitler Was a Vegetarian” and “Swastikas on Parade.” The album’s cover art featured a cartoon-drawn image of American Bandstand host Dick Clark, outfitted in a Nazi uniform and

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Fig. 4.3  Sid Vicious, Nazi T-Shirt. (Note: Appropriating Nazi/Holocaust icons for social disruption and economic profit)

wearing a swastika armband. Such visuals reflect what James Ward terms the band’s rock-saboteur image.21 The drawing might also index aspects of the Rolling Stones’ earlier Ed Sullivan gambit, as Dick Clark inherited Sullivan’s American pop culture leadership mantle. Other punk bands, notably several with Jewish members, broached the history’s genocidal legacy. Unlike UK rockers’ distance from this past, these American acts exhibited nuanced understanding of the killings. This knowledge renders their artistry more akin to intentional post-­memorializing. As Mathew Boswell notes, when The Dictators, with its mostly Jewish lineup,

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performed “Master Race Rock,” they inherently ridiculed the historical claims of Nazi racial supremacy.22 The same was true with Jewish Joey Ramone, and his bandmate Tommy Ramone, born to a Hungarian family decimated by the Holocaust, stomping the “Blitzkrieg Bop.” This cheekiness was not discourteous to the memory of Jewish losses. Instead, it was insolent toward Nazism and those contemporary voices glorifying this past.23 American rockers’ sensationalism helped clarify—not confuse—this history by reminding audiences that Nazism and swastikas denoted fascism and genocide. Perhaps, San Francisco’s punk band The Dead Kennedys best  models this pedagogy in “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” (1981). Its lyrics directly rebuke those youth that “think swastikas look cool.” “In a real fourth Reich,” the song sneers, “you’ll be the first to go.”24 In “California Über Alles” (1979), the band targets Governor Jerry Brown, not Adolf Hitler. The song’s imagery, however, is a compendium of factual Holocaust references, notably, “Führer,” “fascism,” “camps,” “showers,” and “poison gas.”25 American rockers’ cautions about remembering precisely what Nazism meant existed in sharp relief to what was happening in the UK. Indeed, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, amidst mounting socio-cultural and economic tensions, British rockers broke from their prior sophomoric costuming, instead directing their intersections with this past to articulate harsh political and racial statements.

Political Nazi/Holocaust Encounters When World War II ended, less than ten thousand foreigners lived in the UK.  Just three decades later, however, several million non-white immigrants called the nation home.26 The new demography reflected urgent economic realities, namely, postwar British labor shortages. In 1948, Parliament remedied this problem via the Nationality Act, soliciting Commonwealth  migration. Although these overwhelmingly non-white immigrants did not receive British citizenship, their “subject” status permitted them rights to enter, work, and settle across the UK.  Officials expected subjects would  eventually repatriate, but this did not occur at high rates. Instead, the once-colonialized peoples inverted the core-­ periphery arrangement, moving to their erstwhile conqueror’s homeland and sourcing its wealth.27 Among white native-born British  citizens, such trends sparked new conversations about race, culture, and national belonging. It also augured violence. Panikos Panayi has chronicled a series of riots directed against

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West Indian and Asian immigrants affecting Liverpool in 1948, and then Birmingham and Deptford in 1949.28 The 1958 Notting Hill riot was the worst public disorder that the UK ever endured.29 A few years later, in Middlesbrough, related strife appeared.30 Hollywood films like To Sir, With Love (1967) may have portrayed restorative stories of growing postwar diversity in the UK, but this trope did not reflect realities across most council and housing estates. In April 1968, Member of Parliament Enoch Powell called political attention to the matter. Speaking in Birmingham, an industrial center populated with immigrant workers, his “rivers of blood” speech predicted, in part: In this country, in fifteen or twenty years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man […] Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.31

Powell knew that his remarks were incendiary: I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings? My answer is that I do not have the right not to do so.32

Such defiance reflected wider urgency, felt especially by white families that never fully recovered from their wartime traumas. By the 1970s, as the nation’s economic fortunes languished, these citizens increasingly resented cultural cosmopolitanism. Some rock stars agreed. Using their public speech platforms, they positively memorialized Nazi-styled bigotry as a remedy. Eric Clapton’s 1976 Birmingham rant is illustrative. Speaking from a concert stage, he referenced Enoch Powell’s earlier remarks: I think Enoch’s right. I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. England is for white people, man. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me, with their standards. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man.33

Clapton’s words carry greater weight because they found voice against the contemporary backdrop of Britain’s bourgeoning, fascist National Front (NF) party, which in 1976 was the nation’s fourth largest.34 While the NF never actually elected a Member of Parliament, their movement was not marginal. Especially during the late 1970s, its influence sourced less from electoral achievements than from the everyday domestic anxieties its

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existence caused, as neighbors passing in the street wondered which among them supported NF visions. Not surprisingly, violence prospered in this environment. Just three weeks after Clapton’s polemic, days-long bloodshed marred the Notting Hill Carnival, pitting white Brits against West Indian immigrants, and ultimately both against the police. Some rockers found in the unrest a rationale for welcoming a Nazi-like reckoning. David Bowie, speaking in a Playboy Magazine interview published shortly after the riots, struck an unmistakable NF chord. He explained: I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible.35

For years thereafter, Bowie and his defenders batted away charges that he was pro-fascist. Instead, they insisted his words reflected creative license, namely, animating his fascistic “Thin White Duke” persona. It ultimately does not matter if Bowie purposefully, or unwittingly, politicized his talent toward far-right ends. His art-imitating-life character is valuable because it confirms the relevance of Nazi ideas in late 1970s British society. Unlike in the US, where the Americanization process produced multitudes of antiNazi narratives, UK citizens had starkly different conversations, based upon sharply different motivations, resulting in a severely different Nazi and Holocaust memorialization (Fig. 4.4). Additional rock ‘n’ roll acts joined these discussions. Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979) was the most commercially successful example, interweaving fascist, Nazi, and Holocaust tropes into a contemporary British context. The album’s identically titled 1982 motion picture adaptation, an international blockbuster, confirms rockers’ post-memorializing influence. At its core, The Wall is a generational story, rather than a primarily racial or political one.36 It describes a boy named Pink, the orphaned son of a fallen British World War II officer. Growing up fatherless, Pink endures layers of abuse from his mother, schoolmaster, doctor, and chums. Even after achieving rock ‘n’ roll celebrity, aggressive record label executives, band managers, and groupies continue his victimization.37 In Pink’s powerlessness, viewers might recognize metaphoric coupling between his individual inadequacies, and the UK government’s incapacity to manage domestic affairs. The method by which Pink (and, by implication wider British society) conquers its weakness casts obvious innuendo. Indeed, Pink develops an alter

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Fig. 4.4  David Bowie, Nazi Salute. (Note: Welcoming the Nazi past into late 1970s British society)

Fig. 4.5  Pink Floyd, The Wall (Note: Modeling what a contemporary fascist UK society might resemble)

ego, that of a fascist-racist dictator.38 Empowered, he whips up frenzied youth crowds against familiar enemies. In the movie scene for “In the Flesh,” jack-booted enforcers manhandle the crowd as Pink exclaims (Fig. 4.5): Are there any queers in the theater tonight? Get them up against the wall. There’s one in the spotlight! He don’t look right to me. Get them up against the wall. That one looks Jewish! And that one’s a coon! Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?39

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Recasting the Nazified past as a localized prologue is the band’s creative innovation. In line with contemporaneous NF activities, The Wall models what a fascist-styled domestic takeover in the UK might resemble. Swastikas abound in the film, slightly modified to appear as interlocking hammers. Notably, the band’s retouched swastikas later became a real-life hate amplifier, as the global “Hammerskins Nation” adopted the film’s icon for its logo.40 Such borrowing indicates that 1970s rock ‘n’ roll post-­ memorializing tangibly connected audiences to this history. The film also features Holocaust imagery, chiefly the scene preceding “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II.” Pink searches a bedroom drawer containing his deceased father’s wartime effects, discovering a box of bullets that he arranges on nearby train tracks. When the locomotive arrives, crushing the ammunition, the flashes and bangs disorient Pink. Amidst the cacophony, as he recoils, the passing cattle cars reveal cargoes of faceless humanoids, evoking Holocaust consciousness.41 Songs such as “Run like Hell” and “Waiting for the Worms” also intersect with the Nazi/Holocaust past. In the film, the former ditty follows Pink’s tirade, as his enraged followers explode from the arena—wearing hammer swastikas armbands—to attack minorities. “Waiting for the Worms,” performed directly after “Run like Hell,” candidly references the Holocaust. Its first words are a German-language “one, two, three” command, delivered over the background sounds of marching boots. “Waiting to put on a black shirt,” the song lyricizes, possibly referencing Mosley’s, Mussolini’s, or Himmler’s squads. Its focus, however, sharpens. “Waiting to weed out the weaklings […] waiting for the final solution […] waiting to turn on the showers and fire the ovens.”42 Such musical memorialization jogs weightier contemplations of the Jewish wartime destruction, facilitating granular plebian interactions with this past, intending to urge people living in the late 1970s UK to reassess their possible support for the NF fascists in their midst.43 Perhaps, the “Rock against Racism” (RAR) movement best reflects UK musicians’ political encounters with Nazi-styled goings-on.44 Formed in direct response to Eric Clapton’s and David Bowie’s racialized remarks, and in partnership with Britain’s Anti-Nazi League, RAR performers such as The Clash, Delta 5, and Steel Pulse constituted a “broad democratic alliance” opposed to the NF crowd.45 RAR activities spanned five years into the early 1980s, promoting what Ian Goodyer terms the “crisis music” movement.46 What specifically constituted their emergency? Namely, combatting the looming NF threat, a danger rooted in an

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unexpectedly late 1970s positive British remembrance of Nazism. The remedy to such ends, as an RAR magazine editorial explained, was music, “Rebel music […] that breaks down peoples’ fear of one another.”47 Performers claimed that their ambitions were apolitical. However, the concerts’ atmosphere—its barkers, vendors, and the omnipresent RAR red star logo—cast clear leftist messages.48 In this sense, the rockers’ campaign resembled aspects of the earlier left-leaning American “cultural front.”49 Performers in both movements plied “agitprop” to erase ethno-racial and economic distinctions.50 Despite these efforts, British racial animosities persisted, fanned in part by a contesting far-right rock ‘n’ roll vision. Beginning in 1979 and continuing sporadically into the next decade, the NF sponsored its Rock against Communism (RAC) crusade.51 Bands like The Dentists, Skrewdriver, and Brutal Attack performed incendiary songs defying “left-wing filth in rock music.”52 Mark Perry, who published the punk fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue, put it more bluntly: “I don’t need to be told by a commie organization [RAR] to love blacks.”53 The RAC campaign was not nearly as influential as the RAR was. Nonetheless, their activities represent another example of UK rockers favorably post-memorializing Hitler’s icons and ideas, defiant to the emerging Americanized construct that maintained crushing the Nazi past connoted building a nonracist future. Perhaps, the RAC’s most significant accomplishment was its fostering a new rock subgenre, Oi!, the self-proclaimed street punk.54 Identifiable by its Nazified lyrics and costuming, Oi! rockers’ intersections with this past represent an opposing point on the memorializing continuum that started two decades earlier with the Rolling Stones playing dress-up. The white supremacist hate rock that follows Oi! symbolizes the final step on this progression. Just because these racialized interactions are more disturbing than the others, as Kirsten Dyck notes, it does not diminish their significance, and might make them more important to study. Performers glorifying Third Reich destructiveness decades after World War II confirm that despite postwar efforts to extinguish it, impulses of bigotry and genocide remained closer to public consciousnesses than most people care to recognize.55

Hateful Nazi/Holocaust Encounters Recalling his youthful (mis)appropriations of Nazi symbols, David Johansen, a member of the 1970s glam-punk band New  York Dolls, explained:

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In grammar school, you get a loose-leaf book and the first thing you draw in it is a swastika […] you carve a swastika in the desk. You don’t know what fascism is and it isn’t anti-Jewish at all. When you want to make a statement about how BAD you are, that’s how you do it.56

Inadvertently, Johansen’s assurance that his pro-Nazi wink was not “anti-­ Jewish at all” appears to confirm that he did understand, or later learned about, Hitler’s genocide. More relevant to my analysis, however, is that while Johansen declared his apathy toward Nazi antisemitism, other musicians flirting with this past had a far keener interest. Specifically, Oi! rockers memorialized Nazi icons and ideas to make a statement about how HATEFUL they were. While white power rockers identify numerous targets, Jews are prominent among them. Songs referencing antisemitic ideas presented in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf span their musical oeuvre. So, too, do ditties that misremember and ridicule the Holocaust. Developed against the glum backdrop of the early 1980s Thatcherism, racist Oi! rock gave identity and voice to socially alienated young white men. Just as during the Weimar Republic, when a similarly marginalized German cohort reclaimed its agency by singing the Horst Wessel song and Hitlernationale, Oi! music articulated an active racist agenda.57 Ian Stuart Donaldson, who formed the band Skrewdriver in 1976, was the most influential Oi! rocker. From its start, Skrewdriver’s reputation involved stoking their fans’ racial animosities. Donaldson, for his part, deflected this charge, arguing instead that “large gangs of big-mouthed blacks” provoked his audiences to violence.58 However, his widening public turn toward Nazi icons and ideas, in both his music and pageantry, suggests that he knew what he was doing. Donaldson’s positive representations of Nazism—set alongside his support for racialized violence—augured a new and more active component to rockers’ encounters with this past. His Nazi-themed “Blood and Honor” campaign openly encouraged his listeners toward physical revolt.59 These were not empty words. Performing in late 1983, in Barking, some five hundred Skrewdriver fans riotously exited a Nazi-styled show. Eyewitnesses recalled the vigilantes patrolling the streets, “Sieg Heiling and obliterating anything in their paths […] quite a few of the local ethnics got a pasting.”60 Notably, such real-life mayhem replicates Pink Floyd’s “In the Flesh” scene from The Wall, released the prior year. In another instance, concluding a similarly Nazified performance, Ian Stuart

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Donaldson flashed Hitler salutes to his fans, declaring, “Fucking right, Sieg Heil.”61 Oi! and later hate rock music provided the era’s skinheads soundtracks for their rage.62 It was a cultural and political fastener that memorialized their contemporary experiences—not in line with Nuremberg/liberator narratives—but rather toward  Nazi perspectives. Take, for example, Skrewdriver’s “Free My Land” (1984). The song opens: We were the country that had everything […] we were the country that could never lose. Once a nation, and now we’re run by Jews. We want our country back now!63

Again, in “White Power” (1983), the chorus demands: “White Power for England! White Power Today! White Power for Britain! Before it’s too late!”64 What renders these calls remarkable is that otherwise law-abiding people stomached the skinheads’ “Paki-bashing” and related street violence.65 Such apathy likely indicates their own fury with the doleful state of public affairs across the UK, just a few years removed from its “winter of discontent,” confirming that the celebration of democratic values vital to Americanized Holocaust remembrance had far less sway in British contexts.66 Holocaust derision was another method Oi! rockers plied to signal their  rejections of this  liberalized expectation. In 1981, the year that London publishers released Kitty Hart-Moxon’s Return to Auschwitz, honoring her suffering and survivorhood, the Scottish band The Exploited released “Hitler’s in the Charts Again.” Its lyrics joke: “Join the shower queue in your dancing shoes. Be the dancing champ of your concentration camp.”67 Skrewdriver’s “Voice of Britain” (1990) similarly lionizes  this past. “Remember Adolf Hitler,” the song exhorts, “Remember Crystal Night!”68 Such lyricizing illustrates how disrespectful representations can simultaneously sow useful historical remembrance. Both The Exploited’s and Skrewdriver’s followers likely had no formal Holocaust instruction, nor had any interest in receiving it. However, listening to hate rock songs that implore them to remember Kristallnacht, or concentration camps shower queues,  even if these are  mean-spirited, nonetheless steer audiences toward factual historical memory.

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The UK hate rock band No Remorse similarly peddles this unwitting pedagogy. On the one hand, ditties like “Six Million Lies” (1988) foment Holocaust denial, terming the genocide, “organized lies by the Jews […] the biggest scandal in history.”69 However, counterposed against the band’s later “Exterminate Ya” (1994), these initial rejections reveal complexities. Notably, in the later track, No Remorse bandmates reify the very memory that they earlier disputed. Its lyrics ponder, “What shall we do with you, Mr. Jew?” Their proposed “solution” mirrors the Nazis’. “Here’s what we’ll do […] Exterminate Ya! Incinerate Ya! Annihilate Ya! Cremate Ya!”70 Such prose defies compassionate commemoration, but this is beside the point. The song and its wider Nazified stance are meaningful because it promotes correct remembrance—especially among skeptical audiences—about what the history of  Nazism denoted for Europe’s Jews. As with the left-leaning variety, this far-right “agitprop” also has an American provenance. During the 1960s, Louisiana singer Johnny Rebel penned dozens of anti-African American tunes as a method for opposing the Civil Rights Movement.71 His foul-mouthed, backwoods, renegade persona provided listeners with an oral cudgel for defending their segregated way of life. For Rebel and his fans, saying the “N” word denigrated blacks, but more so it signaled their defiance toward liberalized demands for social change. It is this entrenched repugnance to multiculturalism that connects bygone Johnny Rebel songs to British Oi! and white power acts. No Remorse’s “Blood Sucker” (1988) models how flexible bigots can be in applying their hatreds. Collectively decrying “filthy” Asians, “dirty” Pakistanis, and “moneyed” Jews, it assures, “One day the world will know that Adolf Hitler was right.”72 In its sweeping racism, the band confirms how hate rockers—along with their fans—recall and memorialize the Nazi/Holocaust past for reassurances that contemporary bigots’ struggles against racial diversity are not simply theirs alone. Ultimately, however, as Jon Savage explains, the story of UK rockers’ intersections with the Nazi/Holocaust past is variable. Performers could “wear the swastika with complete ambivalence, sometimes being for it, sometimes against it. The point was to get people wondering: What the fuck is happening here?”73 Although citizens’ distress reflected numerous miseries, a common subtext bridging the thirty-year trend was confusion about what tangible gain the nation had wrought from its World War II triumphs. Unlike in the US, British disconnectedness to the past, in part,

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left the subject open for rock performers to probe. For all their expected tumult, however, rockers achieved some form of authentic remembrance during otherwise mostly “silent” times. Their antics promoted greater public encounters with this past, helping inject a commemorative foundation for more affirmative later interactions to develop.

Notes 1. Chester Pach, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Stay”: Using Popular Music to Teach about Dating and Youth Culture from Elvis to the Beatles,” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 4 (2004): 45. 2. Gerald Nachman, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 373. 3. Frank Mort, “Social and Symbolic Fathers and Sons in Postwar Britain,” Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 (1999): 373–4. 4. Marcus Collins, “The Beatles’ Politics,” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 16, no. 2 (2014): 291–309. 5. Lawrence Grossberg, “The Politics of Youth Culture: Some Observations on Rock ‘n’ Roll in American Culture,” Social Text 8 (1983/84): 108–9. 6. Mark Paytress, The Rolling Stones: Off the Record (New York: Omnibus, 2003), 439. 7. Tony Fletcher, Boy about Town (London: Windmill Books, 2014), 33. 8. Jeffrey Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity eds. Jeffrey Alexander et  al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1. 9. Detlef Siegfried, “‘Don’t Trust Anyone Older Than 30?’ Voices of Conflict and Consensus between Generations in 1960s West Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 4 (2005): 737. 10. As quoted in Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex-Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 241. 11. Guy Peellaert and Nik Cohn, Rock Dreams (New York: Popular Library, 1973). 12. As quoted in Andrew Bailey, “Rock Dreams”: Teen Fantasies as Art,” Rolling Stone, April 11, 1974, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/ culture-­news/rock-­dreams-­teen-­fantasies-­as-­art-­68376/. The next year, the Stones commissioned Peellaert to design the album cover for It’s Only Rock And Roll (1974). 13. Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Little, Brown and Co. 2005). 14. Andy Pearce, Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain (London: Routledge, 2013), 183.

