The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
The subject of the Holocaust has been depicted withinmodern dance.[1] In 1961,Anna Sokolow, a Jewish-Americanchoreographer, created her pieceDreams, as an attempt to deal with hernight terrors. Eventually, it became anaide-mémoire to the horrors of the Holocaust.[2] In 1994, Israeli choreographer Rami Be'er tried to illustrate the feeling of being trapped inAide Memoire (Hebrew title:Zichron Dvarim).[3] The dancers move ecstatically, trapped in their turmoil, spinning while swinging their arms and legs, and banging on the wall; some are crucified, unable to move freely on the stage. This piece was performed by theKibbutz Contemporary Dance Company.[4] In 2016,Tatiana Navka caused controversy when she and her dancing partner, Andrei Burkovsky, appeared in the Russian version ofDancing on Ice dressed asconcentration camp prisoners.[5][6]
Arguably, the Holocaust film most highly acclaimed by critics and historians alike isAlain Resnais'sNight and Fog (1955), which is harrowingly brutal in its graphic depiction of the events at the camps. Many historians and critics have noted its realistic portrayal of the camps and its lack of the histrionics present in so many other Holocaust films.[9] Renowned film historianPeter Cowie states: "It's a tribute to the clarity and cogency ofNight and Fog that Resnais' masterpiece has not been diminished by time or displaced by longer and more ambitious films on the Holocaust, such asShoah andSchindler's List."[10]
With the aging population ofHolocaust survivors, there has been an increased focus in recent years on preserving the Holocaust memory throughdocumentaries. Among the most influential of these[11] is Claude Lanzmann'sShoah (1985), which attempts to tell the story in as much a literal manner as possible without dramatization. Reaching the young population (especially in countries where the Holocaust is not part of education programs) is a challenge, as shown in Mumin Shakirov's documentaryThe Holocaust – Is It Wallpaper Paste? (2013) and Mickey Rapkin's short filmThe Anne Frank Gift Shop (2023).[12]
The Holocaust has been a popular theme in cinema in theCentral andEasternEuropean countries, particularly the cinemas ofPoland, theCzech andSlovak halves ofCzechoslovakia, andHungary. These nations hosted concentration camps or lost substantial portions of their Jewish populations to thegas chambers and, consequently, the Holocaust and the fate of Central Europe's Jews have haunted the work of many film directors, although certain periods have lent themselves more easily to exploring the subject.[which?][citation needed] Although some directors were inspired by their Jewish roots, other directors, such asHungary'sMiklós Jancsó, have no personal connection toJudaism or the Holocaust and yet have repeatedly returned to explore the topic in their works.[which?][citation needed]
Early films about the Holocaust includeAuschwitz survivorWanda Jakubowska'ssemi-documentaryThe Last Stage (Ostatni etap, Poland, 1947) andAlfréd Radok'sThe Long Journey (Daleká cesta, Czechoslovakia, 1948). As Central Europe fell under the grip ofStalinism and state control over the film industry increased, works about the Holocaust ceased to be made until the end of the 1950s (although films aboutWorld War II continued to be produced). Among the first films to reintroduce the topic wasJiří Weiss'Sweet Light in a Dark Room (Romeo, Juliet a tma, Czechoslovakia, 1959) andAndrzej Wajda'sSamson (Poland, 1961).[citation needed]
In the 1960s, several Central European films that dealt with the Holocaust, either directly or indirectly, had critical successes internationally. In 1966, theSlovak-language Holocaust dramaThe Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze, Czechoslovakia, 1965) byJán Kadár andElmer Klos won a special mention at theCannes Film Festival in 1965 and theOscar for Best Foreign Language Film the following year.[citation needed] Another sophisticated Holocaust film from Czechoslovakia isDita Saxova (Antonín Moskalyk, 1967).[13]
While some of these films, such asShop on the Main Street, used a conventional filmmaking style,[citation needed] a significant body of films were bold stylistically and used innovative techniques to dramatize the terror of the period. This included nonlinear narratives and narrative ambiguity, for example inAndrzej Munk'sPassenger (Pasażerka, Poland, 1963) andJan Němec'sDiamonds of the Night (Démanty noci, Czechoslovakia, 1964);expressionist lighting and staging, as inZbyněk Brynych'sThe Fifth Horseman is Fear (...a paty jezdec je Strach, Czechoslovakia, 1964); and grotesquelyblack humor, as inJuraj Herz'sThe Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, Czechoslovakia, 1968).
