HOLOKITSCH. THAT IS ARTIST Art Spiegelmann's word for the banal and manipulative uses to which the Nazi Holocaust has been put in popular culture. Holokitsch reduces an egregious crime to the mechanics of cloying melodrama--dewy-eyed victims and sneering villains. Memory is debased; the uniqueness of each of 6 million lost souls is devalued.
One tonic effect of Jon Blair's documentary Anne Frank Remembered is to restore the human scale to an immense atrocity. It chronicles the daily life of a family--the Frank family, hiding in Amsterdam from the Nazis--with a detail that never sensationalizes. It also gives a fresh perspective to...
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