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15. Kevin Dunn, “Never Mind the Bollocks: The Punk Rock Politics of Global Communication,” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 201. 16. Nina Antonia, Too Much, Too Soon: The Makeup and Breakup of The New York Dolls (New York: Omnibus Press, 1998), 101. 17. Peter Smith, Sex Pistols: The Pride of Punk (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 123. 18. Maria Buszek, “CLOTHES CLOTHES CLOTHES PUNK PUNK PUNK WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN,” in Design History Beyond the Canon eds., Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Victoria Rose Pass, and Christopher Wilson (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019), 101. 19. As quoted in Nigel Farndale, “Oh Come On, Can’t We Recognize a Little Harmless Mischief Anymore?,” The Telegraph, January 16, 2005, https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/nigelfarndale/3614249/ Oh-­come-­on-­cant-­we-­recognise-­a-­little-­harmless-­mischief-­any-­more.html. 20. Kirsten Dyck, Reichsrock: The International Web of White-Power and NeoNazi Hate Music (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 14. 21. James Ward, “This is Germany! It’s 1933!” Appropriations and Constructions of “Fascism” in New York Punk/Hardcore in the 1980s,” Journal of Popular Culture 30, no. 3 (1996): 160. 22. Matthew Boswell, “Holocaust Impiety in Punk and Post-Punk,” (conference presentation, Post-war Responses to the Holocaust, London Imperial War Museum March 20, 2009). 23. Steven Lee Beeber, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2006), 175. 24. Ward, “This,” 162. 25. The Dead Kennedys, “California Über Alles,” recorded 1979, Decay Music/BMI, Vinyl Single. 26. Chris Waters “Dark Strangers” in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–1963,” Journal of British Studies 36, no. 2 (1997): 208. 27. Mike Cole, Racism: A Critical Analysis. London: Pluto Press, 2016), 35. 28. Panikos Panayi, “Middlesbrough 1961: A British Race Riot of the 1960s?,” Social History 16, no. 2 (1991): 140. 29. Tony Moore, Policing Notting Hill: Fifty Years of Turbulence (Sherfield on Loddon Hook, UK: Waterside Press, 2013), 163. 30. Panayi, “Middlesbrough,” 143. 31. As quoted in Paul Corthorn, “Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionism, and the British Nation,” Journal of British Studies,” 51, no. 4 (2012): 968. 32. As quoted in Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 234. Emphasis original.

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33. As quoted in Dave Renton, Never Again: Rock against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League 1976–1982 (New York: Routledge, 2019), 51. 34. Stan Taylor, The National Front in English Politics (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 118–9. 35. As quoted in Ulrich Adelt, Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 146. 36. Philip Jenkins, “Bricks in the Wall: An Interpretation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” in The Berlin Wall: Representations and Perspectives eds. Ernst Schürer, Manfred Keune, and Philip Jenkins (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 205–13. 37. Jorge Romero and Luis Miguel Varela Cabo, “Roger Waters’ Poetry of the Absent Father: British Identity in Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” Atlantis 28, no. 2 (2006): 49. 38. Zeno Ackermann, “Rocking the Culture Industry/Performing Breakdown: Pink Floyd’s The Wall and the Termination of the Post-War Era,” Popular Society and Music 35, no. 1 (2012): 1–24. 39. Pink Floyd: The Wall, directed by Alan Parker (1982; Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1982), VHS. 40. See Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Terrorism and Violent Extremism Awareness Guide (Ottawa, Canada: National Security Awareness Program, 2016), 41. 41. Cliff Jones, Another Brick in the Wall: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song (London: Carlton Books, 1999), 133–5, 141. 42. Pink Floyd, “Waiting for the Worms,” recorded April–November 1979, side 4, track 4 The Wall, Harvest, LP. 43. British playwright David Edgar similarly developed this theme in Destiny (1976), a thinly veiled National Front critique. See Misha Berson, “The Politics of a Playwright: Talking with David Edgar,” The Threepenny Review 7 (1981): 25–6. 44. Renton, Never, 51. 45. Evan Smith, “Are the Kids United?: The Communist Party of Great Britain, Rock Against Racism, and the Politics of Youth Culture,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 5, no. 2 (2011): 100. 46. Ian Goodyer, Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock against Racism (New York: Manchester University Press, 2009), 1. 47. As quoted in David Widgery, “Beating Time” in White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race eds. Stephan Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay (London: Verso, 2011), 182. 48. Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, 1976–1992 (London: Picador, 2016), 35.

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49. Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996). 50. For “agitprop” see Lynn Mally, “Exporting Soviet Culture: The Case of Agitprop Theater,” Slavic Review 62, no. 2 (2003): 325. 51. Ryan Shaffer, “The Soundtrack of Neo-Fascism: Youth and Music in the National Front,” Patterns of Prejudice 47, nos. 4/5 (2013): 467. 52. Ryan Shaffer, Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism: The Transformation of Extremism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 74. 53. As quoted in Roger Sabin, “‘I Won’t Let That Dago By’: Rethinking Punk and Racism,” in Punk Rock: So What?: The Cultural Legacy of Punk ed. Roger Sabin (New York: Routledge, 2002), 207. 54. Timothy Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and “Nazi Rock” in England and Germany,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 158. 55. Kirsten Dyck, “The (Un)Popularity of White Power Music,” in Music at the Extremes: Essays on Sounds Outside the Mainstream ed. Scott Wilson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2015), 157. 56. As quoted in Savage, England’s, 63–4. 57. Robert Futrell, Pete Simi, and Simon Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene,” Sociological Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2006): 277. 58. As quoted in Dyck, Reichrock, 15. 59. Steve Silver, “Blood and Honour 1987–1992,” in White Noise: Inside the International Nazi Skinhead Scene, eds. Nick Lowles and Steve Silver (London: Searchlight, 1998), 13. 60. Robert Forbes and Eddie Stampton, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979–1993 (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2015), 104–5. Note that co-author Stampton participated in the Barking riots. 61. Shaffer, “Soundtrack,” 474. 62. Robin Maria Valeri, Nicole Sweazy and Kevin Borgeson, “An Analysis of Skinhead Websites and Social Networks, A Decade Later,” Michigan Sociological Review 31 (2017): 78. 63. Skrewdriver, “Free My Land,” recorded 1984, track 14 on Hail the New Dawn, Rock-O-Rama, Vinyl LP. 64. Skrewdriver, “White Power,” recorded 1983, White Noise Records, Vinyl Single. 65. Erika Funk-Hennigs, “Skinheadmusik, OI-Musik, Nazi-Rock,” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 40 (1995): 85. 66. Tara Martin López, The Winter of Discontent: Myth, Memory, and History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 9.

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67. Exploited, “Hitler’s In the Charts Again,” recorded 1981, track AA1 on Dead Cities, Secret, Vinyl, 7″. 68. Skrewdriver, “Voice of Britain,” recorded 1990, track 13 on Boots & Braces, Rock-O-Rama, CD. 69. No Remorse, “Six Million Lies,” recorded 2008, track 10 on This Time the World, Rebelles Européens, Vinyl LP. 70. No Remorse, “Exterminate Ya,” recorded 1994, track 8 on Barbecue in Rostock, I.S.D., CD. 71. Michael Wade, “Johnny Rebel and the Cajun Roots of Right-Wing Rock,” Popular Music and Society 30, no. 4 (2007): 493–512. 72. No Remorse, “Blood Sucker,” recorded 1988, track 2 on This Time the World, Rebelles Européens, Vinyl LP. 73. As quoted in Savage, England’s, 241–2.

CHAPTER 5

No Soup For You!: Responsible and Irresponsible Holocaust Humor on American Sitcoms

Abstract  Demsky examines American sitcom skits broadcasting Nazi/ Holocaust humor. Spanning episodes from the 1990s into current times, he categorizes two contrasting examples. Some shows produce what he terms “responsible” humor—comedy that spurs, rather that spurns, faithful Holocaust memorializing. Others, however, harvest what he terms “irresponsible” humor—shows recovering the history simply to depreciate it. Demsky does not consider whether this humor is amusing, or appropriate. Instead, counterposed against each other, he argues that two varieties can sharpen our understanding of how Americans recall and remember this past. Fundamental to his argument is the question of whether the lampooning damages the history and its victims, or skewers the dominant memorializing tradition, and those figures judged to have stewarded the legacy in sometimes-questionable directions. Keywords  Holocaust • Humor • Television • Sitcoms • Post-­ memory • US In his groundbreaking essay, “Holocaust Laughter,” Terrence Des Pres outlined a theoretical framework for memorializing this history via comedy. He observed that levity serves several cohesive functions. It is a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_5

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coping tool for managing pain, a communication device for sharing anguish, and a therapeutic method for promoting healing. While Holocaust humor might alienate some observers from the subject’s solemnity, Des Pres ultimately  credits its ability to form “tougher and more active” responses.1 Humor and the Holocaust have always been intertwined, although its context and content are nuanced. Prisoners employed “gallows” humor while enduring the Nazis’ camps.2 Remorseful Germans living during (and after) Hitler’s regime did similarly.3 However, first-­ hand witnesses’ use of satire to convey their suffering, for example, Tadeus Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, is significantly different from subsequent generations finding such experiences amusing.4 Nonetheless, this latter practice flourishes. Its operations appear across American situation comedies airing during the last twenty-five years, on series such as Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons. The rising amounts of Holocaust-themed joke work has stirring limited controversy. Many writers contributing to the “Ha-Ha Holocaust” genre possess Jewish heritage.5 Moreover, this comedy is not altogether new. Fifty years ago, Mel Brooks’s The Producers (1968) modeled the potential for humorizing Hitlerism with ensembles of Nazified can-can dancers, and cheeky dialogue like, “Don’t be stupid, be a smarty! Come and join the Nazi Party!”6 However, importantly, The Producers’ plot told a story of investors trying to stage a magnificent flop—explaining why they backed a Nazi comedy—rather than their selecting the topic because of its implied humor value.7 Comedians from the 1960s, namely, Lenny Bruce, sourced the Nazi past for levity, but, unlike today, such decisions carried sharp costs.8 That stiff penalties no longer exist is notable. If unlikely, the aphorism recognizing humor as the combination of tragedy plus the passage of time now pertains to Nazism and the Holocaust.9 Such realities raise the questions of why this change appeared and how its operations will influence future remembrance.10 Crassness is the coin of the realm in contemporary American entertainment. However, Holocaust humor, which is distinctive from Nazi humor, is more than just a sign of our bad-mannered times. It represents second- and third-generation Jewish Americans’ post memorialization of an inherited trauma.11 Their grieving processes are  complicated. Many Jewish Americans view their thriving—approximately five-million-person—community as “reincarnated” forms of their murdered European cousins.12 Framed as such, the Holocaust’s destruction presents less as a tragic end story than as a Whiggish origin tale. These are the “GI Jew” children, those born after

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the nation’s triumph over Nazism, who matured in a postwar domestic atmosphere defined by greater Christian sensitivities toward Jewishness.13 Although they undoubtedly learned what antisemitism denoted for their foreign ancestors, they formed their American identities separately from these received lessons. Consequently, similar to postwar British youth filtering their elders’ wartime experiences through contemporary screens, certain post-­ Holocaust Jewish Americans carve out distance. Cultural discourses especially model the technique. “Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew,” Phillip Roth exclaims in Portnoy’s Complaint (1967). “It is coming out my ears already, the saga of the suffering Jews! Do me a favor, my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass!”14 Again, in The Ghost Writer (1979), he reminds, “We are not the wretched of Belsen […] if you want to see the physical violence done to the Jews of Newark, go to the office of the plastic surgeon where the girls get their noses fixed. That’s where the Jewish blood flows!”15 This waggishness entertains, but it also enlightens. Roth, and those for whom he wrote, understood that European Jewry endured genocide. His prose’s frustration conveys ambivalence toward the subsequent social expectation that, owing to such knowledge, he must orient his postwar (American) identity toward that fact. Such impertinence  reappears among second-generation comedians— figures like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David—who pioneered Holocaust-­ themed television humor skits. Third-generation sitcom writers, born during the 1970s and early 1980s, perhaps not fully cognizant of this gifting, nonetheless follow along this path. The thematic linkage connecting Philip Roth’s  questioning discourses, and South Park cartoons, is ambiguity about how to remember this unhappy European past in light of a markedly different American present. I recognize that some onlookers will dismiss this chapter’s  source material as dreadful. That judgment misses  the point. Just as with British hate rock songs, these poor-taste cartoonish representations often faithfully depict who did what to whom. Their barbs are also not always directed solely at the history’s victims, but sometimes  skewer a dominant memorializing tradition judged to have stewarded the legacy in sometimes-questionable directions.16 I categorize both “responsible” and “irresponsible” Nazi/Holocaust humor. The former grouping connotes imaginings that veer from factual orthodoxy, but spur, not spurn, respectful remembrance. Movies like Train of Life, Life is Beautiful, and Last Laugh model this approach.17 So, too, do writers for series like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The

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Simpsons. However, not all the joking is constructive. “Irresponsible” humor connotes instances in which producers recall this past mostly to mock it. Common to series like South Park and Family Guy, these portrayals trivialize Jewish victims, rather than the Jewish victimization narrative. Counterposed against each other, the two varieties can sharpen our understanding of how some contemporary Americans recall and remember this past. Humor matters. Its words, images, and impacts cannot be undone. Like tragedy, comedy has the ability to help people learn about serious topics.18 Alternatively, however, teasing may have the exact opposite impact, representing that humanity is inexorably baneful, and laughing about its barbarism is about all you can do.

Responsible Holocaust Humor on American Sitcoms In his seminal study, While America Watches, Jeffrey Shandler demonstrates that television programs, spanning the 1940s into current times, facilitated  American Holocaust consciousness.19 Analyzing such efforts requires care. Television is a two-edged sword, functioning as a guardian of normative hegemony on one hand, but a presenter of subversive content on the other.20 This unlikely conflation, rooted in countermanding traditions of rectitude and rebelliousness, informs my thinking about so-­ called responsible Holocaust humor. Seinfeld (1989–1998) was the first American sitcom plying this brand of mischievous, but constructive, post-­ memory. Although Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish, Seinfeld eludes classification as a “Jewish” series.21 Instead, as Jon Stratton explains, its writers hint at a character’s Jewishness, but encourage audiences to establish such values independently.22 This suppleness also governs the show’s Holocaust humor, meaning that Jewish and non-Jewish audiences might construe the levity differently. The “Soup Nazi” (1995) episode models this variable method. By branding the episode’s antagonist a “Nazi,” Seinfeld writers help Christian audiences locate a tradition of laughing at Nazis that sources back to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940).23 For Jewish viewers, however, juxtaposing Nazi and current-era lineups, only now set before an authoritarian chef, represents a weightier wink. “Just follow the ordering procedure and you will be fine,” Jerry assures his panicky friends as they prepare to face the kitchen dictator.24 As a humoring device, this hopefulness alerts viewers to the probability that the exact opposite result will follow. However, again, for Jewish viewers specifically, such professions of

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faith filter uncomfortably through a post-Holocaust screen. Jerry’s encouragements have the potential to conjure up recollections of Judenrat claims that obeying the Nazis’ deportation protocol would ensure Jews’ safety, or more drastically Kapos’ false promises about de-licing showers. That the kitchen bully targets George Costanza—perhaps the show’s most “Jewish” character—also presents differently to viewers of varying faiths.25 George’s denied request for complimentary bread might strike Christians as misguided chutzpah. Jews, however, likely form different conclusions, drawn from their learned communal expectations for social inequity. As George meekly reminds his soup-ladling-tormentor, “Everyone in front of me got free bread.”26 Notably, Jerry’s friend Elaine, and his antagonist Newman, experience no trepidation with the “Nazi.” This is because they are patently non-Jewish characters. Newman is a postal worker who, like the identically named figure in Arthur Miller’s novel Focus, embodies the petite bourgeoisie mindset that cherishes obedience to power. His crisp ordering style is perfect. “One large jambalaya, please.”27 The patrician Elaine Benes character displays a similar confidence, wantonly deviating from the “ordering procedure,” tapping her hands on the countertop and making unwanted chitchat. Elaine does not back down, despite her unruliness eliciting the shop’s most dreaded banishment, “No soup for you!” Unlike Jerry and George, she does not view this fraught encounter through post-Holocaust Jewish eyes. Rather, raised as a mid-Atlantic- state Brahmin, her pugnacity reflects a birthright that ensures she cannot be cowed by an immigrant line cook.28 Again, Jewish viewers probably recognized these nuances more readily than Christians. They also likely better appreciated that, owing to her privileged stock, Elaine possessed the agency to take retaliatory steps. As the episode closes, she pushes back forcefully, revealing the “Nazi’s” recipes, ruining his business, and requiring him to “flee for Argentina.”29 Such comedy possesses underlying seriousness. It confirms that fifty years after World War II, even in an Americanized context, the residue of the Jewish victim/Nazi victimizer paradigm persists. These barriers do not impact second-generation post-Holocaust Christians like Elaine, whose ancestors dispatched with Hitlerism, but they do still threaten the security of Jewish Jerry and George. That vestiges of inherited pasts can seep into the lived present sanctions post-memory producers’ continued appropriations of  Nazi/Holocaust trauma in their own way, and on their own terms. Seinfeld writers

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especially seized this right in “The Raincoats” (1994) episode. Ostensibly, the story centers on Jerry’s parents visiting from Florida, cramping their son’s bachelorhood. However, Helen and Morty Seinfeld, representing the wartime/survivor generation, also specifically irritate Jerry with their insistence that he participate in the period’s flourishing Holocaust consciousness. Helen: Jerry, have you seen Schindler’s List? Jerry: No, I haven’t seen it yet. Helen: Oh, you have to go. You have to. Jerry: I’m going. Helen: You have to. Jerry: Okay!30 Eventually, Jerry (and his Jewish girlfriend) elude his parent’s pestering by going to the movies. As circumstance would have it, Schindler’s List is the only available show for them to screen. Just like with “The Soup Nazi,” the resulting shenanigans reveal second-generation Jewish Americans relating to (or rejecting) this legacy in service of their contemporary needs. Indeed, amidst background sounds of incessant whip cracking and human wailing, Jerry and his date passionately kiss. They completely ignore the film. One person in the theatre, however, paying close attention to both the movie and Jerry’s impudence, was his nemesis, Newman. As Jerry’s perpetual foil, he reveled in later reporting to Mr. and Mrs. Seinfeld what he observed. “Do I have to spell it out for you,” he quizzed the incredulous Seinfelds. “He was moving on her like the storm-­ troopers into Poland.”31 Setting the humor aside, both the make-out scene and Newman’s professed outrage teach deeper lessons. Jerry’s rude behavior confirms that he and his girlfriend were not the film’s target audience. Indeed, Schindler’s List petitioned non-Jews—like Newman—with a story wrapped in Christian leitmotifs of saviorhood, repentance, and forgiveness.32 Such packaging, relatable to Anne Frank’s similarly de-Judaized story, aimed to increase Christians’ interest in this foreign past. Jews do not need these encouragements, which is why Jerry and his date ignore the movie. However, while Jerry’s heritage empowered such choices, his behaviors damaged American Holocaust memorialization—not as a Jewish self-­ identity marker—but rather as a symbol of national rectitude. Newman, on the other hand, ever compliant to social authority and norms, seized

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the moral high ground, less owing to his authentic commitment to Holocaust learning, but rather because of his enthusiastic participation in this affirming civic ritual. In 2004, Seinfeld co-creator, Larry David, re-explored this tangle when his Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–present) series aired “The Survivor.”33 Its plot counterposes rival “survivors,” one who lived through Nazi imprisonment, and the other who competed in an endurance-based reality television show. For those whose tastes allow, the two rival claimants’ lunchtime back-and-forth is enlightening because it confronts the Holocaust’s uneasy presence in contemporary pop culture conversations. As David Lazar reminds, the script’s premise was inherently unconcerned with honoring testimony, confirmed by the fact that viewers are not even watching a real Holocaust survivor, but rather an actor playing one.34 The episode further complicates these equations by introducing a new variable—third-generation post-witnesses—representing a cohort that might  lack the emotive and cognitive skills required to encounter this history. Indeed, the twenty-something-year-old “survivor” regaled guests with stories related to his television show’s limited cafeteria snacks and gym facilities. A slight innocence tempers his ignorance as he remains oblivious to the much older man, seated just a few spots away at the table, staring at him with palpable dismay. “That’s a very interesting story,” the senior observer soon exclaims. “But I was in a concentration camp! You never even suffered one minute in your life compared to what I went through!”35 Notably, the television “survivor” refuses to drop his claims  of distress, displaying “disagreement humor,” in line with Mel Brooks’s quip, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer.”36 Moving past the scene’s “cringe elements,” the scenario predicts a potentially troubled future for staid Holocaust commemoration.37 In foregrounding the third-generation actor’s attempts to establish equivalency between his hurt, and the older man’s, the comedic spacing introduces viewers to the possibility that for some inheritors  upholding somber Holocaust remembrance itself can be a misery trigger.