Literature was an important influence on these films, and almost all of the film examples cited in this section were based on novels or short stories. In Czechoslovakia, five stories byArnošt Lustig were adapted for the screen in the 1960s, including Němec'sDiamonds of the Night.[citation needed]
Although some works, such as Munk'sThe Passenger (1963), had disturbing and graphic sequences of the camps,[citation needed] generally these films depicted the moral dilemmas the Holocaust placed ordinary people in and the dehumanizing effects it had on society as a whole, rather than the physical tribulations of individuals actually in the camps. As a result, a body of these Holocaust films was interested in those who collaborated in the Holocaust, either by direct action, for example inThe Passenger andAndrás Kovács'sCold Days (Hideg Napok, Hungary, 1966), or through passive inaction, as inThe Fifth Horseman is Fear.[citation needed]
The 1970s and 1980s were less fruitful times for Central European film generally,[citation needed] and Czechoslovak cinema particularly suffered after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion.[citation needed] Nevertheless, interesting works on the Holocaust, and more generally the Jewish experience in Central Europe, were sporadically produced in this period, particularly in Hungary. Holocaust films from this time includeImre Gyöngyössy andBarna Kabay'sThe Revolt of Job (Jób lázadása, Hungary, 1983), Leszek Wosiewicz'sKornblumenblau (Poland, 1988), andRavensbrück survivorJuraj Herz'sNight Caught Up With Me (Zastihla mě noc, Czechoslovakia, 1986), whose shower scene is thought to be the basis ofSteven Spielberg's similar sequence inSchindler's List.[citation needed]
Directors such asIstván Szabó (Hungary) andAgnieszka Holland (Poland) were able to make films that touched on the Holocaust by working internationally, Szabó with hisOscar-winningMephisto (Germany/Hungary/Austria, 1981) and Holland with her more directly Holocaust-themedAngry Harvest (Bittere Ernte, Germany, 1984). Also worth noting is the East German-Czechoslovak coproductionJacob the Liar (Jakob, der Lügner, 1975) in German and directed by German directorFrank Beyer, but starring the acclaimed Czech actorVlastimil Brodský. The film was remade inan English-language version in 1999 but did not achieve the scholarly acceptance of theEast German version by Beyer.[citation needed]
A resurgence of interest in Central Europe's Jewish heritage in the post-Communist era has led to several more recent features about the Holocaust, such as Wajda'sKorczak (Poland, 1990), Szabó'sSunshine (Germany/Austria/Canada/Hungary, 1999), andJan Hřebejk'sDivided We Fall (Musíme si pomáhat, Czech Republic, 2001). BothSunshine andDivided We Fall are typical of a trend of recent films from Central Europe that asks questions about integration and how national identity can incorporate minorities.[citation needed]
In comparison to movies from the 1960s, these current ones have been significantly less stylised and subjectivized. For example, Polish directorRoman Polanski'sThe Pianist (France/Germany/United Kingdom/Poland, 2002) was noted for its emotional economy and restraint, which somewhat surprised some critics given the overwrought style of some of Polanski's previous films[citation needed] and Polanski's personal history as a Holocaust survivor.[citation needed]
There is a substantial body of literature and art in many languages. Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of studyingHolocaust literature is the language often used in stories or essays; survivorPrimo Levi notes in an interview for theInternational School for Holocaust Studies, housed at theYad Vashem:
On many occasions, we survivors of theNazi concentration camps have come to notice how little use words are in describing our experiences... In all of our accounts, verbal or written, one finds expressions such as "indescribable," "inexpressible," "words are not enough," "one would need a language for..." This was, in fact, our daily thought; language is for the description of daily experience, but here it is another world, here one would need a language of this other world, but a language born here.[15]
This type of language is present in many, if not most, of the words by authors presented here.
