Haunted Laughter

Jonathan C. Friedman is director of Holocaust and genocide studies and professor of history at West Chester University.

• IntroductionChapter One: Famous Comedies from The Great Dictator to JoJo RabbitChapter Two: Comedy Films and TV Shows about HitlerChapter Three: Contesting the Nazis and Their System of Terror Through HumorChapter Four: Memory, Trauma, and ComedyChapter Five: Humor as Social CriticismConclusion: Comedy, The Solemn, and The Serious

In his laudable study of the Shoah/Holocaust event and memory, Friedman proposes a setting marked by the collaboration of historical data and filmography. Abounding with contextual readings and resources, this sociohistorical treatment of over a hundred Shoah centered comedic film and TV productions investigates the constituent characteristics of why and how learning and teaching the Shoah tragedy through a comedic framework can be inspirational and not trivial nor irreverent. Friedman’s chapters reflect on different aspects of comedy and humor and attempt to show how the personification of laughter is an experiential device to confront, content, and make right not light the trivialization of catastrophic victimhood. The Introduction charts the book’s divisions and sections and explains their rationale for selection and interpretation. In the chapters that follow, concise, detailed explanations accompany the narrative on the selected films and videos. They reflect Friedman’s instructional expertise: reading, observing, writing, and reasoning. It is pointedly expressed in the title: Haunted Laughter, no post-mortem victory for Hitlerism. The result is an erudite guide to a counter-culture genre that complements epochal approaches in the study of the Shoah. A tour de force contribution to Holocaust education.