Irresponsible Humor on American Sitcoms In a 2019 Jewish Review of Books essay, Gavriel Rosenfeld explains his “law of ironic Hitlerization.”38 Simply put, the maxim holds that as a cultural icon’s celebrity increases, so, too, does the likelihood that interlopers will

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attach it to some aspect of Nazi/Holocaust history. Rosenfeld’s insight helps explain related phenomena, such as Hitler-themed fried chicken shops in Thailand and South Africans egg producers that adorn their wares with Hitler-styled mustaches.39 American cultural discourses also support these off-kilter appropriations, especially television sitcoms. However, important distinctions separate how series’ writers envision and apply the technique. Unlike Nazi/Holocaust jokes written by second-generation post-World War II comedians, who direct their imaginings toward respectful representation, some third-generation scriptwriters poke fun at the Nazis’ crimes. This technique reflects what I characterize as irresponsible humor, deriding the Holocaust and its victims more than despairing its sometimes-exaggerated Americanized remembrance. South Park (1997–present) models this style. The globally syndicated cartoon series depicts the lives of four grade-schoolers, and their neighbors, living in a quiet Colorado town. One of the boys, Kyle Broflovski, is Jewish, likely a quasi-eponymous character for the show’s co-creator, Matt Stone.40 Kyle struggles to negotiate his Jewish identity, a process aggravated by the cascade of harassment that his bigoted classmate, Eric Cartman, directs toward him. Although just a fourth grader, Cartman is an antisemite. Throughout the show’s run, writers use his character to provoke a wide range of inflammatory conversations about ethno-racial and religious intolerance, including various episodes intersecting with Nazism and the Holocaust.41 “Pinkeye” (1997) features Cartman wearing an Adolf Hitler Halloween costume to school.42 After seeing his getup, the staff predictably recoils. The principal orders Cartman to her office to watch an anti-Nazi documentary. Cartman’s flippant response, however, ruins this attempted remedy. Screening the film, still outfitted as Adolf Hitler, he gleefully admires the depictions of marching Nazi columns. At one point, Cartman drifts into a dream sequence where he images that he is the Nazi Führer, standing atop a rostrum, screaming German-sounding gibberish. The show’s fans might dismiss this brazen portrayal as harmless, predictable to Cartman’s well-known love of authoritarianism.43 However, the decision to produce this skit is a bit more complicated. South Park’s third-­generation post-Holocaust (Jewish) creators certainly knew what Hitlerism denoted. The same is true for the show’s target audience. Developing a scenario that lionizes Hitler and his regime’s genocide—an admiration they located within a fourth-generation character—thus presents more accurately as post-mockery than post-memory (Fig. 5.1).

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Fig. 5.1  Eric Cartman, Nazi Costume. (Note: This image locates third-generation Nazi/ Holocaust post-mockery within a fourth-­ generation character)

“Major Boobage” (2008) models this same impulse with its Anne Frank parody, as cats replace Jews as the social outcasts. During the episode, when authorities arrive at Cartman’s home searching for felines, the antisemitic youngster takes on a Miep Gies savior role, frustrating the officers’ search. However, such professed displays of concern are merely a predicate to Holocaust humor. After it was safe, as plangent, minor-mode background music crescendos, Cartman climbs a staircase to his attic. He is hiding a cat. He tells the animal about the danger and explains the need for him to remain cloistered. Before leaving, he slips the animal a book, instructing, “Here, write a diary.” (Fig. 5.2).44 Notably, “Dear Kitty” was how the real-life Anne often began her diary entries. South Park’s third-generation creative team might have included this nod as something of an homage, potentially opening a gateway to responsible Holocaust comedy. For this to be the case, however, audiences must possess ready familiarity with Anne Frank and Holocaust history.45 While this is arguably the case for the episode’s American viewership, I am less sanguine about the knowledge’s proper transfer to global audiences that might not perceive the nuanced Americanized irreverence.46 Absent such sophistication, South Park’s representation presents as a baser deconstruction that equates Anne’s memory—and the millions more victims that she represents—to nothing more than a stray cat. Such vulgarity toward Anne Frank’s legacy is popular on American television sitcoms, and around the world.47 It embodies aspects of the commemorative process that Alvin Rosenfeld terms finding the “Anne Frank

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Fig. 5.2  Cartman and his “Anne Frank” kitty. (Note: This image reveals potential risks associated with transferring American Holocaust humor into global contexts)

we remember versus the Anne Frank that we forget.”48 The Claymation series Robot Chicken (2005–present) re-memorializes her in “Toy Meets Girl” (2005). Their rendition finds Anne happy to live in an annex behind her father’s business. “Luckily,” she confides to her diary, “everything I want is right here.”49 As her inner monologue continues, the camera pans across a bourgeois-appearing room to reveal her companion, Peter Van Dann, reading from a scroll that might index a torah. When the Nazis arrive, Anne is ferocious. Equipped with a full complement of Home Alone (1990) traps—a swinging paint can and slippery ice puddles—she single-­ handedly stymies a collection of Storm Troopers. Robot Chicken writers close their fantasy with Anne and Peter, clad in modern couture, embracing atop an Amsterdam river crossing. “You’re really something, Anne Frank,” Peter declares, overemphasizing her name for effect. “I’m just me,” she replies, tossing back her hair and flirtatiously curving her leg.50 This pop culture trope does not victim mock. Indeed, the Robot Chicken imagining empowers Anne—just as Alexsandro Palombo does—permitting her to elude capture and continue living a privileged teenaged life. However, this Americanized cleansing of her factual pain, loss, and destruction marks its irresponsibility. Viewers watching this skit, mostly all of whom are youthful and non-Jewish, might easily form the mistaken impression that during World War II Anne Frank lived in a studio

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apartment with her boyfriend. While Nazism posed her (and by extension other Jews) an inconvenience, it was not a mortal threat, and one that she handily dispatched in any event. Such post-memory subverts truth, rather than supporting it, encapsulating some aspect of Lawrence Langer’s observation that Anne Frank would be “appalled” at the postwar misuses of her life/writings.51 In a similar fashion, Family Guy (1999–present) also produced a dissident Anne Frank skit. “If I’m Dyin’, I’m Lyin’” (2000) features a black-­ and-­white scene depicting the show’s patriarch, Peter Griffin, seated in an attic. He sits off to the side, looking at a group of people drawn as observant Jews. In the center, a girl with braided hair clutches a book marked “Diary.”52 After setting up the joke’s premise, its punch line arrives via three successive frames. First, viewers witness Nazis storming into the house. Next, the camera slowly pans upward to reveal those hiding in the attic. It is at the dramatic zenith that Family Guy writers unveil their final image: Peter munching on a large bag of potato chips. As the vulnerable Jews stare upon their attic interloper with horror, his countenance is entirely blank. He continues to snack.53 The scene’s implied message, which is scornful, reveals that Peter either does not recognize, or care, that his nibbling will expose the Jews’ hideaway, a result that connotes their likely deaths. Such indifference captures the precarious state of present-day American Holocaust memorialization. The boorish and ignorant Peter Griffin character, and those viewers that identify with him, are incapable of responsible remembrance. They profess not knowing much about this past, and care less to learn. It is, however, the series’ eagerness to lambaste the very commemoration that they flout that captures the core difference between second- and third-generation sitcom humoring. “Candy, Quahog, Marshmallow” (2016) best displays this destructive impulse. Its action locates a skit in a postwar German movie studio. A film director cheerfully hands his assistant a piece of paper with a list of names written on it. Director: Now that World War II is over, we can get back to writing comedies! Get me these comedy writers! Assistant: They won’t be available. Director: What?! This is so crazy. Get me my agent! Assistant: Sorry. He isn’t available either. Director: What happened? Oh, yeah. I remember.54

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Of course, the quip’s motive is that Jews overpopulate the entertainment industry, and, post-Holocaust, the talent market is thin. These sorts of antisemitic cracks are common to Family Guy episodes, confirming that its Holocaust comedy is far more mean-spirited than meaningful. A dialogue from “Trump Guy” (2019) indicates that the series’ writers contemplate their bigotry. Arguing with Peter about whose reckless public speech damages civic society more, the President Trump figure assails, “Many children have learned their favorite Jewish, black, and gay jokes by watching your show.”55 Peter’s response is telling, pleading, “In fairness, we’ve been trying to phase out the gay stuff.”56 Such a rejoinder implies that the show’s producers have (similarly) reviewed  their frequent Holocaust and antisemitic joking, but sanctioned it as acceptable. In contrast, The Simpsons (1989 –present), the longest running American sitcom, employs far greater restraint in its Nazi/Holocaust humoring. Perhaps reflecting its haute Harvard Lampoon pedigree, the series’ writers tread lightly while appropriating this past.57 Early episodes spoof Adolf Hitler, not his genocide, as “Simpson and Delilah” (1990) demonstrates. A scene depicts the family assembled in their living room, watching a television quiz show. The host asks the contestants to identify North Dakota’s capital city. At the exact moment that his sisters-in-law correctly state, “Bismarck,” Homer blurts out “Hitler!”58 Such a ruse achieves Hitler-themed comedy without saying anything provocative. The joking simply confirms that fifty-plus years after World War II, snickering at the Third Reich remains a familiar American behavior.59 “Burger Kings” (2021) models this same technique. Part of the show’s plot found the town’s curmudgeonly patriarch, Mr. Burns, lamenting his unpopularity to his assistant, Smithers. “I’m a hero!” he exclaimed, reminding that his new plant-based hamburger could improve consumers’ health, “just like that guy who landed the plane safely.” Slightly puzzled, Smithers inquired, “Sully Sullenberger?” referencing the American pilot celebrated for his valor in the motion picture Miracle on the Hudson (2016). “No, no, no,” Burns hastily replies as the show’s wit veers toward a Nazi-themed joke, “Rudolf Hess!”60 As with Seinfeld writers’ noting that the “Soup Nazi” fled to Argentina, this comedy strikes a responsible stance in the sense that the humor recalls and promotes historical truth. Unenlightened audience members intrigued by the dialogue’s redirection might investigate who Rudolf Hess was, and why the cold-hearted Mr. Burns lauded his exploits. The result is Nazi-­ inspired levity clearing a pathway to fresh remembrance. However, owing

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to The Simpsons’ longevity, as norms governing this sort of comedic intersections have coarsened, the show’s writers sometimes also sharpen their Holocaust satires. An example appears in “The Spy Who Learned Me” (2012).61 The episode reworks Morgan Spurlock’s Super-Size Me (2004) documentary, chronicling the negative health effects associated with eating fast food. In his own muckraking film, Do You Want LIES with That?, The Simpsons’ Declan Desmond character trains his camera on Springfield’s sordid Krusty Burger chain. The unexpected opening to Holocaust humor occurs when Desmond completes the Academy Award submission form for his documentary. The only two possible genre boxes listed on his application are “Holocaust” and “non-Holocaust.” While ample evidence supports the joke’s underlying premise, the decision to riff on the “Jews control Hollywood” trope places this Simpsons quip in line with baser Family Guy humor.62 Popular British sitcoms also poke fun at this flourishing commerce. The shared comicality indicates the pervasiveness of Holocaust-themed cultural discourses in both nations. It further confirms that contemporary UK citizens possess greater sophistication about this history’s memorialization than during prior generations. Take, for example, a 2005 Extras (2005–2007) episode, starring Kate Winslet portraying a World War II– era nun who saved endangered Jews.63 During a filming break, still wearing her habit costume, she speaks off-stage with fellow cast members. One assures her, “I think you doing this is so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust.”64 Unexpectedly, Winslet replies, “Thank god, I am not doing it for that. I don’t think we really need another Holocaust film. How may have there been? We get it. It was grim. Move on.”65 While her colleagues stare at her, their mouths agape, Winslet shares her true motives. “No. I am doing it because I have noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust you are guaranteed an Oscar.” […] “That’s why I am doing it. Schindler’s-bloody-List. The Pianist. Oscars, coming out their ass.”66 Such dialogue exemplifies how calls to “never forget” can elicit “stop reminding” retorts. Current-day learners, indeed, representing the fifth post-Holocaust generation, do not want to see black-and-white media depicting corpse piles of unknown bygone victims. Grainy shots of random gas chambers and crematorium cannot easily entice someone born in 2005, and raised in a prospering western democracy, to contemplate this past. Instead, alternative depictions, in line with sitcoms joking, provide these potential new learners more inviting portrayals. Paradoxically, in line

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with my calls to sponsor irreverent Holocaust remembrance, permitting new viewers to establish emotional space from these traumas can draw them closer to the lessons. No history can insist upon its relevance. Ensuring continued constructive Holocaust consciousness, and responsible memorialization, requires contemporary stewards to seek out fresh ways of ensuring that future generations will agree to learn and remember this era on their own accord.

Notes 1. Terrence Des Pres, Writing into the World (New York: Viking, 1991), 277–286. 2. Russell Heddendorf, From Faith to Fun: The Secularisation of Humour (Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press, 2009), xv. 3. Rudolph Herzog, Dead Funny: Telling Jokes in Hitler’s Germany trans. Jefferson Chase (New York: Melville House, 2011), 183, 213. 4. Ruth Wisse, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 179. 5. Aviva Atlani, “The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst the Ruins and Beyond in Testimony, Literature and Film” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 2014). 6. James Bloom, Gravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 214. 7. Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards, “The Last Laugh?” in  Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust eds.  David Slucki, Gabriel Finder, and Avinoam Patt, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020), 318. 8. David Kaufman, Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 136–7. 9. For this phrase’s many iterations see Amy Richlin, Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 46. 10. Joost Krijnen, Holocaust Impiety in Jewish American Literature: Memory, Identity (post-) Postmodernism (Boston: Brill, 2016); Matthew Boswell, Holocaust Impiety: In Literature, Popular Music and Film (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 93–4. 11. Michael Schuldiner, “The Second-Generation Holocaust Nonsurvivor: Third-Degree Metalepsis and Creative Block in Art Spiegelman’s Maus,” in Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative, ed. Derek Parker Royal (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2011), 72.

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12. Yosefa Loshitzky, “Introduction,” in Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List, ed. Yosefa Loshitzky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 4. 13. Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004). 14. Phillip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (New York: Random House, 1969), 75. 15. Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 106. 16. Jeffrey Demsky and Liat Steir-Livny, “Signaling Positions of Intimacy and Distance toward Holocaust Memory on American and Israeli Situational Comedies,” in The Languages of Humor: Verbal, Visual and Physical Humor ed. Arie Sover (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 70. 17. Hilene Flanzbaum, “But Wasn’t It Terrific? A Defense of Liking Life is Beautiful,” Yale Journal of Criticism 14, no.1 (2001): 273–286. 18. John Morreall, Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 119. 19. Jeffrey Shandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 259. 20. Liat Steir-Livny, “Holocaust Humor, Satire, and Parody on Israeli Television,” Jewish Film and New Media 3, no. 2 (2015): 212. 21. Jarrod Tanny, “Decoding Seinfeld’s Jewishness,” in A Club of Their Own: Jewish Humorists and the Contemporary World eds., Eli Lederhendler and Gabriel Finder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 53. 22. Jon Stratton, “Seinfeld is a Jewish Sitcom, Isn’t It?,” in Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain: Revisiting Television’s Greatest Sitcom, ed. David Lavery (New York: Continuum, 2006), 117–36. 23. Adrian Daub, “Hannah, Can You Hear Me? Chaplin’s Great Dictator, “Schtonk,” and the Vicissitudes of Voice,” Criticism, 51, no. 3 (2009): 452. 24. Seinfeld, Season 7 Episode 6, “The Soup Nazi,” Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, November 2, 1995, NBC. 25. Vincent Brook, “Y’all Killed Him, We Didn’t!”: Jewish Self-Hatred and the Larry Sanders Show,” in You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture ed. Vincent Brook (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 303. 26. Seinfeld, “Soup.” 27. Ibid. 28. Evan Cooper, “I’m a Little Scared of Elaine: Representations of Jewish and Gentile Women on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Studies in American Humor 3, no. 27 (2013): 100, 107. 29. Seinfeld, “Soup.” 30. Seinfeld, Season 5 Episode 18, “The Raincoats,” Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, April 28, 1994, NBC. 31. Seinfeld, “Raincoats.”

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32. Sara Horowitz, “But Is It Good for the Jews? Spielberg’s Schindler and the Aesthetics of Atrocity,” in Spielberg’s, ed. Loshitzky, 125. 33. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 4 Episode 9, “The Survivor,” Larry David, March 7, 2004, HBO. 34. David Lazar, Occasional Desire: Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), 82. 35. Curb Your Enthusiasm, “Survivor.” 36. As quoted in Andy Egan, “There’s Something Funny about Comedy: A Case Study in Faultless Disagreement,” Erkenntnis 79, no. 1 (2014): 73. 37. Benjamin Wright, “Why Would You Do That, Larry?”: Identity Formation and Humor in Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Journal of Popular Culture 44, no. 3 (2011): 662. 38. Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Digital Anti-Semitism: From Irony to Ideology,” Jewish Review of Books 36 (2019): 16. 39. Gavriel Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past Is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 342. 40. Robert Samuels, “Freud Goes to South Park: Prejudices and Equal Opportunity Hatred,” in Taking South Park Seriously ed. Jeffrey Weinstock (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 103. 41. David Koepsell, “They Satirized My Prophet…Those Bastards! South Park and Blasphemy” in South Park  and Philosophy ed. Robert Arp (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 131. 42. South Park, Season 1 Episode 7, “Pinkeye,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, October 29, 1997, Comedy Central. 43. Mark White, “Respect My Authorita! Is Cartman “The Law,” and Even If He Is, Why Should We Obey Him?,” in South, ed. Arp, 67. 44. South Park, Season 12 Episode 3, “Major Boobage,” Trey Parker, March 26, 2008, Comedy Central. 45. Edward Portnoy “Anne Frank on Crank: Comic Anxieties,” in Anne Frank, Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory, eds. Barbara Kirshenblatt-­ Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012), 314. 46. Jeffrey Demsky, “Searching for Humor in Dehumanization: American Situational Comedies, the Internet, and the Globalization of Holocaust Parodies,” in Analyzing Language & Humor in Online Discourse ed. Rotimi Taiwo (Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing, 2016), 11. 47. Liat Steir-Livny, “The Image of Anne Frank: From Universal Hero to Comic Figure,” in Laughter, eds., Slucki, Finder, and Patt, 200–03. 48. Alvin Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 140.