Nonna Bannister wroteThe Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister, a collection of diary entries and memoirs she wrote before, during, and after her time in a Nazi labor camp.
Gad Beck wroteAn Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin.
Richard Glazar, who was one of only a small group of survivors of theTreblinka revolt, wrote an autobiographical book titledTrap with a Green Fence: Survival inTreblinka.
Dorka Goldkorn wroteMemoirs of A Participant of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Irene Gut Opdyke wroteIn My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer about how she rescued some Jews fromdeportation.
Fanya Gottesfeld Heller wroteLove in a World of Sorrow/Strange and Unexpected Love (both titles used).
Arek Hersh wroteA Detail of History: The Harrowing True Story of a Boy Who Survived the Nazi Holocaust.
Magda Herzberger wroteSurvival about her early life, her time in the camps and her reunion with her mother.
Etty Hillesum wroteAn Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum.
Edgar Hilsenrath wroteNight, which describes life and survival in a Jewish ghetto in Ukraine, andThe Nazi and the Barber, which describes the story from the point of view of aSS mass murderer, who later assumes a Jewish identity and escapes toIsrael.
Eugene Hollander was a Hungarian who wroteFrom the Hell of the Holocaust: A Survivor's Story.
Ruth Klüger wroteStill Alive, which is a memoir of her experiences growing up in Nazi-occupied Vienna and later in the concentration camps ofTheresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Christianstadt.
Victor Lewis wroteHardships and Near-Death Experiences at the Hands of the Nazi SS andGestapo.
Leon Leyson wroteThe Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible… on Schindler's List.
Marceline Loridan-Ivens wrote a memoirBut You Did Not Come Back, which details her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Jacques Lusseyran wrote the autobiographyAnd There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Resistance about his life beforeWWII, his work in the resistance, and his experience in Buchenwald concentration camp
Henry Orenstein wroteI Shall Live: Surviving Against All Odds 1939–1945, a memoir of his experiences during the Nazi Holocaust and his survival in five concentration camps.
Miriam Winter wroteTrains: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood during and after World War II, in which she describes her survival of the Holocaust as a "hidden child".
Eva Salier wroteThe Survival of a Spirit for teenagers and preteens. It recounts her story and highlights the role of humor as a coping mechanism making note that, "Mad as it may sound, there was a funny side even in Auschwitz".[21]
Selma Van de Perre wroteMy Name is Selma depicting her experience first as a resistance fighter, and later in a concentration camp. Although she was Jewish, she was imprisoned as a political prisoner due to her false papers.
Janina Altman wroteOczyma dwunastoletniej dziewczyny. She wrote this when she was 12 years old and recounts her time inLwów Ghetto andJanowska concentration camp. The book was translated from Polish into German, French, Finnish, Catalan, and Spanish.
Denise Holstein wroteJe ne vous oublierai jamais, mes enfants d'Auschwitz.
Art Spiegelman completed the second and final installment ofMaus, hisPulitzer Prize-winninggraphic novel in 1991. Through text and illustration, the autobiography retraces his father's steps through the Holocaust along with the residual effects of those events a generation later. According toHolocaust Literature: A History and Guide,Maus can be seen as a species oforal history, and is very much an autobiography, for the parents "bleed history" into their children.[22]
Larry Duberstein publishedFive Bullets in 2014. Of the novel, which chronicles the life of Duberstein's uncle who escaped Auschwitz and joined theSoviet partisan struggle against the German army, historianTheodore Rosengarten wrote, "[m]ore people learn about the Holocaust from fiction than from anything else, and readers will learn more from Duberstein's daring, elegant, introspective masterpiece than any other novel I know."[23]
Fern Schumer Chapman wrote two books about the Holocaust. The firstMotherland: Beyond the Holocaust – A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past is about the author and her mother returning to the village where their family used to live. Her mother was the only one who survived. The second book isIs It Night or Day?.
Vasily Grossman wroteThe Hell of Treblinka, describing the liberation by theRed Army of the Treblinka extermination camp.