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49. Robot Chicken, Season 1 Episode 11, “Toy Meets Girl,” Matthew Senreich, May 1, 2005, Cartoon Network. 50. Portnoy “Anne,” in Anne, eds. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Shandler, 316. 51. Lawrence Langer, “The Uses and Misuses of a Young Girl’s Diary,” in Anne Frank: Reflections on Her Life and Legacy eds. Hyman Aaron Enzer and Sandra Solotaroff-Enzer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 203–5. 52. Family Guy, Season 2 Episode 9, “If I’m Dyin’ I’m Lyin’,” Seth MacFarlane, April 4, 2000, Fox. 53. Portnoy “Anne,” in Anne, eds. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Shandler, 317. 54. Family Guy, Season 14 Episode 10, “Candy, Quahog Marshmallow,” Seth MacFarlane, January 3, 2016, Fox. 55. Family Guy, Season 17 Episode 11, “Trump Guy,” Seth MacFarlane, January 13, 2019, Fox. 56. Ibid. 57. Edward Fink, “Writing The Simpsons: A Case Study of Comic Theory,” Journal of Film and Video 65, No. 1–2 (2013): 45. 58. The Simpsons, Season 2 Episode 2, “Simpson and Delilah,” Matt Groening, October 18, 1990, Fox. 59. Amanda Brian, “The Strange Afterlife of Adolf Hitler in American Popular Culture,” The Journal of Popular Culture 53. no. 2 (2020): 363–83. 60. The Simpsons, Season 32 Episode 18, “Burger Kings,” Matt Groening, April 11, 2021, Fox. 61. The Simpsons, Season 23 Episode 20, “The Spy Who Learned Me,” Matt Groening, May 6, 2012, Fox. 62. Harold Brackman, “The Attack on “Jewish Hollywood”: A Chapter in the History of Modern American Anti-Semitism,” Modern Judaism 20, no. 1 (2000): 5. 63. Extras, Season 1 Episode 3, “Kate Winslet,” Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, October 9, 2015, BBC Two. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. Emphasis original. 66. Ibid.

CHAPTER 6

Irreverent Instruction: Considering New Approaches in Twenty-First-Century European and American Holocaust Education Abstract  Demsky recommends that American and western European educators retool their Holocaust curriculum and delivery methods. Observing that increasing numbers of “Generation Z” students lack meaningful connections to this past, he argues that assigning more relatable—if less historically faithful—materials can rejuvenate students’ interest. Demsky presents a bifurcated analysis that separately examines American and western European goings-on. He presents numerous examples taken from contemporary literature, film, and television that demonstrate how teachers can repurpose traditional Holocaust lessons by adapting them to the modern representations. In addition to integrating new learning materials, Demsky argues that educators should shift the focus of Holocaust lessons away from eliciting students’ empathy toward more critical analyses that interrogate producers’ intent when depicting this past. Keywords  Holocaust • Education • Generation Z • Post-memory In May 2014, a Holocaust miseducation scandal emerged in Rialto, California. Newspaper reporters broke a story describing an essay assignment for the community’s eighth graders. Its prompt was provocative: “Explain whether or not you believe the Holocaust was an actual event in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_6

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history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and secure financial gain.”1 Several dozen students argued that the Holocaust was a ploy. Since this assessment was the capstone assignment to the district’s Anne Frank teaching unit, onlookers puzzled as to what had happened. I was one of them. The Rialto public school district is located a dozen miles away from my college’s campus. Recognizing that some of these same misguided pupils might eventually register in my Comparative Genocide class, I asked the district’s administration to assist their faculty in reteaching the lessons. Although I did not know it at the time, this collaboration spurred my current thinking about irreverent remembrance. Rialto’s faculty did not intend to debase Holocaust education. Their stumbles reflect an emerging twenty-first-century reality. Canons like Diary of a Young Girl (1952), a text requiring readers’ “imaginative Holocaust role taking […] seeing the world through another’s eyes,” are less effective than they used to be.2 Modern learners are not apathetic; nor has the history lost its relevance. Instead, “Generation Z” students—distinctive from earlier cohorts—lack meaningful connections to this past.3 The Nuremberg liberator narrative, a trope tied to related western Cold War claims about defending human rights against Soviet totalitarianism, means little to them. Added to this, in increasingly diverse American and European classrooms, non-white youth resent perceived hegemonic Holocaust remembrance muting discussion of their own community’s victimhood. At the other end of the spectrum, equally challenging for educators, are students poised and ready to “suffer.” Western culture, with its emphasis on the production of emotional entertainment, enables these students to internalize Holocaust stories as a form of gratification. In this sense, taking the emotional “plunge” toward studying the European Jewish destruction is a self-directed effort.4 In 2013, Canadian pop music star Justin Bieber modeled this tendency. After visiting Anne Frank’s Amsterdam annex, he wrote in the museum’s guestbook, “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully, she would have been a Belieber.”5 In appropriating Anne’s celebrity to his own—“Beliebers” reference his most ardent devotees—he reveals how present-day youth can conduct Holocaust interactions that satisfy their individual feelings rather than their learning. Unfortunately, while working with Rialto’s staff, I underappreciated that empathetic-focused Holocaust teaching does not convey wisdom.6 Indeed, my recommendation for moving the district past their Anne Frank

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essay mistake involved assigning Night, another empathy-arousing text. In predictable ways, this resolution “worked.” By mid-December, the same newspaper that broke the news about the miseducation stumble published a new article: “Rialto Unified Teachers on Second Holocaust Assignment: There Wasn’t a Dry Eye in the Room.”7 The accompanying story chronicled the once ill-informed teenagers sharing emotional Holocaust-themed essays. “There were several times we had to pass the tissues around,” one educator commented. “They [students] came out better for it on the other end,” another agreed.8 Such gains, however, proved short-lived. The next year, school administrators removed the eighth-grade Anne Frank unit from its mandatory curriculum. A door to Holocaust education closed, in part because teaching about Anne Frank had inspired more political peril then intellectual profit. This regrettable outcome led me to revisit my advice. Specifically, I pondered if recommending a more daring curriculum—less historically faithful but more relatable—would have rejuvenated the Holocaust’s lessons. I think it would have. For example, set against the backdrop of New York’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood, the novel/film Anne B. Real (2003) transposes Anne Frank’s words into an Afro-Latinx protagonist named Cynthia Gimenez.9 Cloistered in her apartment because of gang violence, Cynthia finds in Anne’s entries a muse for penning rap poems about her own vulnerabilities. Rialto’s students, hailing from a hardscrabble community with an overwhelmingly Latinx/Chicanx population, likely would have found this Holocaust-themed trope more relevant than stories about European Jews hiding in an Amsterdam annex. Anne B. Real’s fictitiousness does not supplant Anne Frank’s factuality. Instead, the repurposing modernizes her story. Western European educators must also begin thinking about these techniques. Nicholas Kinloch instructs Holocaust curriculum in England. He characterizes as “doomed to failure” educators’ expectations that contemporary students care about this topic.10 Such lessons’ relevance are “no more obvious or understandable to contemporary teenagers than they were to those who lived the history.”11 For English and other European educators, just as in Rialto, California, I recommend adopting an “irreverent instruction” method. This is an approach to pedagogy that permits a certain degree of waywardness toward historical exactness, a trade-off made to entice contemporary students to study these difficult lessons. For example, assigning Irish writer John Boyne’s popular novel Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006) can open franker conversations.12 Supplemented

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by factual evidence, readers will hopefully grieve Bruno’s and Shmuel’s death as a surrogate form of mourning for the actual victims.13 Having students screen the film V for Vendetta (2005), set in contemporary Britain and indexing issues related to historical fascism, can similarly open a path to  constructive Holocaust lessons. Australian academic Grant Rodwell prefers teaching this history via fiction. He observes that the method offers more compelling characters, providing “meaning for students who […] struggle to feel any connection to […] textbook facts and figures.”14 Historical fiction also provides a more sophisticated understanding of characters’ agency, reminding readers that their own day-to-day actions matter.15 Sanctioning fictionalized narratives to teach factual Holocaust lessons may well embody the “farce” that Karl Marx observed eventually debases all tragedies.16 However, the alternative to such indulgences is possible Holocaust forgetting, as twenty-first-century learners elect to abandon this troublesome inheritance.

Irreverent Instruction for Twenty-First-Century European Students In July 2011, Norwegian Anders Breivik killed seventy-seven people during a day-long murder spree. His homicidal activities targeted perceived agents of an “Islamic colonization” of Western Europe.17 Notably, while Nazi-like in his calls for killing racial “others,” Breivik is not rabidly antisemitic. He distinguishes between [Jewish] “cultural Marxists and ­ multiculturalists,” whom he despises, and Israelis whom he admires.18 Breivik hates the former group because of their perceived efforts to supplant Christian nationalism with a “civil religion” drawn from humanistic Holocaust memorialization.19 Israelis, at least in his judgment, buck this trend. They maintain a healthy nationalist bent, if not Christian-based, all-the-while battling the same Muslims that Breivik despises. Admittedly, Anders Breivik is a fringe and flawed figure. I note his activities mostly because they provide a thematic bridge to analyzing challenges and opportunities in European Holocaust education. Seventy-five years after the Nuremberg narrative endeavored to close racialized nationalist tropes, Breivik’s hatreds—even trained upon Muslims rather than Jews— confirms their persistence. Tied to this reality is a wider learning that teaching about the Holocaust does not automatically stimulate greater social tolerance. At the time of his attacks and continuing today, Norway

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supports a robust Holocaust curriculum. Indeed, Breivik rages against this commitment, characterizing the pedagogy as an effort to “brainwash […] white European youth into pacifist eunuchs.”20 If guttural, Breivik’s criticism engages scholarly debates, especially complementing what Jan Selling terms, “The Europeanization of culture and identity, where Holocaust awareness is seen as a founding myth for the post-Cold War community.”21 Following American patterns, many Western European educators employ Holocaust history to teach universal lessons about “human morality and equity […] building societies based on shared democratic values.”22 Such pan-European connectivity is why I have widened this chapter’s focus beyond my US/UK framework. Additionally, implementing Holocaust curriculum proved controversial in the UK, where only England mandates its instruction.23 Returning to Norway, their educators focus on traditional empathy-based instruction, but with innovative enhancements. Approximately one quarter of Norwegian tenth graders travel with their schoolmates and teachers to Poland and visit the Nazis’ extermination camps. As Kyrre Kverndokk explains: The process is strictly and ritually scripted. The youngsters are highly aware that they should internalize a certain set of moral universals and that they should experience the camps in fairly specific emotional ways.24

Students chronicle their experiences in journals. Fifteen-year-old Hilde’s entries are especially instructive. “I believe that this trip is important to us […] we need to hear these things!”25 Others agreed. “We know it is true. We learn and saw what happened […] we are really sorry.”26 Such willingness to accept this burden reflects the power of carefully curated representation. However, just as with sanitized American and British Nuremberg liberator narratives, Norwegian educators foreground the Nazis’ misdeeds while diminishing localized discussions of Quislingism and the Norwegians’ near-complete deportation of its small Jewish community.27 Educators in neighboring Sweden follow suit. In 1997, Stockholm University researchers discovered that a third of Swedish youths were uncertain that the Holocaust occurred.28 The next year, the Swedish government initiated its Living History Forum, dedicated to growing pupils’ Holocaust consciousness.29 Notably, Swedes primarily commemorate their amnesty offers to Danish Jews as well as their “white buses” campaign.30 Their memorializing downplays the intricate (and

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profitable) Swedish–Nazi wartime relationship, which included welcoming Nazi guidance on policing, arresting, and placing alleged Swedish communists into concentration camps.31 Not all Western European nations, however, can loosen this past’s grasp on their present. Take for example the German experience. Holocaust education is mandatory for all German students. Paradoxically, this strong commitment fuels certain resentments. As Thomas Lutz explains, westernized Holocaust remembrance, celebrating US/UK liberators, requires German youth to acknowledge their forefather’s infamy.32 However, as he reminds, “Kids want to be proud of something […] and need to identify with something.”33 For pockets of learners, embracing white nationalism facilitates this positive reconnection.34 Current events have hastened the trend. In 2015–2016, Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps leading the German present through a lens of the Nazi past, authorized entry for more than one million non-white Muslim asylum-seekers.35 Those youthful Germans aware of Hitler’s dogmas, and perhaps also familiar with figures like Anders Breivik (who maintains an active Internet presence), interpreted this Muslim immigration spike as a contemporary resurrection of the same impulses that once drove the “Jewish Question.” Notably, while they are as reviled as Jews once were, German Muslims join with their neo-Nazi tormentors in scorning Holocaust education. “It is always about the Jews!” one Muslim student exclaimed, “No one cares about them.”36 A German educator confirms such attitudes’ prevalence in their classroom, confiding, “Emotional (as well as cognitive) challenges […] prevents Muslims from having empathy towards Jews.”37 Muslims also wonder if they might be similarly vulnerable. A concentration camp tour guide recalled: I had a feeling that they [Turkish and Arab–Germans] were different from other visitors […] they come out of the camp anxious and afraid. I do not like it at all when they do that, and I do not even want to take them there.38

German educators similarly report hearing this dread during classrooms conversations. Students ask their teachers: “Would Germans do such a thing to us as well […] will we find ourselves in the same position as the Jews?”39 This fraught atmosphere, however, presents an opportunity for irreverent instruction. In 2008, a German motion picture studio remade the

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anti-totalitarian American film, The Wave. Released several years before the 2015 Muslim influx, the film does not explicitly confront the relationship between totalitarianism and racial othering. However, multi-ethnic German learners can take from this story a path to candid conversations about how they must negotiate the residue of the Nazi past in their own lives. Instructors could couple such lessons with more recent Heimat television episodes investigating the racialized underbelly of German identity politics. Such approaches might help both native-born and immigrant German students recognize the similarities—and the nuance—in national attitudes toward non-white otherness. If not exclusively a Holocaust lesson, this pedagogy might provide a surrogate form of related instruction, especially valuable in Muslim-majority classrooms. Dutch educators grapple with similar issues. Beginning during the 1970s, some thirty thousand Surinamese Muslims relocated to the Netherlands.40 As former colonial subjects, their arrival was not especially disruptive. However, this soon changed. By 1999, approximately seven hundred thousand Muslims—Iranian, Iraqi, Somalian, and Afghani— called the Netherlands home. A decade later, that number rose to slightly under one million people.41 Such sharp demographic changes stirred hosts of sociocultural challenges, specifically jolting Dutch Holocaust education. Of course, the Netherlands has an original claim to this history’s memorialization, specifically its media publishing Anne Frank’s diary shortly after World War II.  Such initial awareness spurred a wider sustained trend. Unlike in most Western European countries, as Ido de Hann explains, “Between 1945 and the 1970s the Holocaust was more present in Dutch collective memory.”42 However, this consciousness is no longer as sharp. Distancing is especially visible in multicultural Dutch classrooms. “The teacher says Holocaust, the (Muslim) pupils say it’s all bullshit,” one educator testified during a 2015 government roundtable discussion.43 Similar to goings-on in Germany, many Dutch Muslim students, steeped in antisemitic traditions, practice victim blaming. “It’s always the Jews’ fault […] Jews don’t belong.”44 In April 2010, the popular weekly Elsevier reported the results of a survey that asked more than three hundred Dutch history teachers about their Holocaust pedagogy experiences. “One in five educators […] experienced being prevented or nearly prevented from broaching the subject by their Muslim students ….”45 This reticence spurns not just Holocaust awareness, but more broadly weakens the liberal, postwar

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pan-­European identity that formed around collective rejections of racial nationalism.46 As in Germany, Dutch Muslims’ snubbing of this memorialization places them in odd accord with the nation’s white supremacists. The world of Dutch football racism provides a glimpse of this pairing. The hate chant, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas,” first echoed from Dutch football stadium bleachers during the mid-1990s.47 However, in April 2002, an estimated thirty thousand Turkish and Moroccan youth exhorted the slogan during an anti-Israel demonstration in Amsterdam’s city center.48 These and other related antisemitic sentiments persist in Dutch football sloganeering. In 2015, hooligans chanted “Wegaan op jodenjacht” [Let’s hunt the Jews] and “Doodaan de Joden” [Death to the Jews] at East Amsterdam Ajax football club matches.49 This coarse public language alerts onlookers to the fact that what was once a society where respectful Anne Frank-­ inspired memorialization thrived now welcomes open contest from native-­ born and immigrant Dutch citizens alike (Fig. 6.1). This trend is potentially reversible. Employing more brazen Holocaust education techniques is a first step. Especially among Dutch Muslim students, educators might counterpose Dutch artist Theo van Gogh’s equally damning comic portrayals of Jews and Muslims. The mid-1980s found him publishing Holocaust mockery cartoons about diabetic Jews producing enticing caramel aromas while “melting” in gas chambers.50 A decade later, however, van Gogh retrained his fire against Muslims, blaspheming the Koran, a step that precipitated his 2004 assassination.51 This compare and contrast method opens a gateway to learning among reluctant participants. Dutch teachers might ask their Muslim pupils to  explain why an Arab European League cartoon like Hitler Goes Dutroux, depicting Adolf Hitler in bed with Anne Frank is funny, but jokes labeling Muslims as “goat fornicators” is cause to vigilantism.52 Such lessons permit students Fig. 6.1  “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas” T-shirt. (Note: Familiar Dutch slogan conveying Holocaust post-mockery)

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to reject traditional empathetic education, but requires instead that they take up harder critical thinking processes. Avoidant post-witnesses may recognize in the stories of pre-Holocaust Jewish persecutions in Western Europe context for understanding their own current struggles. This learning is admittedly base level, but its real-world potential to teach how genocides can emerge nods toward Holocaust Studies’ greatest potential.

Irreverent Instruction for Twenty-First-Century American Students Even before the USHMM opened, officials in eight states, spanning California to New York, authorized some sort of Holocaust, genocide, or human rights curriculum.53 During the 1990s and 2000s, dozens more followed suit. Lawmakers in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and Rhode Island constituted Holocaust and Genocide education commissions.54 Legislators in Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois went further, mandating its classroom instruction.55 Thomas Fallace characterizes this enthusiasm “Holocaustomania,” an end-of-the-century surge in domestic awareness levels.56 The trend proved somewhat controversial. Related calls subsequently emerged for remembering the Armenian and Cambodian genocides, African Diaspora, Native Americans’ destruction, and even the Irish Potato Famine.57 Vocal instances of pushback cropped up, notably when African American learners in Oakland, CA, laughed and jeered during a Schindler’s List screening.58 Such outbursts are instructive. Director Steven Spielberg posited, “This is a story about tolerance and remembrance for everyone […] it represents racial hatred everywhere ….”59 However, Oakland pupils—shown the film on Martin Luther King Jr. Day—rebuffed his  claim. Their  aversion reminds onlookers that empathy-driven Holocaust stories are not a one-­ size-­fits-all product. Instead, such resistance is a call to adopt “trauma informed pedagogy,” an approach that invites learners to filter historical lessons through lenses of their own sorrows.60 “My man got busted in the head just like that last year,” one Oakland student vocalized, after a scene depicted a bullet exploding a young Jewish woman’s head.61 Witnesses estimate that about two dozen students subsequently laughed.62 Such apparent callousness does not necessarily evidence antisemitism. Rather, the  snickering perhaps helped these students as a coping mechanism to deal with omnipresent violence in their own lives. Contemporary educators should take note. Teaching the Holocaust to modern American

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learners, especially those disconnected to the history by both time and circumstance, requires that educators fashion delivery techniques that accommodate multiple heritages of pain. For example, counterposing film screenings of Schindler’s List (1993) with Amistad (1997), or television miniseries episodes from Roots (1977) with The Holocaust (1978), welcomes critical-thinking discussions about how Americanized memorializing of suffering facilitates corporate profiteering.63 Deconstructing Quentin Tarantino’s films Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) offers similar opportunities for unorthodox but meaningful learning. The films resemble each other in certain obvious ways. Its leading characters display frequent malice and moral ambiguity when confronting issues of race and racism.64 Both scripts achieve bold historical revisionism, Django depicts slaves killing their owners, just as Jews ostensibly did to Hitler in Inglourious. That these endings are fantasy does not entirely matter. Contemporary viewers might enjoy the adjusted storylines precisely because they offer momentary escape from difficult truths.65 Comparing Holocaust and slavery sitcom humor is another path to unorthodox learning. During its broadcast, Chappelle’s Show (2003–2006) often employed humor to probe the intersections of race, history, and memorialization. The episode “Mandela Boot Camp & Time Haters” (2004) includes both a slavery and Holocaust skit. The “Time Haters” were a foursome of non-white males that visited bygone eras to remedy racial injustices.66 In the slavery scenario, they reappeared in the antebellum South, sauntering down a plantation’s dirt road. Tension builds when an actor portraying the white overseer confronts and insults the group, cracking his whip. Chappelle’s Show writers, a decade before Django’s release, instead reaching back to The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972), drew a murder  plot.67 After informing the overseer that they were free men, lead “Hater” and show star, Dave Chappelle, calls the white actor a “cracker” and assassinates him at close range with a pistol.68 Costumed in brassy modern couture, he then emancipates the plantation’s remaining slaves, fulfilling the skit’s revisionist history and providing new conversation opportunities about who did what to whom.69 Later in the same episode, in a Holocaust-themed segment, the “Haters” again plied this sensationalized pedagogical device. “Hitler, fuck you!” one of the men shouted as the other three assaulted a swastika-­ adorned character resembling the Nazi dictator.70 Notably, the script does

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not specifically indicate to viewers why the group had visited wartime Germany to deliver vengeance upon this figure. Such silences are opportunities to build learning among youthful viewers. Having pupils identify and research the skit’s villain invariably leads to discoveries about Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. David Lindquist terms this sort of fact-based gathering “lower-order” skill building, but educators must meet their students where they are, not where we want them to be.71 Perhaps, the most intellectual sitcom treatment of shared Jewish/African American struggles with Nazism and racism is Key and Peele’s (2012–2015) “Episode #1.3 (2012).72 Its script stations the two African American comedians living in Nazi Germany. An SS officer rings their house’s doorbell. He informs them of his business, he is searching for, “two Negros hiding out […] you wouldn’t happen to know anything about this. Would you?”73 At this point in the action, the camera’s perspective, previously trained on the Nazi character, reverses to show Key and Peele, standing in their foyer wearing poorly applied whiteface. The “whiting up” technique indexes a variation of minstrelsy similarly pursued for social subversions and laughs.74 “Ahh … no!” Key awkwardly exclaims in response to the Nazi’s question. “Negros?” Peele chimes in, “Eww!”75 The SS officer appears convinced, but reminds, “The Negro, not unlike the Jew, can be a very tricky creature.”76 He subjects the duo to an absurd interrogation— which they easily navigate—before relenting. The joking sources its humor from subverting traditions of Christian white racism, especially branding Jews and blacks as recognizable “others.” Key and Peele destabilize this trope by having the Nazi/Aryan figure confer whiteness onto them, exposing racial constructs as both supple and absurd.77 Just as European educators experience resistance from some  Muslim students, American teachers also encounter certain learners inherently hostile to Holocaust curriculum. Karen Spector studies Midwestern educators’ experiences. Especially among pupils hailing from pious Christian households, she notes that traditional anti-Jewish attitudes impede instruction.78 Following the unit centered on Wiesel’s Night, one teacher asked their students to explain how studying the text impacted their thinking about anti-Jewish prejudices. “It didn’t change me at all,” a teenage girl responded.79 “I wouldn’t want that for me, but they [Jews] got to expect it, killing God.”80 Another classmate agreed, similarly noting, “Jews deserved what they got because they didn’t worship God.”81 Various additional instructors reported surprise that their students held such attitudes,

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expecting, instead, that Holocaust study would promote increased tolerance of others.82 That this did not happen strikes me as a call to innovate the instruction by removing affective response from the expected learning result. Assigning non-empathy-based texts like Ruth Klüger’s Still Alive directs learners toward this end. “Dear readers,” she implores, “don’t wax sentimental.”83 Her memoirs reject, “The obvious drift […] away from the gas chambers and the killing fields toward the postwar period, where prosperity beckons.”84 This approach diverges from the “welcome narrative” tendency that I analyzed in Chap. 3’s discussion of Americanized remembrance. Tova Reich’s novel My Holocaust, an acrid critique of this technique, similarly asks its readers for little empathy, and offers them little solace.85 By purposefully disrupting students’ emotional involvement, directing them toward the harder tasks of intellectual inquiry, the result can produce more meaningful interactions with this history, in turn manufacturing sturdier involvement with its lessons. How might this pedagogy look? Perhaps, educators can formulate comparisons of a popular Holocaust narrative, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and a lesser known and taught text, Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness.86 Counterposing such works directs students’ attention toward interrogating authorial intent, and away from any potential sympathy that their stories may evoke. This practice is especially well suited to a critical reading of Fatelessness, because Kertész’s more accessible narration provides a markedly different co-witnessing function than Night. At nearly three hundred pages, Fatelessness does not compete with Night for brevity. However similar to Night, its first-person narrator is an adolescent male, the sixteen-year-old Gyuri. Also, like Night, the historical contours of the story follow Kertesz’s own biography: deportation from Hungary, transport to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, and a return to his native Budapest.87 However, this is where the comparisons end. Unlike Wiesel’s retrospective presentation, Kertesz’s narrator does not reflect on past events; rather, he is chronicling goings on as they occur, as the book’s opening line makes clear, “I didn’t go to school today.”88 From this perspective, the sixteen-year-old storyteller does not know what the reader likely already does, namely, that Gyuri’s teenaged life will work its way through a winding path toward the Holocaust.89 Fatelessness also undermines readers’ expectations for Holocaust canon. It certifies familiar aspects of Holocaust literature—roundups,

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deportation, selection, dehumanization—but their presentation is atypical since the events are observed through the filter of the narrator’s purposeful ignorance. For example, Gyuri likens the death camp selection process to a friendly competition with his buddies, to see who “makes the team.”90 He describes the atmosphere at Buchenwald as “likeable.”91 Such incongruity between Gyuri’s perceptions and concentration camp realities exasperates the reader’s expectations. However, it is precisely this incongruity that can prompt substantive classroom discussions, not only about Kertesz’s authorial intentions, but also about the contemporary nature of students’ own experiences using sarcasm and self-delusion to survive ugly situations. Fatelessness does not entirely deny emotionality. In the Zeitz sub-camp, now near death, Gyuri’s perspective finally corresponds to his Holocaust realities. However, even in these empathetic scenes, Kertész insists upon insolence. “I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp,” he declares.92 His word choice (and defiance) provides instructors a useful segue to opening discussions about how the word “beautiful,” applied to a concentration camp, reveals Gyuri’s humanistic understanding that even such a deplorable life is preferable to death.93 Kertész’s moral reminds that while humans should be vigilant against dehumanization and genocide, all humans possess the “general potential” to perpetrate it.94 This enduring lesson is the one that educators must find new ways to teach twenty-first-century learners, whether they are reluctant Dutch Muslims, African Americans living in urban centers, or Midwestern white Christians. Owing in part to the weight of its prior commercial and political celebrity, twenty-first-century Holocaust remembrance risks losing its commemorative authority. Its lessons no longer automatically present as unquestionably essential; instead they may come across as manufactured. However, educators can revive this history’s former appeal for contemporary learners by  devising creative new methods for repacking its legacy, conflating impulses of critical thinking to those of kitsch. Rather than expecting modern students to approach and internalize this past in the same grave manner as prior generations, welcoming some rebelliousness is a practical compromise. Absent this flexibility, the potential is real that twenty-first-century students will indulge in additional forgetting/denial, achieving genocide’s final stage.95

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Notes 1. Beau Yarbrough, “Holocaust Denied by Students in Rialto School Assignment,” San Bernardino Sun, July 11, 2014, http://www.sbsun. c o m / s o c i a l -­a f f a i r s / 2 0 1 4 0 7 1 1 / e x c l u s i v e -­h o l o c a u s t -­d e n i e d -­ by-­students-­in-­rialto-­school-­assignment#disqus_thread. 2. N. Ann Rider, “The Perils of Empathy: Holocaust Narratives, Cognitive Studies and the Politics of Sentiments,” Holocaust Studies 19, no. 3 (2013): 46. 3. Victoria Aarons and Alan Berger, Third-Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press), 28. 4. Martin Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47. 5. Megan Conway, “Justin Bieber on Anne Frank: Reactions from Twitter and Beyond,” Rolling Stone, April 15, 2013, https://www.rollingstone. com/music/music-­news/justin-­bieber-­on-­anne-­frank-­r eactions-­from­twitter-­and-­beyond-­183172/. 6. Karen Riley, “The Holocaust and Historical Empathy: The Politics of Understanding,” in Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies eds. O L Davis, Elizabeth Anne Yeager, and Stuart Foster (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 143. 7. Beau Yarbrough, “Rialto Unified Teachers on Second Holocaust Assignment: There Wasn’t a Dry Eye in the Room,” San Bernardino Sun, December 11, 2014, http://www.sbsun.com/social-­affairs/20141211/ rialto-­unified-­teachers-­on-­second-­holocaust-­assignment-­there-­wasnt-­a-­ dry-­eye-­in-­the-­room. 8. Ibid. 9. Sara Horowitz, “Literary Afterlives of Anne Frank,” in Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, and Memory eds. Barbara Kirschenblatt-­ Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 249–253. 10. Nicholas Kinloch, “Learning about the Holocaust: Moral or Historical Question?” Teaching History 93 (1998): 44–6. 11. Simone Schweber, Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 6. 12. Grant Rodwell, See Whose History?: Engaging History Students through Historical Fiction Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 176. 13. Elaine Culberson strongly disagrees, characterizing decisions to teach the book as the “exact opposite” ambition to which Holocaust educators should strive. See “A Reflection on the Use of Iconic Holocaust Resources,”

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in Essentials of Holocaust Education: Fundamental Issues and Approaches eds. Samuel Totten and Stephen Feinberg (New York: Routledge, 2016), 136. 14. Rodwell, Whose, 178. 15. J.  Spencer Clark, “Encounters with Historical Agency: The Value of Nonfiction Graphic Novels in the Classroom,” The History Teacher 46, no. 4 (2013): 490. 16. Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (New York: Verso, 2009), 1. 17. Barry Richards, “What Drove Anders Breivik?” Contexts 13, no. 4 (2014): 43. 18. Ahmed Hashim, “Terrorism as an Instrument of Cultural Warfare: The Meaning of Anders Breivik,” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses 3, no. 8 (2011): 3. 19. Larissa Allwork, “Holocaust Remembrance as “Civil Religion”: The Case of the Stockholm Declaration,” in Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era eds. Tanja Schult and Diana Popescu (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 288. 20. Andres Breivik, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” accessed July 19, 2019, http://www.deism.com/images/breivik-­ manifesto-­2011.pdf. 21. Jan Selling, “Between History and Politics: The Swedish Living History Project as Discursive Formation,” Scandinavian Journal of History 36, no. 5 (2011): 555. 22. Masako Shibata, “Holocaust Education in Transition: A Transnational Perspective,” in Equity in and Through Education: Changing Contexts, Consequences and Contestations eds. Stephen Carney and Michele Schweisfurth (Boston: Brill, 2018), 31–2. 23. Andy Pearce, “The Anatomy of a Relationship: The Holocaust, Genocide, and Education in Britain,” in Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings ed. Andy Pearce (London: Routledge, 2018), 53–4. 24. Kyrre Kverndokk, “Negotiating Holocaust Memory in School Trip Reports,” in Negotiating Pasts in the Nordic Countries eds. Anne Eriksen and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (Chicago: Nordic Academic Press, 2010), 267. 25. Ibid, 265. 26. Ibid., 280. 27. Irene Levin Berman, We Are Going to Pick Potatoes: Norway and the Holocaust, The Untold Story (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2010), 4–5. 28. Krisitn Wagrell, “Cosmopolitan Memory in a National Context: The Case of the ‘Living History Forum,’” in Revisiting, eds. Popescu and Schult, 272. 29. Karin Kvist Geverts, “The Challenges of Holocaust Education and Remembrance in Sweden,” in Bystanders, Rescuers, or Perpetrators?: The

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Neutral Countries and the Shoah eds. International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2016), 267. 30. John Gilmour; Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin: The Swedish Experience in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 206. 31. Michael Landzelius, ‘Homo Sacer’ out of Left Field: Communist “Slime” as Bare Life in 1930s and Second World War Sweden,” Human Geography 88, no. 4 (2006): 453, 463. 32. Lucy Russell, Teaching the Holocaust in School History: Teachers or Preachers? (New York: Continuum, 2008), 7. 33. Ibid. 34. Debora Hinderliter Ortloff, “They Think It Is Funny to Call Us Nazis: Holocaust Education and Multicultural Education in a Diverse Germany,” in As the Witnesses Fall Silent: Twenty-First Century Holocaust Education in Curriculum, Policy and Practice eds. Zehavit Gross and Doyle Stevick (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015), 216. 35. Ruth Wittlinger, “The Merkel Government’s Politics of the Past,” German Politics & Society 26, no. 4 (2008): 9. 36. Esra Ozyurek, “Rethinking Empathy: Emotions Triggered by the Holocaust among the Muslim-Minority in Germany,” Anthropological Theory 18, no. 4 (2018): 457. 37. Ibid., 458. 38. Ibid., 457. 39. Ibid., 466. 40. Jørgen Nielsen and Jonas Otterbeck, Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 67. 41. Ibid. 42. Marcus Leonardus van Berkel, “Plotlines of Victimhood: The Holocaust in German and Dutch History Textbooks, 1960–2010,” (Ph.D. thesis, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 2017), 55. 43. Jewish Telegraph Agency, “Dutch Muslim Pupils Resist Holocaust Education,” Times of Israel, March 6, 2015, https://www.timesofisrael. com/dutch-­muslim-­pupils-­resist-­holocaust-­education/. 44. Ibid. For a wider discussion of Muslims’ Jewish victim blaming, see Joseph Spoerl, “Muhammad and the Jews According to Ibn Ishaq,” The Levantine Review 2, no. 1 (2013): 94. 45. Remco Ensel and Annemarike Stremmelaar, “Speech Acts: Observing Antisemitism and Holocaust Education in the Netherlands,” in Perceptions of the Holocaust in Europe and Muslim Communities eds. Günther Jikeli and Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun (New York: Dordrecht Springer 2013), 153. 46. Dan Diner, “Memory and Restitution: World War II as a Foundational Event in a Uniting Europe,” in Restitution and Memory: Material Restitution in Europe eds. Dan Diner and Gotthart Wunberg (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 11–2.

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47. Evelien Gans, “Hamas, Hamas, All Jews to the Gas: The History and Significance of an Antisemitic Slogan in the Netherlands, 1945–2010,” in Perceptions eds. Jikeli and Allouche-Benayoun, 97. 48. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism: Common Characteristics and Motifs,” Jewish Political Studies Review 19, no. 1/2 (2007): 101. 49. Evelien Gans, “They Have Forgotten to Gas You”: Post-1945 Anti-­ Semitism in the Netherlands,” in Dutch Racism eds. Philomena Essed and Isabel Hoving (Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 2014), 72. 50. Gans, “Hamas,” 90. 51. Jytte Klausen, The Cartoons that Shook the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 18. 52. Gans, “Hamas,” 90. 53. Thomas Fallace, The Emergence of Holocaust Education in American Schools (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 104. 54. Ibid, 105. 55. Flawed teaching materials may have damaged these efforts. Scholars’ review of Holocaust curricula assigned to public school students in California, Connecticut, Virginia, and Florida reveals “rife inaccuracies.” See Samuel Totten and Karen Riley, “Understanding Matters: The Holocaust and Social Studies Classrooms,” Theory and Research in Social Education 30, no. 4 (2002): 541–62. 56. Fallace, Emergence, 93–97. See also Gary Brock and Marvin Prosono, “Holocaustism: The Emergence of a New Religious Movement,” Perspectives on Social Problems 7 (1995): 228. 57. Fallace, Emergence, 40, 106. 58. Omar Bartov, Murder in our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 170. 59. As quoted in Michael Andre Bernstein, “The Schindler’s List Effect,” The American Scholar 63, no. 3 (1994): 431. 60. Sherry Posnick-Goodwin, “Teaching through Trauma,” California Educator 24, no. 1 (2019): 43–6. 61. As quoted in Bartov, Murder, 170. 62. Donna Rosenthal, “Did Cultures Clash Over Schindler’s?” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1994, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-­ xpm-­1994-­01-­22-­ca-­14266-­story.html. 63. Laurence Thomas, “American Slavery and the Holocaust: Their Ideologies Compared,” Public Affairs Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1991): 197–8. 64. Richard Aquila, The Sagebrush Trail: Western Movies and Twentieth-­ Century America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 329–30. 65. Black filmmaker Spike Lee disagrees, noting, “All I’m going to say is that it’s disrespectful to my ancestors.” As quoted in Joi Carr, “Django

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Unchained—Disrupting Classical Hollywood Historical Realism?” Black Camera 7, no. 2 (2016): 40. 66. Glenda Carpio, “I Like the Way You Die, Boy,” Transition 112 (2013): 10–11. 67. Henry Louis Gates, “Tarantino ‘Unchained’: Django Trilogy,” in Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated ed. Gerald Peary (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 184. 68. Chappelle’s Show, season 2, episode 11, “Mandela Boot Camp & The Time Haters,” Neal Brennan, March 31, 2004, Comedy Central. 69. Kendra Bryant, “The Making of a Western-Negro-Superhero-Savior: Django’s Blue Velvet Fauntleroy,” Studies in Popular Culture 38, no. 1 (2015): 65. 70. Chappelle’s, “Mandela.” 71. David Lindquist, “Developing Holocaust Curricula: The Content Decision-Making Process,” The Clearing House 82, no. 1 (2008): 30–1. 72. Key and Peele, season 1, episode 3, “Episode #1.3,” Sean Conroy and Rebecca Drysdale, aired February 14, 2012, Comedy Central. 73. Ibid. 74. Marvin Edward McAllister, Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 182. 75. Key and Peele, “Episode.” 76. Ibid. 77. John Hartigan, “Establishing the Fact of Whiteness,” American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (1997): 497. 78. Karen Spector, “God on the Gallows: Reading the Holocaust through Narratives of Redemption,” Research in the Teaching of English 42, no. 1 (2007): 45. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 42. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., 21. 83. As quoted in Rider, “Perils,” 60. 84. Ibid. 85. Tova Reich, My Holocaust: A Novel (New York: Harper and Collins, 2007), 197. 86. Linda Raphael, “Representing the Holocaust in Literature: Diaries, Memoirs, Fateless, and Other Fiction,” Colloquia Germanica 36, no. 3/4 (2003): 231. 87. Jeffrey Demsky and N. Ann Rider, “A Complicated Curriculum: Teaching Holocaust Empathy and Distance to Non-Traditional Students,” in New

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Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures: Reading and Teaching eds. Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky (New York: SUNY Press, 2019), 251–2. 88. Imre Kertész, Fatelessness (New York: Random House, 2004), 1. 89. Demsky and Rider, “Complicated,” 251–2. 90. Rider, “Perils,” 57. Key and Peele similarly developed this idea. Positioning the African American comedians as slaves at auction, their initial anger at being sold to bidders soon yielded to anger at buyers’ lack of interest in owning them. See Key and Peele, season 1, episode 3, “Episode #1.3.” 91. Rider, “Perils,” 58. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Alexander Karn, “Toward a Philosophy of Holocaust Education: Teaching Values without Imposing Agendas,” The History Teacher 45, no. 2 (2012): 227. 95. Henry Theriault, “Denial of Ongoing Atrocities as a Rationale for Not Attempting to Prevent or Intervene,” in Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide vol. 9 ed. Samuel Totten (New York: Transaction Publisher, 2013), 48.