Hanna Krall wroteShielding the Flame,[24] also published asTo Outwit God, in whichMarek Edelman, the last surviving commander of theJewish Combat Organization (ZOB) in theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising, speaks of the uprising. She also wrote stories, translated asThe Woman from Hamburg,[25] and a longer work,Chasing the King of Hearts,[26] concerning Holocaust survivors. These works, presented as reporting others' experiences, sometimes appear to straddle the line between reportage and fiction.
Magda Hellinger wroteThe Nazis Knew my Name about her own experiences in Auschwitz, with the help of David Brewster, and her daughter Maya Lee. Magda was on the second Slovakian women's transport.
Roxane Van Iperen wroteThe Sisters of Auschwitz: The True Story of Two Jewish Sisters' Resistance in the Heart of Nazi Territory based on the story of the Dutch sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper.
The Holocaust has been a common subject in American literature, with authors ranging fromSaul Bellow toSylvia Plath addressing it in their works.
The title character of American authorWilliam Styron's novelSophie's Choice (1979), is a former inmate ofAuschwitz who tells the story of her Holocaust experience to the narrator over the course of the novel. It was commercially successful and won theNational Book Award for fiction in 1980.[29]
In 1991,Martin Amis' novel,Time's Arrow was published. This book, shortlisted for theBooker Prize, details the life of a Nazi doctor but is told in reverse chronological order, in a narrative that almost seems to cleanse the doctor of his sins he has committed and return to a time before the horrific acts of pure evil that preceded the Nazi regime.[citation needed]
The Shawl is a short story byCynthia Ozick and tells the story of three people and their march to and internment in a Nazi concentration camp.
Richard Zimler'sThe Warsaw Anagrams takes place in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940-41 and is narrated by anibbur (ghost). Named 2010 Book of the Year in Portugal, where Zimler has lived since 1990, the novel was described in theSan Francisco Chronicle in August 2011 as follows: "Equal parts riveting, heartbreaking, inspiring and intelligent, this mystery set in the most infamous Jewish ghetto of World War II deserves a place among the most important works of Holocaust literature." Zimler'sThe Seventh Gate (2012) explores the Nazi war against disabled people.Booklist wrote the following: "Mixing profound reflections on Jewish Mysticism with scenes of elemental yet always tender sensuality, Zimler captures the Nazi era in the most human of terms, devoid of sentimentality but throbbing with life lived passionately in the midst of horror."
"Stalags" were pocket books that became popular in Israel and whose stories involved lusty female SS officers sexually abusing Nazi camp prisoners. During the 1960s, parallel to theEichmann trial, sales of this pornographic literature broke all records in Israel as hundreds of thousands of copies were sold atkiosks.[30]
Somealternate history fiction set inscenarios whereNazi Germany wins World War II, includes the Holocaust happening in countries where it did not happen in reality. And, the effects of a slight turn of historic events on other nations is imagined inThe Plot Against America, byPhilip Roth where an allegedNazi sympathizer—Charles A. Lindbergh—defeats FDR for the Presidency in the United States in 1940.
The effect of the Holocaust on Jews living in other countries is also seen inThe Museum Guard byHoward Norman, which is set inNova Scotia in 1938 and in which a young half-Jewish woman becomes so obsessed and disturbed with a painting of a "Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam", that she is resolved to go to Amsterdam and "reunite" with the painter, despite all the horrific events occurring in Europe at the time and the consequences that may result.
A large body of literature has also been established concerning theNuremberg Trials of 1945–1946, a subject which has been continually written about over the years. (SeeNuremberg Trials bibliography).
The Invisible Bridge, written byJulie Orringer, tells the story of a young Hungarian-Jewish student who leaves Budapest in 1937 to study architecture in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with a ballet teacher. Both are then caught up in the second world war and struggle to survive.
A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, written byIda Fink, is a collection of fictional short stories relating various characters to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust.
The Lost Shtetl (2020), the debut novel of Max Gross, centers on a Jewish shtetl that was spared the Holocaust and the Cold War. It garnered acclaim from book critics and drew comparisons with the novels ofMichael Chabon.[31]
Jane Yolen'sThe Devil's Arithmetic (1988) hurls its protagonist—an American teenage Jewish girl of the 1980s—back in time to the terrifying circumstances of being a young Jewish girl in a Polishshtetl in the 1940s. In her novelBriar Rose a child finds out that her grandmother was a survivor of the Holocaust and then tries to find the identity and the life of her grandmother.