CHAPTER 7

That Is Really Meme: Nazi Pepe the Frog and the Subversion of Anglo-American Holocaust Remembrance Abstract  Demsky investigates Internet memes subverting contemporary Anglo-American Holocaust memorialization. Focusing on an erstwhile apolitical cartoon character named Pepe the Frog, this chapter explains how MAGA nationalists Nazified Pepe as part of a Holocaust mocking campaign. Demsky posits that Pepe’s saboteurs did not stumble onto this subject focus. Undermining Holocaust memorialization reflects a confluence of long-standing American political impulses, namely, anti-globalism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism. Pepe serves a related role in the UK. Brexit supporters do not direct Pepe specifically toward Holocaust derision. Rather, they employ him as a nationalist symbol rejecting liberalized calls for ethno-racial tolerance and transnationalism. As Demsky’s analysis notes, however, these impulses subvert Holocaust remembrance by honoring the very obstacles that enabled the Nazis’ European Jewish destruction. Keywords  Holocaust • Pepe the Frog • Memes/MAGA/Brexit

Nazifying Pepe the Frog In 2006, American cartoonist Matt Furie anthropomorphized Pepe the Frog as part of his Boy’s Club graphic novel.1 Pepe’s was a decidedly slacker existence. He spent time chillaxing with his roommates, smoking © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_7

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cannabis, and eating junk food. It was an apolitical life, typified by his bohemian “feels good” catchphrase. Over the next decade, however, this all changed. Beginning in 2008, interlopers cast Pepe as a meme, images that by way of their self-replication, mutation, and mimicry become ubiquitous signifiers of a period’s sociocultural and political goings-on.2 Memes spread via various medium, but are especially prevalent in cyberspace, which was Pepe’s experience.3 On platforms such as 4chan, Reddit, Tumblr, and Instagram, online users appropriated his visage to convey their own happy, sad, smug, and angry emotions. This fad spurred further interventions, resulting in flourishs of evermore Pepe memes, portrayals that situated the cartoon frog in increasingly outlandish scenarios (Fig. 7.1).4 If puerile, such behaviors were harmless. No one could have predicted that American white nationalists—so-called alt right adherents—would eventually appropriate Pepe in service of a Holocaust hate and mockery campaign. However, this is exactly what happened.5 Beginning in 2015–2016, Internet trolls started conflating Pepe to hosts of Nazified themes.6 Some images placed his smirking face before Auschwitz’s gates; others changed his “feel good man” motto to “kill Jews man.” It bears mention that not the entire racist Pepe oeuvre intersected with Third Reich themes. Participants also uploaded memes depicting him in Ku Klux Klan robes, as a skinhead, and as a US Border Patrol agent turning away Mexican families (Fig. 7.2).7

Fig. 7.1  Pepe the Frog. (Note: Pepe the Frog prior to his transformation into a Holocaust mockery symbol)

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Fig. 7.2  Nazi Pepe the Frog. (Note: This image depicts Pepe’s transformation into a symbol of Holocaust mockery)

Pepe’s sway as a high-value public amplifier of bigotry soon crossed onto political terrain. During the 2016 American presidential election, a contest gripped by “build-that-wall” tribalism, candidate Donald Trump re-tweeted Pepe memes to accentuate his MAGA platform.8 His son, Donald Jr., did similarly. A few months before Election Day, Anti-­ Defamation League officials reacted. Acknowledging that bad actors had co-opted the once-pacific frog, victimizing him alongside those he victimized, they nonetheless added him to their hate symbol catalog. Such turns eventually proved too burdensome for creator Matt Furie. He killed off his stoner frog and litigated against those who had directed his creative property toward odious ends.9 What makes this pop culture anecdote meaningful is that Pepe’s saboteurs did not stumble onto their Nazi and Holocaust focus. Their decision to employ the frog meme as a subversive agent reflects a confluence of long-standing domestic impulses, namely, anti-globalism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism.10 The languages of patriotic nationalism and bigotry blend easily, enabling people to convey their expressions of the latter via the rhetoric of the former. The Charlottesville tiki torchers’ chants, “The Jews Will Not Replace Us,” models this technique. Their reason for convening—honoring Confederate statutes—was not overtly connected to Jews. However, for the disaffected, many sporting Nazi Pepe the Frog

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symbols, the “Jewishness” they rejected was the normative expectation that Americans continue to venerate a globalized history that celebrates Anne Frank but scorns localized figures like Robert E. Lee. “You know what I am,” Donald Trump asked a rally crowd in October 2018. “I am a nationalist. OK? I am a nationalist.”11 Such rhetoric has transatlantic echoes, matching Brexit leader Nigel Farage’s “We Want Our Country Back” sloganeering.12 Since Holocaust history is inexorably Jewish and patently global, denigrating its significance rejects both impulses. Additional evidence hides in plain sight. President Trump’s January 2017 Holocaust Remembrance Day statement omitted all mention of Jews.13 A few months later, his communications director rebranded the Nazi death camps “Holocaust centers,” falsely stating that Adolf Hitler “never sunk to using chemical weapons on his enemies.”14 While Brexit supporters do not appropriate Pepe to specifically diminish Holocaust commemoration, he is a conservative anti-globalist symbol, as Brexit, National Front, and MAGA Pepe-styled memes confirm.15 Participants find in Pepe a semiotic for conveying rejections of the post-World War II world order. He especially helps them snub Nuremberg-era expectations that democratic nations (and their citizens) must embrace multiculturalism and interdependence (Fig. 7.3).16 Stimulating these revisions is exactly the reason that Nazi Pepe the Frog is not ephemera. He is a harbinger. In both the US/UK, those people amused by such memes do not want to hear about Holocaust history anymore.17 They covet heterodox worldviews, often sourced from Q-Anon discussion boards, opinions that frequently index conspiratorial antisemitism.18 Destabilizing Holocaust memorialization is an ideal target for their skepticism, precisely because of its perceived politicization and role as a

Fig. 7.3  Pepe Nigel Farage, Pepe Marine Le Pen, and Pepe Donald Trump. (Note: Assigning Pepe to convey British, French, and American nationalism)

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commodified agent. It is likely too late to ask what happened, or to assign blame. Instead, in line with Pablo Picasso’s insight that “destruction is the first act of creation,” stewards interested in protecting what remains of this torn commemoration must recognize that while Nazi Pepe the Frog is clearly a disruptive agent, he may also offer a guide for developing new and sturdier future remembrance.19

Subverting American Holocaust Remembrance Peter Novick once wrote, “American gentiles […] as decent people […] are glad to join with their Jewish neighbors in deploring the Holocaust.”20 As Nazi Pepe the Frog reveals however, this is no longer automatically the case. To be clear, snubbing Holocaust remembrance is not a new phenomenon. Nazi Pepe the Frog’s emergence reflects prior unsettled arguments, reaching back to the post-World War II era, centered on how that fight might change the American identity. Many GIs returned home recognizing connections between crushing Nazi racism overseas and eliminating similar attitudes domestically.21 This is the cohort that Novick credits with developing constructive Holocaust consciousness. However, more insular-­ minded veterans, those portrayed in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), had visions of reclaiming their prewar provincialism.22 Such men had little interest in learning about the European Jewish destruction, instead founding nativist and often antisemitic outfits like the John Birch Society.23 Disinterest in, and hostility toward, Jews and Holocaust remembrance also cropped up in  localized quarrels. The 1968 New  York City Ocean Hill-Brownsville schoolteachers’ controversy, rooted in black versus Jewish American tensions, is notable. During the clash, Julius Lester, an African American scholar and radio host, who years  later converted to Judaism, invited a black teacher to read one of his student’s poems about the dispute over the air.24 Entitled “Anti-Semitism,” its opening stanzas jeered, “Hey Jew boy, with that yarmulke on your head. You pale-faced Jew boy, I wish that you were dead.”25 Subsequent verses directly subverted Holocaust commemoration: I’m sick of hearing about your suffering in Germany […] about the murder of six million Jews. You took my religion and adopted it for you […] Black people were the original Hebrews.26

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Plebian activists leveled similar attacks. One black Ocean Hill-­ Brownsville demonstrator attended a street rally with a sign reading, “You will all make good lampshades!”27 Another’s placard stated, “Hitler was the Messiah.”28 Such sentiments presaged Stokely Carmichael’s 1970 pro-­ Holocaust declaration, “I have never admired a White man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler.”29 These taunts remind contemporary onlookers that savaging Holocaust remembrance is a familiar tactic. African American snubs from the late 1960s connect to the planned neo-­ Nazi Skokie march a decade later, both of which bridge into modern Pepe the Frog commotions. Unpacking citizens’ wider bitterness toward domestic political and economic climates often explains their hostility toward Jews and Holocaust commemoration. This was the case in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville imbroglio, just as it is in present times. Such context situates Pepe’s improbable role during the 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton’s gaffe disparaging Donald Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” proved to be an inflection point in the contest. Her critics claimed the phrase betrayed Clinton’s global/liberal contempt toward rural/conservative communities. Donald Trump Jr. seized upon the opportunity to remind voters that his father honors this “forgotten” America.30 Notably, he selected Pepe the Frog for his messenger, promoting an Instagram meme depicting the cartoon figure—drawn to look like candidate Trump—arranged alongside a wider alt right lot. The meme satirizes the publicity poster for the action-adventure motion picture The Expendables (2010). Its message is that these political figures are fighting against the globalist and liberal traditions that Trump’s supporters blame for their waning status.31 However, by fusing a known Nazified icon to such political outreach, the meme also subtly nods toward antisemitism, Holocaust mockery, and the idea that liberal/globalists care more about honoring foreign Jewish suffering than “Making America Great Again” (Fig. 7.4).  This image is just one of many digital salvos from the “great meme war,” an online sub-contest to the 2016 presidential campaign.32 In addition to Pepe-related images, trolls posted hosts of additional memes indexing the same troika of anti-globalism, anti-liberalism, and antisemitism. An especially provocative example involved candidate Trump’s re-­tweeting a meme depicting Hillary Clinton’s face splashed across a collage of hundred-dollar bills, set alongside a Star of David.33 To already pre-­disposed observers, such nods stoked beliefs that she was a “Jewish puppet.” The meme’s subtextual meaning hinted that her election would perpetrate a

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Fig. 7.4  The Deplorables, 2016. (Note: Using Pepe to convey anti-globalist, antiliberal, and Holocaust mocking impulses)

larger drift toward secular transnationalism, threatening white Christian Americans’ communal and individual identities.34 Such messaging mirrors core white supremacist ideas—articulated in the movement’s canonical The Turner Diaries (1978)—that avers sly Jewish cells co-opt corrupt politicians in order to control American society via gun confiscations, politically correct speech, and compulsory anti-racism learning (Fig. 7.5).35 Soothing such  anxieties explains the Trump administration’s 2020 directive to suspend federal agencies’ diversity training programs.36 Such mindsets also situate the rising popularity of an additional alt right meme, NPC Wojak. NPC is an acronym for Non-Playable Character, video games characters that possess no agency and instead follow pre-programmed algorithms.37 “Wojak” is a politicized expression of that impulse, drawn as an expressionless, grey male face. His vacant portrayal reflects the alt right community’s fears that furtive political and economic forces plot to reduce white Christian Americans into homogeneous “sheeple.”38 This argument is not original, drawing heavily from Ayn Rand’s and George Orwell’s earlier writings.39 Like Pepe the Frog, prior to his alt right co-­ opting, NPC Wojak was an apolitical image. However, unlike Pepe, since no creator claims Wojak as their intellectual property, outside appropriators continue to assign him in support of various socio-cultural and political campaigns (Fig. 7.6).

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Fig. 7.5  Corrupt Hillary, 2016. (Note: Hillary Clinton as a “Jewish puppet” hostile toward white Christians) Fig. 7.6  NPC Wojak, 2018. (Note: This meme indexes alt right fears of government-imposed social homogeneity)

Indeed, Wojak memes engage various targets, from political correctness to masturbation to cryptocurrencies. This active social consciousness is the pathway that finds him placed in service of promoting antisemitism and Holocaust derision. Owing to their coarsely drawn, unyielding masculine outlines, Wojaks are especially compatible with efforts to channel aggression.40 Countless Nazified Wojaks exist, including many that intersect with

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Pepe the Frog.41 Conflating these two popular digital envoys is an obvious threat for twenty-first-century Holocaust remembrance. However, the danger encompasses more than just online hate speech. Some users leave their cyberspace interactions and commit everyday acts of violence. Robert Bowers is an example. In 2018, agitated in part by Internet chatter, he killed eleven worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.42 Notably, Bowers created a digital record of his radicalization. Just hours before committing his crimes, he posted his intentions to a Gab chatroom, a hate speech echo chamber sporting a Pepe the Frog-inspired logo.43 Numerous people joined his pre-massacre thread, providing glimpses of how seemingly transitory digital communications can spur tangible results. Set against this backdrop, trolls’ later memorializing Bowers as an NPC Wojak adds weight to the meme. Its “I’m going in!” caption lionizes his final chatroom post, rejecting cautions that such an attack would subvert alt right claims to sociopolitical legitimacy. The stylistic decision to outfit Bowers (who attacked a synagogue and murdered Jews) in a Nazi-styled SA Brownshirt uniform, adorned with a Nazi SS neck tattoo and quasi-­ swastika lapel pin, delivers clear pro-Holocaust undertones. It patterns a behavior visible in later MAGA agitations, namely, glorifying Nazism/ Holocaust while attacking perceived (Jewish) political enemies. This nexus reappears in the January 2021 alt right-led US Capitol violence. MAGA loyalists revived the same Judaizing tactic deployed against Hillary Clinton, smearing those officials preparing to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory  as Jewish globalist agents. It should not be surprising that some Capitol Hill rabble-rousers unfurled Pepe the Frog flags, while others wore apparel depicting Auschwitz as a summer camp. For true believers, attacking a perceived Jewish remembrance, alongside the “Jewish” politicians that sponsor its memorialization, is two sides of the same coin (Figs. 7.7 and 7.8). Sympathetic citizens, so-called alt lite supporters, might not join a public fracas, but they support such scrums. Fears of globalism and liberalized government—as well as a shared racism—bind them to their more ardent brethren.44 The COVID-19 pandemic brought this crowd’s existence into greater focus. It also revealed another layer of online angst directed toward Jews and Holocaust memorialization. For example, in July 2020, the Kansas-based Anderson County Review posted a political cartoon to its Facebook page depicting the state’s governor wearing a face mask with a Star of David patch stitched to its front. The image’s background picture and caption strike unambiguous Holocaust references, informing readers,

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Fig. 7.7  NPC Wojak Robert Bowers. (Note: Memorializing via Nazi symbols an alt right adherent who attacked a synagogue)

Fig. 7.8  MAGA Capitol insurgents. (Note: Rabble-rousers displaying Pepe the Frog and related derisive Holocaust icons)

“Put on your mask … and step onto the cattle car.” Such messaging supports wider conspiratorial claims, common to alt right and Q-anon discourses, that COVID-19 is a “plandemic” designed to cloak Jewish social control.45 Related memes stoke fears that Bill Gates intends  to surveil Americans via a microchip fused into the COVID-19 vaccine.46 While Gates is not Jewish, his braininess, wealth, and pro-globalist attitudes

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Fig. 7.9  Lockdown Laura. (Note: This cartoon implies that COVID-19 mask mandates are a Jewish control device)

complement many bigots’ perceptions of “Jewishness.”47 His intellectualism also outfits him with socio-political power disproportionate to his station, another antisemitic trope. Such factors lend themselves to conspiratorial fears that the Judaized Gates, and his COVID-19 cabalists, are plotting a possible (Holocaust-inspired) revenge against Christians. So-called 5G conspiracy narratives are especially prevalent in the UK, providing a thematic segue to comparing American and British Holocaust memorialization subversions.48 Pepe the Frog-styled sarcasm is just one method for destabilizing this remembrance. Equally destructive, and more prevalent in the British context, is devaluing or denying the history. Since the UK has a ricketier commitment to this legacy than Americans do, such pricks may ultimately prove more damaging (Figs. 7.9 and 7.10).

Subverting British Holocaust Remembrance In 2019, British courts convicted Alison Chabloz for violating the Communications Act of 2003. Its codes prohibit, “sending by means of a public electronic network a message […] that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene, or menacing character.”49 Chabloz’s specific violation was uploading her Holocaust-mockery songs to YouTube. One ditty

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Fig. 7.10  Star of COVID. (Note: This meme references fears that the COVID-19 vaccine has surveillance microchips)

smeared Elie Wiesel—terming Night “full of nonsense” and sung over a Hava Nagila soundtrack.50 Others derided Anne Frank, characterized Auschwitz as a “theme park for fools,” and chimed that gas chambers were a “proven hoax.”51 Chabloz’s lawyers claimed free speech protections, representing her songs as satire, not hate speech, arguing that Britain has murky laws governing Holocaust derision.52 That the court rejected these assertions is ultimately incidental. Instead, what makes Chabloz’s case meaningful is that the episode represents another step, on a preexisting path, toward subverting staid Holocaust memorialization in the UK. Like American rejections, British snubs have a long history. Even prior to the Holocaust, playwright Bernard Shaw modeled how to minimize concern for Nazi-inspired Jewish anguish, namely, plying tacit antisemitism and Jewish victim blaming. His play Geneva (1938) employs both devices in its exploration of the fascist “superman” ideal.53 Shaw’s Hitleresque “Dictator Battler” character—consumed with harrying Jews—articulates the play’s bigotry. Battler’s discourses with a nameless Jewish figure unpack familiar tropes alleging Jewish arrogance, greed, and unassimilable foreignness. Throughout these dialogues, and across the play’s wider subtext, Shaw implicates Jews as the cause of their own misfortune.54 British audiences enjoyed Geneva—in April 1939 BBC Television broadcast its third act—re-confirming anti-Jewish prewar attitudes.55 However, this bygone play’s popularity also has contemporary

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value because it reminds onlookers that for some British citizens and their progeny such mindsets persisted into the postwar years. This was the case for Bernard Shaw. Both before and after the fight, he argued that Adolf Hitler was a heroic figure whose only shortcoming was persecuting Jews.56 Notably, this apologia represented a departure from his initial Third Reich condemnations, sentiments that provoked Nazi hooligans’ “Jew Shaw” chants when he toured Germany in early 1933.57 Even possessing Holocaust knowledge, he argued that the genocide was more a matter of circumstance than intention, attempting to establish moral equivalency between the Nazis’ crimes, American atomic deployments in Japan, and the British firebombing of Dresden.58 Shaw was also an early proponent of Holocaust diminishing, arguing that Jewish wartime suffering was no greater than similar fates that befell other groups. If unwitting, such representations helped buoy later British belittling, spanning obscure individuals like Alison Chabloz to more notorious ones like David Irving.59 Their shared bond is trivializing the genocide, while nevertheless alleging that Jews’ mischief provoked it. Perhaps, English conspiracy theorist David Icke best articulates these impulses. A former professional soccer player, television personality, and Green Party spokesperson, Icke reset his life’s course in 1991 when he announced that he was God’s son.60 This declaration marked the beginning of his sensationalized (but popular) post-revelation career, a calling that directly intersects with anti-globalism, antisemitism, and Holocaust scorn. Central to his proselytizing is the claim that alien lizards control the Earth’s human vanguards, leveraging their dominion to stoke warmongering and greed.61 Icke’s theories owe some debts to the Protocols and he specifically identifies the Rothschild family as exemplar predatory reptiles. However, since he similarly smears non-Jews, either as a deflection tactic or nuance, the question of whether he is antisemitic remains unsettled for some.62 Icke’s dissonant attitudes toward Holocaust memorialization is clearer. His book, And the Truth Shall Set You Free (1995), attacks what he terms the “official Holocaust line.”63 In Icke’s view, a “small Jewish clique” sponsored Adolf Hitler’s rise—setting the later genocide in motion—to establish a “New World Order” unmoored from cultural, religious, and national identities.64 Such postulations about a radically revamped global structure echo American evangelical leader Pat Robertson’s identically titled 1991 book, also foreshadowing the tiki torchers’ later gripes. Icke’s interpretation posits that western Holocaust remembrance is a contrivance

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toward Jewish global domination, ensuring that the “whole non-Jewish world is made to feel guilty.”65 Combined with his related assertions that Holocaust commemoration is imposed from on high, and cordoned off from critical examination, Icke’s twenty-five-year-old arguments provide useful context for situating modern subversions. It is ultimately immaterial whether his thinking is sound, batty, bigoted, or bold. David Icke’s agitations are not meaningful for the messages that they purport, but for revealing the existence of a British constituency willing to receive them. This is the “5G” conspiracy crowd, and, indeed, a decade before COVID-19, Icke similarly alleged that the British government controlled its citizens via “hair sized microchip” implants.66 These folks support Brexit. They have slight interest in memorializing  the Holocaust. While Icke’s reptilian subjugators elude these discourses, the American amphibian—Pepe the Frog—is vital to their messaging. Unlike in the American context, British trolls do not assign Pepe to celebrating Hitler or mocking Jews. Instead, they direct him to cast off Nuremberg-­ era liberalized values, specifically those normalizing ethno-racial tolerance and calls for Britons to embrace transnationalism (Fig. 7.11).

Fig. 7.11  Brexit Pepe. (Note: MAGA-styled hat—sporting a Get the Fuck Out acronym—and Brexit ribbon conflate impulses of Anglo-American nativism)

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Such messages are not new to British discourses. Clear thematic overlaps bind National Front agitations from the 1970s to contemporary churnings. Especially this is true regarding anti-immigration impulses. Owing to the EU’s “free movement” principle, new émigrés, including nearly onemillion Polish-born people, have exacerbated this tension during the last twenty years.67 Polish newcomers’ youthfulness—nearly seventy percent are twenty-five to forty-nine years old—sharply contrasts with the UK’s aging population.68 Poles are also more skilled than prior immigrant cohorts, and, combined with perceptions that they “make little effort” to assimilate local customs (or learn the English language), their presence jolts British society.69 Such worries coincide with the so-called Brexodous, the flight of young, educated, native-born professionals leaving Britain for higher-paying jobs elsewhere.70 Consequently, some native-­born UK citizens, taking up the same frustrations that Skrewdriver lyricized a generation earlier in “Free My Land” (1984), push back with bigotry. Just as in the US, where MAGA supporters direct Pepe the Frog and NPC Wojak memes to promote anti-Mexican immigration messages, disgruntled Brexiteers employ them to target the Polish community. One meme depicts a “smug” Pepe, painted to resemble the Union Jack, holding a tea cup, and positioned in front of a fence labeled “UK border.” Two “sad” Pepes squat behind the barrier—one wearing a “Polska” sweatshirt—fulfilling the image’s anti-immigrant intention. This meme subverts prevailing EU open border dictums while also carving out space from Nuremberg-era promises that democratic societies welcome immigrants seeking betterment (Fig. 7.12).

Fig. 7.12  Nativist Pepe and Wojak Oswald Mosley. (Note: Memes conveying latent hostility toward British Holocaust remembrance)

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An associated NPC Wojak meme, depicting Oswald Mosley set in front of a British Union of Fascists (BUF) flag, further destabilizes this trope. Glorifying the prewar British fascist movement indicates that Bernard Shaw’s, Enoch Powell’s, Eric Clapton’s, and others’ insular postwar mindsets might not merely hearken back to a bygone past, but instead foreshadow continued future resentments. The two memes, jointly, remind contemporary onlookers that despite seventy-five years of pluralist social engineering, the work that Hartley Shawcross started at Nuremberg remains unfinished. Indeed, these anti-Polish Pepe and Wojak memes are latently hostile toward British Holocaust remembrance. Celebrating nativism and supporting fascists honors the exact obstacles thwarting European Jewish asylum seekers during the 1930s and 1940s. Such resurgent xenophobic mindsets countermand British liberator credentials—impugning their ethical worth—stripping Holocaust commemoration of its emotional heft and denying victims of their memorializing value. Brooding plebeians are not the only pocket of British society perpetrating these subversions. The troublemaking also occurs at the nation’s highest ranks, confirming the remembrance’s wider vulnerability. In 2005, then twenty-year-old Prince Harry attended a costume party with a “colonials and natives” theme. His chosen attire, a khaki-colored uniform sporting a Nazi swastika armband, provoked controversy. Occurring just two weeks before Queen Elizabeth II prepared to lead an observance commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, the costume undercut the royal family’s commitment—and by extension the nation’s—toward honoring this past.71 British tabloid publishers seized upon the story. “Harry the Nazi” headlines, accentuated by a photograph depicting the swastika-styled royal casually holding a drink and cigarette, captured his capriciousness. That the prince soon apologized, “It was a poor choice of costume,” is incidental.72 The more significant matter is the prince’s apparent obliviousness about why such an outfit was taboo in the first place. That he did not know better, or set such learning aside, is revelatory. Just two years before committing the faux pas, Harry graduated from prestigious Eton College, where his instructors surely delivered some sort of Nazi/Holocaust lessons. Moreover, in 2001, Harry’s father participated in the nation’s first Holocaust Remembrance Day, ceremonies broadcast live on BBC television. If someone as privileged as Harry possessed ambivalent Holocaust consciousness, the disconnect signals a much deeper national deficiency. However, if the prince’s decision to wear a

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swastika reflected more his arrogance than ignorance, the scheme is still problematic because it sanctions decontextualizing the genocidal symbol for one’s own amusement.73 This pattern encapsulates the wider promises and pitfalls of the  Anglo-American  memorializing tradition. The hopefully  fashioned nature of the  Nuremberg liberator narrative connects  to the whimsical negativity of Nazi Pepe the Frog memes; rock stars’ dalliances with this past intersect with David Icke’s delusions, just as and the Duke of Sussex’s obliviousness finds common cause with Donald Trump’s indifference. As time moves humankind toward this history’s centennial, onlookers must ready themselves to negotiate both impulses, celebrating constructive expressions of Holocaust remembrance while sifting through, its potential wastelands.

Notes 1. Matt Furie, Boy’s Club (San Jose, CA: Teenage Dinosaur, 2006). 2. Gavriel Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past Is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 306. 3. Kin-Wee Chen, “The Internet Political Meme as Remediation of the Political Cartoon,” in The Languages of Humor: Verbal, Visual, and Physical Humor, ed. Arie Sover (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 203. 4. Sean Milligan, A Rhetoric of Zaniness: The Case of Pepe The Frog,” (Ph.D. thesis, Wayne State University, 2019), 41. 5. Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2017), 11. 6. Joan Donovan, “Deconstructing Disinformation’s Threat to Democracy,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 44, no. 1 (2020): 158. 7. Gregory Schrempp terms these relics “bad memes.” See “Taking the Dawkins Challenge, or, the Dark Side of the Meme,” Journal of Folklore Research 46, no. 1 (2009): 93. 8. Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse, Political Argument in a Polarized Age: Reason and Democratic Life (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2020), 65. 9. For a documentary of the saga see Feels Good Man, directed by Arthur Jones (Los Angeles, CA: Ready Fictions, 2020), Film. 10. Bharath Ganesh, “The Ungovernability of Digital Hate Culture,” Journal of International Affairs 71, no. 2 (2018): 31. 11. Florian Bieber, Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 190.

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12. Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter, “Whiteness, Populism, and the Racialization of the Working Class in the UK and US,” in Whiteness and Nationalism ed. Nasar Meer (London: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 13. 13. John Foster, Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), 55. 14. Andy Pearce, “Preface,” in Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings ed. Andy Pearce (London: Routledge, 2018), xviii. 15. For a discussion of shared national symbols see Gabriella Elgenius, Symbols of Nations and Nationalism: Celebrating Nationhood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 23. 16. Andy Pearce, “Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Day: Inculcating ‘British’ or ‘European’ Holocaust Consciousness,” in Britain and the Holocaust: Remembering and Representing War and Genocide eds. Caroline Sharples and Olaf Jensen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 190. 17. Ian Parker, “Memesis and Psychoanalysis: Mediatizing Donald Trump,” in Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production eds. Alfie Bown and Dan Bristow (Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2019), 356. 18. Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 27. 19. Mark Runco, Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice (London: Academic Press, 2014), 142. 20. Peter Novick, “The American National Narrative of the Holocaust: There Isn’t Any,” New German Critique 90 (2003): 33. 21. Robert Fleegler, “Forget All Differences until the Forces of Freedom Are Triumphant”: The World War II–Era Quest for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance,” Journal of American Ethnic History 27, no. 2 (2008): 62–5. 22. David Gerber, “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in The Best Years of Our Lives,” American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1994): 552–3. 23. Eckard Toy, Jr., “The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 105, no. 2 (2004): 262–3. 24. William Hart, Black Religion: Malcolm X, Julius Lester, and Jan Willis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 116. 25. As quoted in Adam Meyer, “Victim and Villain: Shylock in the African American Imagination,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 7, no. 2 (2012): 9. 26. As quoted in Jane Anna Gordon, Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black-Jewish Conflict Over Community Control in Ocean HillBrownsville, 1967–1971 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 90.

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27. Jacob Dorman, “Dreams Defended and Deferred: The Brooklyn Schools Crisis of 1968 and Black Power’s Influence on Rabbi Meir Kahane,” American Jewish History 100, no. 3 (2016): 422. 28. Ibid. 29. As quoted in Eric Sundquist, Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-­ Holocaust America (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2008), 316. 30. Richard Russo, “American Work,” in Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation ed. John Freeman (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 58. 31. See Diana Mutz, “Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote,” PNAS 115, no. 19 (2018): E4330-E4339. 32. PW Singer and Emerson Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2018), 188–9. 33. George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 179. 34. David Lehmann, “Fundamentalism and Globalism,” Third World Quarterly 19, no. 4 (1998): 608–9. 35. Jonathan Cullick, “The Literary Offenses of a Neo-Nazi: Narrative Voice in The Turner Diaries,” Studies in Popular Culture 24, no. 3 (2002): 92. 36. Hailie Fuchs, “Trump Attack on Diversity Training Has a Quick and Chilling Effect,” New York Times, October 13, 2020, https://www. nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/politics/trump-­d iversity-­t raining-­ race.html. 37. Patrik Hermansson et  al., The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the Twenty-First Century? (London: Routledge, 2020), 113. 38. Jeffrey Kaplan, “History and Terrorism,” Journal of American History 8, no. 1 (2011): 103. 39. Christopher Hitchens, Why Orwell Matters (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 5. 40. Annie Kelly, “The Alt-Right: Reactionary Rehabilitation for White Masculinity,” Soundings 66, no. 66 (2017): 68–78. 41. “NPC Wojak-Pepe turns Maga NPC into Nazi Wojacks,” Know Your Meme, accessed July 19, 2020, https://knowyourmeme.com/ photos/1422924-­npc-­wojak. 42. Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia, “Community Resilience and the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,”  in Anti-Semitism and Psychiatry: Recognition, Prevention, and Interventions eds. Steven Moffic et al. (Cham: Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 223. 43. Shannon Reid and Matthew Valasik, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020), 104, 124. 44. Ibid., 104.

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45. Jennifer Bulanda, Shelby Frye and Valerie Thompson, “Vaccine Opposition in the COVID-19 Age,” in Social Problems in the Age of COVID-19 vol. 1 eds. Glenn Muschert et al. (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2020), 123. 46. Elise Thomas and Albert Zhang, ID2020, Bill Gates and the Mark of the Beast: How COVID-19 Catalyses Existing Online Conspiracy Movements (Canberra, Australia: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2020), 1. 47. Anna Manchin, “Matzo Hussars & Creative (Anti)Semitism: Jewishness & Popular Culture in Post-Communist Hungary,” Shofar 34, no. 3 (2016): 8–9. 48. James Meese, Jordan Frith, and Rowan Wilken, “COVID-19, 5G Conspiracies and Infrastructural Futures,” Media International Australia 177, no. 1 (2020): 37. 49. Laura Bliss, “Magistrates Court: Social Media: ‘A Theme Park just for Fools’ R v Alison Chabloz (unreported) Westminster Magistrates’ Court 25 May 2018,” Journal of Criminal Law 82, no. 4 (2018): 301. 50. Ben Weich, “Holocaust Denier Alison Chabloz Jailed,” The Jewish Chronicle, September 24, 2019, https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/ holocaust-­denier-­alison-­chabloz-­jailed-­for-­continuing-­to-­blog-­despite-­ social-­media-­ban-­1.489185. 51. Dave Rubin, Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for yourself in an Age of Unreason (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2020), 52. 52. David Williams, “Hate Speech in the UK: An Historical Overview,” in Extreme Speech and Democracy eds. Ivan Hare and James Weinstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 93. 53. AM Gibbs, A Bernard Shaw Chronology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 365. 54. Edward Isser, “Bernard Shaw and British Holocaust Drama,” Shaw 12 (1992): 111–13. 55. Leonard Conolly, Bernard Shaw and the BBC (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 96. 56. Conolly, Bernard, 110. 57. Gibbs, Bernard, 290. 58. Isser, “Bernard,” 115. 59. Deborah Lipstadt, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial (New York: Ecco, 2016), 13. 60. Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures with Extremists (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 152. 61. Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn, “The Reptoid Hypothesis: Utopian and Dystopian Representational Motifs in David Icke’s Alien Conspiracy Theory,” Utopian Studies 16, no. 1 (2005): 45. 62. Ronson, Them, 149. 63. David Icke, And the Truth Shall Set You Free (Isle of Wight, UK: 1995), 119.

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64. Ibid., 121. 65. Ibid., 129. 66. Sean Sagan, “Biochip Implants,” in Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History vol. 1 eds. Christopher Fee and Jeffrey Webb (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2019), 144. 67. Andrew Glencross, Why the UK Voted for Brexit: David Cameron’s Great Miscalculation (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2016), 43. 68. Eva Duda-Mikulin, EU Migrant Workers, Brexit and Precarity: Polish Women’s Perspectives from Inside the UK (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2019), 30. 69. Julie Knight, John Lever, and Andrew Thompson, Labour, Mobility and Temporary Migration: A Comparative Study of Polish Migration to Wales (Wales: University of Wales Press, 2017), 167. 70. Royal Institute of International Affairs, “The World in Brief,” The World Today 73, no. 5 (2017): 6. 71. Mark Donnelly, “‘We Should Do Something for the Fiftieth’: Remembering Auschwitz, Belsen, and the Holocaust in Britain in 1995,” in Britain, eds. Sharples and Jensen, 171. 72. Christopher Andersen, After Diana: William, Harry, Charles, and the Royal House of Windsor (New York: Hyperion Books, 2008), 223. 73. Caroline Pearce, Contemporary Germany and the Nazi Legacy: Remembrance, Politics and the Dialectic of Normality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 202.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion

Abstract  Demsky asserts that the future of Holocaust memorialization involves scholars mediating expressions of constructive and destructive memorializing. He argues that just as the opposing concepts of Heaven and Hell are dialectically joined, the countermanding impulses of confirming and caustic Holocaust remembrance constitute the same memorializing continuum. Demsky points out various instances of overlap between the seemingly opposed polarities, noting that their synthesis can produce fresher remembrance forms. He concludes that this flexible memorialization approach returns the field to where it started, at the Nuremberg trials, when Anglo-American jurists first fashioned an imagined narrative in service of constructive remembrance. Keywords  Holocaust • Memorialization • Dialectics

Mediating Expressions of Constructive and Destructive Memorializing In May 2019, Netflix debuted Historical Roasts, a comedy series that sends up bygone figures. Along with such luminaries as Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Cleopatra, writers satirized Anne Frank.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3_8

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Not surprisingly, critics soon termed the episode vulgar and trivializing, both to Anne’s memory, and the many millions more that her memory symbolizes.1 Such representations are highly irreverent, but I disagree that they are irredeemable. Throughout this book, I have argued that exaggerated cultural appropriations might have a potentially pedagogical value. When the portrayals contest Holocaust memorialization, and not the factual history, the possibility exists that the impious depictions form fresher remembrance for contemporary audiences. This was the case during the Anne Frank roast. Performers barbed Adolf Hitler’s masculine mystique, his alleged Übermensch Nazis, and the powerless-Jew construct. They did not ridicule Anne Frank. Indeed, at the episode’s close, when her character tells the Hitler figure to “eat a dick,” the spectacle arguably inspires contemporary viewers to imagine this past in more active ways.2 Twenty years into the twenty-first century, these abundant complicating representations are less a matter of fault than fact. Rather than condemning their operations, I conclude that scholars must embrace them. My study has differentiated between what I term constructive and destructive memorializing. The former grouping, typified by the Yolocaust website—with its reworked snapshots of visitors’ glee-filled pictures at Holocaust memorials—represents shocking interventions that nevertheless rejuvenate remembrance.3 On the other hand, television skits lampooning Jewish losses, and related mocking Internet memes, perpetrate destructive remembrance that summons this past solely to reject it. Embedded in both constructs, however, are keys that can help answer the broader question of why this seemingly sacrosanct lore became convoluted in the first place. Finding this commemoration’s path forward requires that scholars mediate between the differing reconstructions, conflating them into holistic interpretations that elucidate both Holocaust history and its historicization. I recognize that my approach sanctions elevating harmful interpretations alongside the helpful. However, just as the opposing concepts of Heaven and Hell are dialectically joined, impulses of confirming and caustic Holocaust remembrance share the same memorializing continuum. Moreover, the opposing polarities validate certain essential truths. Both camps acknowledge the Jewish destruction that happened under Nazism. Even deniers tacitly concede this fact, quibbling instead about casualty numbers, killing methods, and authorization orders.4 Another common concern is the legacy’s highly constructed nature. As Peter Novick notes, “Its [Holocaust] curricula, museums, ceremonies, media presentations are

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in every instance the result of Jewish initiatives […] it is not that the majority of it is, but virtually all of it is.”5 Moving this memorialization forward, as David Stannard notes, requires more candid explanation of whether the Holocaust’s elevated commemorative status reflects its unique horror, or is it better understood as “the hegemonic product of many years of strenuous intellectual labor by a handful of Jewish scholars.”6 These are challenging questions. However, if the history’s stewards expect successive generations to uphold a duty to this memory, they must unwind its tangles, for both academics as well as bigots. It is practical and expected that Jews initially assumed a leadership role in building and sustaining this remembrance. However, the resulting perception that Holocaust lore is “Jewish”—indeed “Jewish global”—has had the unintended contemporary consequence of signaling some non-Jewish onlookers that its teachings are superfluous. All histories struggle to remain relevant. This is why developing refreshing representations, depicting this past in light of the ever-changing present, is vital work. Admittedly, such processes are uncertain. The resulting creative interventions will likely infuriate as many onlookers as they enlighten, recalling former American Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s quip about obscenity versus art: “I know it when I see it.”7 Nevertheless, this risky road strikes me as the best likely path onward. The numbers of confounding Nazi/Holocaust appropriations are not going to recede. In just December 2019 alone, an entire cohort of graduating West Virginia state corrections officers delivered “Sieg Heil” salutes in their formal class photo.8 Professional European figure skaters performed a Schindler’s List ice routine costumed in concentration camp garb.9 Amazon.com vendors hawked Auschwitz-themed Christmas ornaments and related trinkets.10 The list goes on and on.11 Throughout this book, I have not analyzed how to determine if such disparate memorializing is indecent, or eye opening. Instead, I have unpacked a narrower argument that contends welcoming this tension, by counterposing traditional and unorthodox representations, offers some potential benefit to Holocaust remembrance. Endorsing memory misuse, if counterintuitive, might help educators discover fresh commemorative terrain, especially when teaching uninitiated learners. Ultimately, this flexible memorialization approach returns us to where we started, to the Nuremberg trials, when Anglo-American jurists first fashioned a bowdlerized narrative in service of constructive remembrance.