AustralianMorris Gleitzman's novels for childrenOnce (2005),Then (2009),Now (2010), andAfter (2011) deal with Jewish children on the run from the Nazis during World War II.[32]
The prize-winning companion novels of another Australian,Ursula Dubosarsky,The First Book of Samuel (1995) andTheodora's Gift (2005), are about children living in contemporary Australia in a family of Holocaust survivors.[33]
Lois Lowry's bookNumber the Stars tells about the escape of a Jewish family from Copenhagen during World War II.
Daniel's Story is a 1993 children's novel byCarol Matas, telling the story of a young boy and his experiences in the Holocaust.
Hana's Suitcase was written by Karen Levine and tells the story ofHana Brady.
Arka Czasu is a 2013 young adult novel by Polish authorMarcin Szczygielski, telling the story about the escape of a nine-year-old Jewish boy Rafał from Warsaw Ghetto.[34]
To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely.
German philosopherTheodor Adorno commented that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric", but he later retracted this statement. There are some substantial works dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath, including the work of survivorPaul Celan, which uses inverted syntax and vocabulary in an attempt to express the inexpressible. Celan considered the German language tainted by the Nazis, although he was friends[citation needed] with Nazi sympathizer and philosopherMartin Heidegger.
PoetCharles Reznikoff, in his 1975 bookHolocaust,[36] created a work intrinsically respectful of the pitfalls implied by Adorno's statement; in itself both a "defense of poetry" and an acknowledgment of the obscenity of poetical rhetoric relative to atrocity, this book utilizes none of the author's own words, coinages, flourishes, interpretations and judgments: it is a creation solely based on U.S. government records of theNuremberg Trials and English-translated transcripts of theAdolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Through selection and arrangement of these source materials (the personal testimonies of both survivor victims and perpetrators), and severe editing down to essentials, Reznikoff fulfills a truth-telling function of poetry by laying bare human realities, and horrors, without embellishment, achieving the "poetic" through ordering the immediacy of documented testimony.
In 1998, Northwestern University Press published an anthology, edited by Marguerite M. Striar, entitledBeyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust,[37] which, in poetry, defends the sentiments of the statement of Adorno, in a section entitled "In Defense of Poetry," and reinforces the need to document for future generations what occurred in those times so as to never forget. The book collects, in poetry by survivors, witnesses, and many other poets—well known and not—remembrances of, and reflections on, the Holocaust, dealing with the subject in other sections chronologically, the poems organized in further sections by topics: "The Beginning: Premonitions and Prophecies," "The Liberation," and "The Aftermath."
Aside from Adorno's opinion, a great deal of poetry has been written about the Holocaust by poets from various backgrounds—survivors (for example, Sonia Schrieber Weitz[38]) and countless others, including well-known poet,William Heyen (author ofErika: Poems of the Holocaust,The Swastika Poems, andThe Shoah Train), himself a nephew of two men who fought for the Nazis in World War II.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Hana Volavkova is a collection of works of art and poetry by Jewish children who lived in the concentration camp Theresienstadt.
Pinaki Roy offered a comparative study of the different Holocaust novels written in or translated into English.[39] Roy also reread different Holocaust victims' poems translated into English for the elements of suffering and protestations ingrained in them.[40] Elsewhere, Roy explored different aspects ofAnne Frank's memoir of the Nazi atrocities, one of the more poignant remembrances of the excesses of World War II.[41] Moreover, in his "Damit wir nicht vergessen!: a very brief Survey of SelectHolocaust Plays", published inEnglish Forum(4, 2015: 121–41,ISSN2279-0446), Roy offers a survey and critical estimate of different plays (inYiddish,German, andEnglish translation), which deal with the theme of theHolocaust.
Ernestine Schlant has analyzed the Holocaust literature byWest German authors.[42] She discussed literary works byHeinrich Böll,Wolfgang Koeppen,Alexander Kluge,Gert Hofmann,W.G. Sebald and others. The so-calledVäterliteratur (novels about fathers) from around 1975 reflected the new generation's exploration of their fathers' (and occasionally mothers') involvement in the Nazi atrocities, and the older generation's generally successful endeavour to pass it under silence.[43] This was often accompanied by a critical portrayal of the new generation's upbringing by authoritarian parents. Jews are usually absent from these narratives, and the new generation tends to appropriate from unmentioned Jews the status of victimhood.[44] One exception, where the absence of the Jew was addressed through the gradual ostracism and disappearance of an elderly Jew in a small town, is Gert Hofmann'sVeilchenfeld (1986).[45]
In 2021De Gruyter published study focused on Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction.[46]
The songs that were created during the Holocaust in ghettos, camps, and partisan groups tell the stories of individuals, groups and communities in the Holocaust period and were a source of unity and comfort, and later, of documentation and remembrance.[47]
In 1984, Canadian rock bandRush recorded the song "Red Sector A" on the albumGrace Under Pressure. The song is particularly notable for its allusions to The Holocaust, inspired byGeddy Lee's memories of his mother's stories[53] about the liberation ofBergen-Belsen, where she was held prisoner. One of Lee's solo songs, "Grace to Grace" on the albumMy Favourite Headache, was also inspired by his mother's Holocaust experiences.[53]
In 1988,Steve Reich composedDifferent Trains, a three-movement piece forstring quartet and tape. In the second movement, Europe — During the War, three Holocaust survivors (identified by Reich as Paul, Rachel, and Rachella) speak about their experiences in Europe during the war, including theirtrain trips to concentration camps. The third movement, "After the War", features Holocaust survivors talking about the years immediately following World War II.
In 2017, the Swedishmelodic death metal bandArch Enemy recorded the song "First Day in Hell" on the albumWill to Power. The song was written by the band's lead vocalist,Alissa White-Gluz, who based it on her Jewish grandparents experiences in the concentration camps.[54]
In 2018, theJewish Telegraphic Agency wrote an article about the song "101 Jerusalem," which chronicles the real-life story of a Jewish boy fleeing Nazism during World War II.[55]
In theHeartbeat episode "Out of the Long, Dark Night", a mysterious woman named Lisa Barnes breaks into the house of married couple Eva and James Knight. She paints a swastika and writes "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" on a wall, which upsets the Jewish Eva. Lisa later returns and attempts to gas Eva to death, but fails. When she is arrested, Lisa reveals that Eva Knight is in reality not Jewish, but a Czechoslovakian nurse and Nazi named Eva Hanacek, who had murdered Lisa's Jewish parents during the Holocaust (Lisa had survived because her parents had sold what they had, and sent the young Lisa to England, before the war). Hanacek had been in charge of examining prisoners, deciding who would be put to hard labour, and who would be sent to their death. If a prisoner could pay Hanacek, she would let them live, but Lisa's parents could not pay, and were killed. Lisa had tried to take the information about Eva Knight to the authorities, but had been dismissed, as Eva Hanacek had been reported to have been killed by Russian bombs in 1945. When confronted by Lisa's allegations, Eva Knight reveals the truth about herself: she had been born Eva Beskova, a Slovacian Jew. Her family was killed by the Nazis, but Eva had been allowed to live. She was young and pretty, and the Nazis had decided that they had a use for her. They sent her to the Russian front, and forced her into a life of prostitution. To prevent any SS-officer from fathering a racially impure child by accident, the Nazis had Eva forcibly sterilized. Eva managed to escape, and came across the dead body of Eva Hanacek, whom she discovered looked like her (and stole Hanacek's identity). Eva Hanacek had Red Cross papers and a lot of money, that allowed Eva Beskova to make it to the British, and escape persecution. Eva's story is confirmed by medical evidence of her sterilization.[56]
In theAmerican Dad! episode "Tearjerker",Tearjerker (a parody ofJames Bond villains) has produced the saddest movie of all time: a Holocaust movie, about a mentally handicapped Jewish boy with a cancer-ridden puppy. Audiences all over the world are shown crying their eyes out, with the one exception beingTehran (where theMuslim audience find the film hilarious).[57]