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In the US, commemorating the Holocaust came to represent the means by which contemporary citizens learned about prior generations fulfilling the American democratic promise and strengthening the national character. In the UK, the legacy correspondingly affirmed that Great Britain stood on the “right” side of history, and will do so once more if necessary. Such positive recollections, culled from a historical record of apathy and antipathy, demonstrates how integrating facts with feints can achieve commemorative merit. It points out that honoring Holocaust losses is more than just a Jewish concern. The appearance of Nazism hurt Jews, as the fanning of ethno-religious hatreds facilitated a wide destruction of the Jewish people during World War II.  However, following the fight, a broad-based memorialization of their trauma formed. During the next seventy-five years, this liberalizing impulse received additional momentum—in the US, UK, and globally—and the subsequent remembrance that emerged has eventually outstripped all efforts that preceded it.

Notes 1. Itay Stern, “‘Sick and Unacceptable’: Netflix’s Satirical ‘Roast’ of Anne Frank Draws Fire,” Haaretz, May 29, 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/ life/television/.premium-­s ick-­a nd-­u nacceptable-­n etflix-­s -­s atirical­roast-­of-­anne-­frank-­draws-­fire-­1.7303599. 2. David Slucki, Gabriel Finder, and Avinoam Patt, “Introduction,” in Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust eds. David Slucki, Gabriel Finder, and Avinoam Patt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020), 4. 3. Siobhan Kattag, Encountering the Past within the Present: Modern Experiences of Time (London: Routledge, 2019), 117. 4. Discussing Muslim Holocaust denial, Gilbert Achcar stresses the technique of denying of compassionate memory rather than disputing the genocide’s factuality. See “Assessing Holocaust Denial in Western and Arab Contexts,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 1 (2011): 85. 5. Peter Novick, “The American National Narrative of the Holocaust: There Isn’t Any,” New German Critique, 90 (2003): 31–3. 6. David Stannard, “Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship,” in Is The Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, ed. Alan Rosenbaum (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 167. 7. As quoted in Pamela Paul, Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006), 256.

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8. Benjamin Van Hoose, “Entire Class of Corrections Cadets to Be Fired after Being Pictured Doing Apparent Nazi Salute,” People Magazine, December 31, 2019, https://people.com/human-­interest/all-­w-­ va-­corrections-­officers-­pictured-­doing-­apparent-­nazi-­salute-­will-­be-­fired-­ governor-­orders/. 9. Elisha Fieldstadt, “Auschwitz-Themed Skating Costume’s Award Nomination Withdrawn after Outcry,” NBC News, December 3, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/auschwitz-­themed-­skating-­ costume-­s-­award-­nomination-­withdrawn-­after-­outcry-­n1094716. 10. Mariel Padilla and Mihir Zaveri, “Amazon Removes Holiday Ornaments with Images of Auschwitz after Criticism,” New York Times, December 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/business/amazon-­ auschwitz-­christmas-­ornament.html. 11. Katie McInerney and Tom Westerholm, “What We Know about Duxbury Firing Its Football Coach after Players used Holocaust-Related Terms, “Boston Globe, March 25, 2021, https://www.bostonglobe. com/2021/03/24/sports/what-­w e-­k now-­a bout-­d uxbury-­f ootball-­ teams-­holocaust-­related-­play-­calls/.

Index1

A Abandonment theory, 38 Achcar, Gilbert, 130n4 African American people support for WWII, 21 teaching about genocide, 92–94, 97, 109 Alexander, Jeffrey, 3, 49 Americanization of the Holocaust, 4–6, 22 Amistad (movie), 94 Amy Bellette (Roth character), 29–30 Anderson County Review antisemitic, anti-mask cartoon, 113 And Truth Shall Set You Free (Icke), 117 Anne B. Real (novel, film), 87 “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II” (Pink Floyd),” 57

Antisemitism conspiratorial, 108 and the Family Guy, 77–78 and Holocaust education in Germany, 90 and indifference to Nazi genocide, 5, 12, 14, 19–21 links to anti-liberalism and anti-­ globalism, 110–111 and the Oi! rock subgenre, 58–59 and resistance to COVID-19 restrictions, 115 rising, and return to nativism and isolationism, 109 See also Holocaust education; Holocaust memorialization; White nationalism Auschwitz imagery, 2, 106, 113 Auslander, Shalom, 30–31

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Demsky, Nazi and Holocaust Representations in Anglo-American Popular Culture, 1945–2020, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79221-3

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INDEX

B Baldwin, Stanley, 15 “Bart vs. Australia” episode (The Simpsons),” 79 Battle of Cable Street, London, 15 Berenbaum, Michael, 4, 28 Bieber, Justin, 86 Blair, Tony, 40 “Blitzkrieg Bop” (Ramone, Joey and Tommy),” 53 “Blood and Honor” campaign (Donaldson), 59 “Blood Sucker” (No Remorse),” 61 Borowski, Tadeus, 68 Bosnia, ethnic cleansing in, 39–41 Boswell, Matthew, 52 Bowers, Robert, 112–114 Bowie, David, 55–57 Boyne, John, 87 Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Boyne), 87 Breivik, Anders, 88–90 British Union of Fascists (BUF), 14–16, 120 Broder, Henryk, 28 Brooks, Mel, 68, 73 Bruce, Lenny, 68 C “California Über Alles” (The Dead Kennedys),” 53 “Candy, Quahog, Marshmallow” episode (Family Guy),” 77 Carmichael, Stokely, 110 Carter, Jimmy, 27, 38 Chabloz, Alison, 115–117 Chappelle’s Show, “Time Haters” skits, 94 Clapton, Eric, 53–55, 57, 120 Clark, Dick, 51, 52 The Clash, 51 Clinton, Bill, 39–40 Clinton, Hillary, 110, 112

Cole, Tim, 2 Commodified memorialization, 33, 109 Conspiracy narratives, 115, 118 Corrupt remembrance, 30, 38 COVID-19 pandemic, 113–116, 118 Crimes against humanity, 12–14 See also International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg Cultural trauma, 3, 49 Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV show, David), “The Survivor” episode, 73 D David, Larry, 69, 73 Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust ceremonies, 27, 31 The Dead Kennedys, 53 De Hann, Ido, 91 Democracy, democratic values, liberator narratives and, 13, 19 See also Liberator narrative Des Pres, Terrence, 67, 68 The Diary of Anne Frank (play, Goodrich and Hackett), 18 The Diary of Anne Frank (movie, Stevens), 18–19 The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank), 86 See also Frank, Anne The Dictators, “Master Race Rock,” 52 Django Unchained (Tarantino), 94 Donaldson, Ian Stuart, 59–60 Dyck, Kirsten, 58 E Eden, Anthony, 17 Ed Sullivan Show, Rolling Stones appearance, 47, 48 Edwards, Ralph, 18

 INDEX 

Emancipator tropes, see Liberator narrative “Episode #1.3” (Kay and Peele),” 95 Eric Cartman (character on South Park), 74 Evian Conference on Refugees, 16 “Exterminate Ya” (No Remorse),” 61 Extras (British TV sitcom), “Kate Winslet” skit, 79–80 F Fallace, Thomas, 93 Family Guy (cartoon), 77 Fatelessness (Kertész), 96 Finklestein, Norman, 2 Frank, Anne fictional deconstructions of, 29–30 portrayals in pop culture, 75–78 real vs. imagined, deconstructive approaches, 86 roast of on Historical Roasts, 127 as symbol of hope, 2–3 See also Liberator narrative “Free My Land” (Skrewdriver),” 60, 119 Furie, Matt, 105–107 See also Pepe the Frog memes G Geneva (Shaw), 116 Genocide addressing at the IMT, 12 in Bosnia, 39–41 and cultural trauma, 3–4 human potential for, 93, 97 Nazi, indifference to in the US and the UK, 4, 12–15, 19–20 Palombo’s memorialization, 33–35 and racism, 61 trivializing, 117

135

See also Holocaust education; International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg; US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) Germany, Holocaust education in, 90–91 The Ghost Writer (Roth), 29, 69 The Great Dictator (Chaplin), 70 Goodrich, Frances, 18, 30 Goodyer, Ian, 57 Gyuri (character in Fatelessness), 96, 97 H Hackett, Albert, 18, 30 “Hammerskins Nation,” 57 Harry, Prince, 120–121 Hate rock, 51, 58–62, 69 Hi Hitler! (Rosenfeld), 3 Historical Roasts (Netflix), 127 Historiography, and being faithful to the historical event, 4–6 See also Holocaust memorialization Hitler, Adolf, 32, 33 Holocaust (NBC TV miniseries), 30–32 Holocaust education brazen/irreverent approaches, value of, 2–3, 6–7, 87, 92–94, 97, 128 constructive approaches, 80, 96–97 contemporary, creativity needed for, 5, 87, 97 contested approaches, 127–129 empathic vs. non-empathic approaches, 96 emphasis on human morality/ equity, 89 in Europe, 88–92 and evoking contemporary parallels, 96–97

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INDEX

Holocaust education (cont.) goal, 93, 97 impact of historical distancing, 5–6, 86–87 and the intersection of race, history and memorialization, 94 and purely emotional responses, 86–87 US vs. UK pedagogical approaches, 3–4, 89 Holocaust humor and Holocaust themed TV skits, 69 Nazi humor vs., 68 responsible vs. irresponsible approaches, 5, 69–79 UK, and changing historical understanding among the British, 79 as way of ensuring constructive future holocaust consciousness, 80 See also Pop culture; Television sitcom skits “Holocaust Laughter” (De Pres),” 67 Holocaust memorialization active, limits, 35 ambiguous vs. ambitious memory, 17 balancing raising awareness with kitsch, 31 “Blood and Honor” campaign (Donaldson), 59 comparison of US and Israeli TV, 4 conflating indifference and concern, 17 constructive vs. destructive memorializing, 94, 127–129 and cultural trauma, 3 and distance from historical events, generational distance, 2–4, 85

historical vs. imagined reality of, 3, 16–18, 86 Holocaust denial/derision, 61, 88, 115–117, 120, 128 impact of the Nuremberg trials, 4, 13 irreverent, pedagogical value, 2, 6–7, 88, 92–94, 97, 128 reimagining, importance, 3–7, 109, 128 responsible vs. irresponsible approaches, 69–79 as solely the responsibility of Jewish people, 128 US vs. UK experiences, 3–4, 14, 29, 130 Wiesel’s contribution, 37–38 See also Holocaust education I Icke, David, 117–119 “If I’m Dying, I’m Lyin” (Family Guy),” 77–78 Inglourious Basterds (move, Tarantino), 94 Intergovernmental Committee (IGC), 16 International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg, 4, 12–15 See also Liberator narrative Irving, David, 117 J Jackson, Robert, 12 Jagger, Mick, 48, 50 Jewish War Veterans March, 1933, 19–20 Johansen, David, 58, 59 Jones, Brian, 48 Joyce, James, 14

 INDEX 

K Karski, Jan, 16, 17 “Kate Winslet” episode (Extras),” 79–80 Kertész, Imre, 96–97 Key and Peele (TV show), 95 Kinloch, Nicholas, 87 Klüger, Ruth, 96 Kohner, Hanna, 18 Kushner, Tony, 3, 13 Kverndokk, Kyrre, 89 L Laqueur, Walter, 38 Latinx/Chicanx populations, educating about the Holocaust, 87 “Law of ironic Hitlerization” (Rosenfeld),” 73 Lazar, David, 73 Lester, Julius, 109 Liberator narrative and the Cold War, 31, 86, 89 emphasis on in the US, 18–19 and the Nuremberg trials, 4 value to both the US and the UK, 12–13 Wiesel’s acquiescence to, 38 See also Holocaust memorialization; International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg; US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), 12 Lindquist, David, 95 “Lockdown Laura” cartoon, 113–115 London, Louise, 14 Long, Breckinridge, Jr., 19, 20 M Magid, Shaul, 38 Maguire, Peter, 12

137

“Major Boobage” (South Park), 75–76 Make America Great Again (MAGA), 6, 107–108, 110, 113–114, 119 “Mandela Boot Camp & Time Haters” (Chappelle’s Show), 94 “Master Race Rock” (The Dictators), 53 Maus (Spiegelman), 31–32 McLaren, Malcolm, 51 Memorializing, see Holocaust memorialization Menthon, François de, 12 Merkel, Angela, 90 Mitford, Diana, 15 Mosley, Oswald, 14, 15, 119, 120 Muslim immigrants, 88, 90–93 My Holocaust (Reich), 96 N Nathan Zuckerberg (Roth character), 30 National Front (NF) party, UK, 54, 55, 57, 58 Nationality Act, 1948, 53 Nativist Pepe, 119–120 Nazi Pepe the Frog, 106–110 “Nazi Punks Face off” (The Dead Kennedys), 53 The Netherlands, Holocaust education in, 91 “Never forget” trope, 6, 79 Night (Wiesel), 37, 96 Non-Playable Character (NPC) memes, 111–114 “No Racism, No Antisemitism” (Palombo), 32, 33 No Remorse (band), 61 Norway, Holocaust education in, 88–89 Novick, Peter, 2–3, 109

138 

INDEX

Nuremberg liberator trope, see International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg O Office of War Information (OWI), U.S., 20–22 Oi! rock, 58–60 See also Hate rock; Pop culture O’Toole, Peter, 48 P Palombo, AleXsandro, 32–33, 76 Panayi, Panikos, 53 Patraka, Vivian, 39 Pearce, Andy, 3, 51 Peellaert, Guy, 50 Pepe the Frog memes appropriations for emotional self-expression, 106 Brexit Pepe, 118–119 conflation with NPC Wojak, 113 Nativist Pepe, 119–120 Nazi Pepe, 106–110 original character, 105 use of by Trump family, 107, 110 and white nationalism, 6–7, 106–107 “Pinkeye” (South Park), 74–76 Pink Floyd, 55–57 Pop culture and appropriation of Nazi/ Holocaust history, 54, 69 bridge-building using, 73, 76 Oi! and other hate rock musicians, 60 “Pinkeye” (South Park), 74–76 The Producers, 68 television sitcom skits, 70–79

See also Frank, Anne; Hate rock; Holocaust education; Holocaust humor Powell, Enoch, 53–55 Presidential campaign, 2016, “great meme war,” 110 Punk rock, 50–53 See also Hate rock; Oi! rock Q Quayle, Dan, 28 R Racism, current, and pedagogical value of Holocaust studies, 93–97, 109, 111 See also Antisemitism; Holocaust education; Pop culture; White nationalism “The Raincoats” episode (Seinfeld), 72 Ramone, Joey and Tommy, 53 Randall, AWG, 17 Rebel, Johnny, 61 Reich, Tova, 96 Reich, Walter, 18–19 The Residents (The Third Reich ‘n Roll), 51 Rhodes, Ben, 51 Rialto, California, Holocaust miseducation scandal, 85–87 “Rivers of blood” speech (Powell), 53–55 Robertson, Pat, 117 Robot Chicken (Claymation), 76 “Rock against Communism (RAC) crusade” (National Front), 58 “Rock against Racism” movement (UK), 57–58 Rock Dreams (Peellaert), 50

 INDEX 

Rodwell, Grant, 88 The Rolling Stones, 47–53, 58 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 19–22, 38 Rosenfeld, Gavriel, 3, 73, 74 Roth, Philip, 29–31, 33, 69 Rumbold, Harold, 14 “Run Like Hell” (Pink Floyd), 57 S Schindler’s List (movie), 72–73, 79, 93–94, 129 Seinfeld, Jerry, 69 Seinfeld (TV show), 69–72 Selling, Jan, 89 Sex Pistols, 51 Shandler, Jeffrey, 70 Shaw, Bernard, 116–117 Shawcross, Hartley, 12–14, 17, 120 Sherman, A.J., 16 Silverman, Max, 17 The Simpsons (cartoon series), 34 Siouxsie Sioux, 50 Sitcom skits, see Television sitcom skits “Six Million Lies” (No Remorse), 61 Skrewdriver (band), 59–60 Smirnov, LM, 12 Sol Kugel (Auslander character), 30 “Soup Nazi” episode (Seinfeld), 70–72 South Park (cartoon series), 74–75 Soviet Union, 12, 31, 86 Spector, Karen, 95 Spiegelman, Art, 30–31 “The Spy Who Learned Me” episode (The Simpsons), 78–79 Steir-Livny, Liat, 4 Stevens, George, 19 Stier, Oren Baruch, 2 Still Alive (Klüger), 96 Stratton, Jon, 70 “The Survivor” episode (Curb Your Enthusiasm), 73 Sweden, Holocaust education in, 89

139

T Tale of a City (OWI brochure), 21–22 Television sitcom skits, 4–5, 70–79 See also Holocaust humor The Third Reich ‘n Roll (the Residents), 51 This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Borowski), 68 “Toy Meets Girl” (Robot Chicken), 75–77 Tree of Life synagogue attack, Pittsburgh, 112–113 Trump, Donald, 78, 107, 110 “Trump Guy” episode (Family Guy), 78 The Turner Diaries, 111 U United Kingdom anti-immigrant/racist animosity in, 106–107, 119–120 Battle of Cable Street, 15 cultural trauma from WWII, 3–4, 13–14 distancing from the past, 17–18, 50–51, 61 Holocaust mockery/indifference, 3–4, 115–121 Kindertransporte program, 14–16 policies towards Nazi’s after start of war, 16–18 and pop cultural appropriation of Nazi/Holocaust history, 4–6 response to the Bosnian genocide, 36–40 “Rock against Racism” movement, 57–58 support for fascism in, 14–15, 17, 116 as upholder of democratic values, 13 value of the Nuremberg myth in, 12 See also Holocaust memorialization

140 

INDEX

United States and the Americanization of the Holocaust, 27–32 anti-African American songs opposing the Civil Rights Movement, 61 attitudes towards Jews, 15–20 Capitol attack, Jan. 6, 2021, 113 as defender of global human rights, 5 as liberator nation, 4–5, 18–19, 40 and modern American learners, 93 punk use of Nazi imagery, 53 and reminders about fascism and genocide by rockers, 53 World War II experience, 3–4 See also Holocaust humor; Holocaust memorialization; International Military Tribunal (IMT), Nuremberg; Liberator narrative US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) activist legacy, 39–40 and the Americanization of the Holocaust, 27 Holocaust (NBC TV miniseries), 30–32 inaugural ceremonies, 36 and indifference to responsible remembrance, 77 and the liberator trope, 38–39 V Van Gogh, Theo, 92 Vicious, Sid, 51, 52 Victimization trope, 31–33, 55, 70, 88

W “Waiting for the Worms” (Pink Floyd), 57 The Wall (album and film; Pink Floyd), 55–57 War Refugee Board (WRB), 20 The Wave (movie), 91 “Welcome narrative” approach, 18, 96 While America Watches (Shandler), 70 White nationalism bigotry and hate associated with, 92, 95, 107–108, 110–111 and the cooptation of Nazi memes, 4–7, 114, 120 and Holocaust education, 90 and NPC Wojak, 111–113 and Pepe the Frog, 106–108 and violence, 112–115 white power rockers, 59 “White Power” (Skrewdriver), 60 “Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed” (Wyman), 38 Wiesel, Elie, 29, 36–38 See also Night (Wiesel) Wildavsky, Aaron, 40 “Wojak” (NPC), 111–113 Wojak Oswald Mosley, 120 Wojak Robert Bowers, 113–114 Wyman, David, 38 Y Yolocaust website, 128 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 17