Herbert, a recurring character on the animated sitcomFamily Guy, is a Holocaust survivor. In the episode "German Guy",Chris Griffin meets and befriends an old German man named Franz Gutentag. Herbert spots the two, and becomes terrified at the sight of Franz. Herbert goes to Chris' parents and tells them that Franz is aNazi SS lieutenant named Franz Schlechtnacht, whom he had met during World War II (while serving in theUnited States Air Force) after being shot down in his plane. He was then taken to a concentration camp by the Nazis, after he was believed to be gay, that was run by Franz (who decided which prisoners lived, and which were sent to their death), and was forced to undergo hard labor. Chris' parents are reluctant to believe Herbert's story. Chris and his father later discover the truth about Franz, who locks them up in his basement. Finding out about this, Herbert confronts Franz, which result in a physical confrontation and ends with Franz falling to his death.[58]
Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), who is one of the main characters of theDC Comics superhero drama television seriesArrow and the love interest and later wife of its titular protagonistOliver Queen / Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), their daughterMia (Katherine McNamara), and Felicity's mother Donna (Charlotte Ross), are descendants of the Holocaust survivors. In "Crisis on Earth-X", a 2017 4-part crossover episode ofSupergirl,Arrow,The Flash, andDC's Legends of Tomorrow, depicts that in aparallel universe where the Axis forces won World War II, and that the Holocaust has continued into the 21st century and spread throughout the world. One Jewish concentration camp prisoner in the Nazi-annexed United States is a parallel universe counterpart of Felicity (also portrayed by Rickards), who is saved by her doppelgänger's husband from execution. Another notable prisoner isRay Terrill (Russell Tovey), who is superheroThe Ray, is arrested for resisting the Nazi regime in addition to his homosexuality.
David Haller (Dan Stevens), the protagonist of theMarvel superhero television seriesLegion, is the son of a Romani Holocaust survivor namedGabrielle (Stephanie Corneliussen). Flashbacks in the episode "Chapter 22",Charles Xavier (David's father) is shown meeting Gabrielle at a mental hospital, after World War II. Gabrielle had been rescued from the camps, but had lost her entire family and the trauma of the Holocaust had left Gabriellecatatonic. With his telepathy, Charles manages to get her out of that state (and they later got married).[59] In the episode "Chapter 23", the grown David is sent back in time, finds himself in a concentration camp, and encounters Gabrielle as a young woman, during her time as a prisoner in the camp. Upon noticing David, Gabrielle asks David (mistaking her future son for a fellow prisoner) if he is: "Jew or gypsy? Or homosexual?".[60]
There are many plays related to the Holocaust, for example "The Substance of Fire" byJon Robin Baitz, "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" byBertolt Brecht,Jeff Cohen's "The Soap Myth",Dea Loher's "Olga's Room", "Cabaret", the stage adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank", "Broken Glass" byArthur Miller, and "Bent" byMartin Sherman.[61][62] In 2010 the advisory board of theNational Jewish Theater Foundation launched the Holocaust Theater International Initiative, which has three parts: theHolocaust Theater Catalog, a digital catalog in the form of a website containing plays from 1933 to the present about the Holocaust that has user specific informative entries, the Holocaust Theater Education (HTE), which is the development of curricula, materials, techniques, and workshops for the primary, secondary, and higher education levels, and the Holocaust Theater Production (HTP), which is the promotion and facilitation of an increased number of live domestic and international productions about the Holocaust, that includes theater works to be recorded for digital access.[63] The Holocaust Theater Catalog, which launched in October 2014, is the first comprehensive archive of theater materials related to the Holocaust; it was created by the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies and the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies — both at the University of Miami — and the National Jewish Theater Foundation.[62]
In 2010, a theater adaptation ofBoris Pahor's novelNecropolis, directed by Boris Kobal, was staged in Trieste's Teatro Verdi.
In 2014 Gal Hurvitz, a young actress and theater artistic director decided to found theEtty Hillesum Israeli Youth Theatre in memory of Etty Hillesum to provide a safe space for youth from underprivileged neighborhoods and backgrounds (Jews, Arabs and Emigrates in Jaffa).
Creating artwork inside theNazi concentration camps andghettos was punishable; if found, the person who created it could be killed. The Nazis branded art that portrayed their regime poorly as "horror propaganda".[64] Nonetheless, many people painted and sketched as inhabitants needed a way to bring life into their lives and express their human need to create and be creative. The Nazis found many of the artists' works before the prisoners could complete them.
A survivor of the Nazi onslaught in Zamosc, Poland Artist Irene Wechter Lieblich started painting at the age of 48 after her immigration to the United States. She was a recognized New York painter who painted pre-Nazi Jewish cultural life of Shtetls surrounding Zamosc, as well as Holocaust paintings while incarcerated in a ghetto, and Jews attempting to flee from the Nazis. She went on early in her art career illustrating the children's books of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer who lauded her work as being authentic to Jewish life in Poland before the war.
David Olère began to draw at Auschwitz during the last days of the camp. He felt compelled to capture Auschwitz artistically to illustrate the fate of all those that did not survive. He exhibited his work at the State Museum of Les Invalides and the Grand Palais in Paris, at the Jewish Museum in New York City, at the Berkeley Museum, and in Chicago.
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz (1927–2001), a Polish survivor untrained in art, told her story in a series of 36 fabric art pictures that are at once both beautiful and shocking.Memories of Survival (2005) displays her art along with a narrative by her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt.[citation needed]
While inside theŁódź Ghetto,Mendel Grossman took over 10,000 photographs of the monstrosities he saw there. Grossman secretly took these photos from inside his raincoat using materials taken from the Statistics Department. He was deported to a labor camp inKoenigs Wusterhausen and stayed there until 16 April 1945. Ill and exhausted, he was shot by Nazis during a forced death march, still holding on to his camera but the negatives of his photos were discovered and published in the bookWith a Camera in the Ghetto. The photos illustrate the sad reality of how the Germans dealt with the Jews.[67]
German internment camps were much less strict with art. A black, Jewish artist namedJosef Nassy created over 200 drawings and paintings while he was at theLaufen andTittmoning camps in Bavaria.[68]
In Israel, many additional artists have dealt with the subject of the Holocaust, including the partisanAlexander Bogen,Moshe Gershuni, Joseph (Yoske) Levy,Yigal Tumarkin, and others. Children of survivors have also expressed their personal family stories through various forms of visual art, such asquilting.[70] An exhibition held atYad Vashem in 2011Virtues of Memory highlighted six decades of Holocaust survivors' creativity.
The Visual artistYishay Garbasz has devoted a large part of her art career to the inheritance ofTraumatic memories as a second generation to the Holocaust.[71] Including her book "In My Mother's Footsteps"[72] she follows her mother's footsteps through the Holocaust as well as many other projects exhibited in many galleries and museums around the world as well as theBusan biennale 2010.[73]
Thepop art painterDan Groover produced several paintings on theShoah theme, which were presented in an exhibition inEmek Refaim Street in Jerusalem.[74]
Israel-born artist Judith Weinshall Liberman has created 1,000 paintings and wall hangings, including theHolocaust Wall Hangings, a series of 60 fabric banners illustrating the plight of Jews and other minorities during the Holocaust.[75][76]
^Parvulescu, Constantin (2015). "The Testifying Orphan: Rethinking Modernity's Optimism".Orphans of the East: Postwar Eastern European Cinema and the Revolutionary Subject. Indiana University Press. pp. 70–91.ISBN978-0-253-01765-9.Project MUSE1509633.
^Wiesel, Elie; Borchardt, Anne (21 March 2006).Day. Macmillan. p. x.ISBN978-0-8090-2309-7. Retrieved31 March 2011.
^Ochayon, Sheryl Silver (2002).Image and Remembrance: Representation and the Holocaust. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.ISBN978-0-253-21569-7.
^Roy, Pinaki (July–September 2008).Memories mean more to us than anything else: Remembering Anne Frank's Diary in the 21st century. Vol. 9. pp. 11–25.ISBN978-81-269-1057-1.ISSN0972-3269.{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)
